Tell us about your weekend ride

this weather is incredible. warmest day ever yesterday over here in NL, and it's going to be another lovely day. have a good one too, all of you!

Turns out doing a long ride and gunning up the hills is actually good preparation for racing the next day... I won the Lea Valley CC HC!

Congrats!

I won a shot of my crotch

then I get to build my 1x10 ribble winter machine.

Why anger the chainline gods?

(I don't get this recent(?) fascination with 1x10...)

First day of a week's cycling in Mallorca here. 92.7km, 1992m climbing.

Views from the Col de Soller were as fine as ever.

Cause it means I can convert my fixed gear into a winter machine without buying a new chainset. I've got all the other bits already. Although tonight I'm rolling suicude style as I didn't have a long enough rear brake outer.

I did the upper Thames audax yesterday. Got dark quickly. Nice route. Food at the finish and a pub with good beer and an open fire. Was a bit windy toward the end .

I can't tell from the thumb nails but if you've not come up the Soller side you should definitely do that. Way better than the million hairpin side. Also: English-fact-loving-cafe-owner at the top lol.

Gorgeous day out on the Essex lanes on Saturday, first time in a while that I've been out for longer than an hour and didn't feel too bad at all!

http://www.strava.com/activities/214233320

Yesterday's ride was from the south, so down the Soller side. But we had a week's cycling in Mallorca last year too, and like this year we stayed in Soller, so it's fair to say that we've done the Col de Soller every which way you can. Today's ride had to be a bit short as @Cycliste had to be back for a 2pm teleconference for work. Lovely and sunny today, but it looks like the weather's going to deteriorate tomorrow. Oh well, here's today's ride:

We did the same ride last year, but this year's effort was 29 minutes faster. #csb #truefax

If you bump into an American woman called Christina outside the Cafeteria Paris, sayu Ronnie says hello.

Will do. Currently sat outside the Cafeteria Planet. We used to go to the Cafeteria Paris, but they've changed the decor and @Cycliste finds the change disturbing.

Where do you get those Fiat shorts? Want

30k of trail XC today 36x17

So @Doctor_Cake and I took a trip over to Bikepark Wales this weekend for rad trail funz. DC hasn’t done any trail riding before, and doesn’t own a trail bike, so we hired a Trek Slash 650b full sus monster bike for her whilst I rode my hardtail Stanton Ti.

The slash did look like a fun ride - 160mm pikes at the front, 160mm at the back and massive 2.4” rubber on sensibly sized 650b wheels gives you a lot of bike to play with, although an uplift was, well, helpful, as the thing clocked in at around 15kg.

Shonky weather, but the trails were in rude health. Being graded ‘blue’, the easiest trails are not dull and still have a couple of challenging features and it took a couple of runs of the two blues for me to find my footing again, so I was very pleased to see DC confidently tackling the rocky sections - the spot of BMXing she’s been doing recently helping there, no doubt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjzeEDHRMpg&list

Having consumed an epic baked potato at the very well equipped cafe we decided to ride up the fire road to the trail head whilst the uplift drivers were on lunch. It only took us 35 minutes, despite lugging chunky bikes up the slopes, and the view from the opposite side of the hill is pretty awesome, so definitely worth doing once if you want to feel like you’ve earned your lunch.

Later we tackled a red run together and the two chunky rock drop offs at the start - built to dissuade riders without the required skills for the rest of the trail - didn’t trouble DC at all. Later on the trail becomes the super-rocky ‘Ring Dinger’, kinda living up to its name by puncturing several of our group’s rubber, but again DC was unflustered and navigated the rocks without drama.

This was my second outing to BPW and overall I felt more confident on the trails and got some good air at times. It’s a great place to put in to practice new skills, but due to the super-fast nature of the trails it’s not a great place to learn new tricks or session obstacles - there’s no way to push back up the trails to repeat a feature or section.

They do have plans there to create 9 - NINE - more runs and extend the cross country climb into a massive loop, so good stuff is afoot there.

The uplift remains booked up for months in advance, so if you fancy giving it a go, drop a date in the calendar for early next year or prepare to make the climb at the end of each run. If you opt for the later you’ll certainly earn the mega-lunch portions.

Now I have to clean / service this, though.

@Cycliste and I cycled up to the monastery at San Sebastian today. Splendid views, and if you look really carefully on the first photo there's a small red blob just by the car at the hairpin - that's @Cycliste on her way up the hill.

Cycled up to another monastery today, this time the monastery at Cura/Randa. More stunning vistas, made even better by the knowledge that we'd come from the far side of the hill in the distance.

Stats below:

The only downside was the fact that I dropped it going down the Col de Soller first thing in the morning. It was only a slow speed fall (I blame the Vittoria Corsa CX death tyres) but my right hip now has a large lump on it which doesn't have much skin left on it. And my arm warmers have blood on them. Oh well...

^ Sounds like a rubbish weekend if it's extending into Thursday.

#lesigh

Some companions just grin your inner mojo #manhug

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Just did my first XC race in a while at Crowthorne wood, Bracknell.

I guess you have to be an absolute beast to turn up to one of these in mid Nov - I was resolutely annihilated.

Still 2 hours of full gas and technical rooty wet mud trails has to be good training, right?

I finally stopped being quite so lazy and attempted to find a new way to the Peaks.
It didn't quite work^, but it was glorious.
http://www.strava.com/activities/217353798
Lots of this (this was the least muddy part):

And very few cyclists (probably a reason for that!)
Bit slower than normal on average pace- but most of that can be attributed to picking/scooting/ skidding/ portaging/ laughing with some horseriders through the above and other sections on 25s and 110 PSI.

^ I had wanted to get some Bakewell tart/pudding, but was running out of time so went home.

Nice one! I know that bit of the world really well - you get a great mix of hills and open country and there is hardly ever anyone else out. Branwen and Hats have been to cafe 'Chez Maman' in Brassington - am sure you could scrounge a cup of tea with a bit of warning.

I wish I did! Everytime I've ever ventured into the Peaks I end up riding trails!
When you're next up- let me know!

Not exactly a "weekend ride" but last weekend I finished this ride, which I started the previous weekend, so that's a tenuous enough link for me.

Something like 520 miles over 7 days, on my own.

I had an almighty fuck up getting to Berlin in the first place, with Deutsche Bahn trying to make me go to Munich (but my bike go to Berlin), but I'm getting compensation.

There was one day of extreme mist and temperatures around 3 degrees. Then it became really sunny, and although it wasn't exactly warm I did take my kneewarmers and neoprene gloves off some of the time. It got dark pretty early and there were a few hairy moments, but nothing I didn't survive.

I absolutely loved it. Cycling in Germany is infinitely better than here (apart from when I got in a shouting match with a woman who wanted me to use the cycle path instead of the road - turns out she was (legally) correct). Cycling in the Netherlands is even better. This isn't news to anyone I'm sure, but it's just so lovely over there that it's worth saying again.

My top tips for a trip like this would be: don't go after the clocks change, spend more than 2 lunch breaks planning the route and buy a bell so that you don't get stuck behind slow cyclists on fietspads.

I tweeted about the trip throughout under the hashtag #hatsradtour and have written a blog about my trip, for anyone interested: http://lambonabike.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/hatsradtour/

Can't wait to go touring again next year!!

Very good read!