Red Run

So after a week of glorious sunshine the obvious plan by Friday was to head to Llandegla trail centre on Saturday to get a trail or two under my biking belt.  Trail centres aren't my favorite form of mountain biking, but they do serve a couple of useful purposes - they have well signed trails, large car parks, cafe and toilet facilities.  The trails are graded so you know you're going to attempt something you should be technically suited to, the distances are designed to last maybe a couple of hours tops, and no roads or road crossings are involved. 

The reasons they aren't top of my list are that I feel part of a treadmill of riders following each other's tails and don't feel like I'm travelling, but enclosed in a man made maze.  They do, however, provide exercise, a sociable ride, safety, security and a fine place to fine tune your skills.  I don't have a lot of skills to fine tune so this should really be something I embrace.

One day I may look to time myself around the red run and put down a personal best marker.  Yesterday wasn't to be that day, however.  I have amazing early season fitness, and may well not see the like of this again, and indeed all fitness is anticipated to vanish by summer as the realist in me accepts that at some point I probably will get injured in some way and find myself with weeks off the bike.  It would be nice to put down a time.  This time, however, I have company which is nice, and sociable and gives me something to measure myself against in a positive way.  I learn not to go full tilt, but to use the time to experiment, to see what happens if I take a rocky line, to concentrate on moving my balance backwards and forwards while going over humps, to try to improve my hill climbing gear selection and even check out how I do corners.  I'm not good at going round corners.  Not sure why.

It's kind of fun standing in strategic places awaiting the arrival of your trail partner for the day.  Young fit men come past you and you can watch their bums receeding into the distance.  

Yesterday I decreed a 4.5 degree temperature as shorts weather.  That's not like me at all, a nesh individual if ever I knew one.  Lulled into a false sense of security by mid week sunshine.