A ride in the mist.

The weather today was misty which meant that it was also still. It hasn’t rained significantly for a good few days but at this time of year the trails were never going to dry up.

Yesterday I did some servicing on my Boardman bike and found that I needed new rear brake pads which I’ve now ordered. This meant that I had to use another bike and confirms the absolute necessity to have more than one bike!

I would say that when you buy a new bike you need to hang on to your previous bike and restore it to good condition. You can ride it for nostalgia reasons or, like today, because you have no alternative.

Having 2 Whyte bikes from 2004 I still had a choice and chose the JW4. It has a 3X10 transmission and I haven’t ridden it for a while. Riding it today reminded me that  single chainring at the front it the future and by far the best way to go. I had to think about changing the cogs at the front and it is a tiny bit distracting. The saving grace of this bike is that it has a wider range of gearing than my 2 single chainring bikes.

Having not ridden the bike for some time I had to do some preparation. I fitted the pedals and pumped the tyres to 40 psi. I then checked the shock absorber pressures front and rear then it was time to go. Birkacre for my second successive ride.

If you’ve read my previous blogs you may have found that I believe that older bikes can often be faster than more modern bikes. This is probably due to a large extent on their lower rolling resistance due to the narrower tyres.

My Strava log shows that on a couple of road segments I set personal best times without even trying. They were downhill and I just tucked. The lack of tyre drag made me go faster than I have before with wider tyres, running less pressure.

Having said that I was getting less grip on the wet corners but I like a good slide!

I did a climb in a second best time of all riders even though conditions were far from perfect. It’s the same climb that Strava has robbed me on twice before by malfunctioning, so it was good to get some recognition.

It was a short ride of 7 miles in just less than an hour but by keeping the effort up it was worthwhile.