Post Covid capers.

Eight days after my Covid 19 infection I was able to ride again today. I hadn’t been ill with the virus, tiredness being the only significant symptom. Today the weather was cold with gentle sunshine. With no rain for a few days the trails have started to dry but still have plenty of muddy puddles. These are excellent conditions for mountain biking.

I wanted to reintroduce myself to riding with a not overly strenuous ride and knew that the purpose built trails on my nearest hill, Healey Nab, would be in good shape. I discovered from the app. Strava that I’ve become a “Local Legend” on 5 segments of the ride. I know that I ride the hill often, especially in winter when the well made trails are always worth riding, but I’m shocked that I’ve ridden so many segments more than any other rider. I’d ridden the indicated trails between 7 and 11 times but this is over the last 90 days. It means in some cases that I might have ridden a 3 lap of the hill ride less than 4 times since the middle of last October, which hardly seems excessive or repetitive.

The riding was good today with plenty of grip on the downhills. I continued to practice the technique of entering corners, especially where there’s a berm (banking), with my torso close to the bike and almost horizontal. This allows me to push myself away from the bike as I turn around the corner which pushes the tyres into the surface to give more grip. I started to wonder if I could enhance the method further by dropping my torso from a high to a low position when entering the corner. This would put force into the tyres before I even started to push my body away later in the turn. It’s good to still find plenty to learn and test out after over 30 years of mountain bike riding.