Well we embarked on the holiday and headed up to the Lake District in the pouring rain in order to spend a couple of nights at Mum and Dads' static caravan. After a chilled time there, we headed North to Peebles. The weather was great and I was feeling ok (this normally means tired but still standing!) so we jumped on the bikes and set off onto the Glentress red route.
Glentress is one of the 7Stanes mountain biking centres in Southern Scotland where it is possible to ride sometimes gnarly manmade mountain bike specific trails. These are always a great option if you don't want to navigate through the bridlepath wilderness.
As part of my effort to reduce top-end exertion (which seems to exhaust me most), we set my heart rate monitor to beep irritatingly at anything above 140 beats per minute. This led to lots of spinning in low gears up hills, but a healthy enjoyment of any downhill sections. Jennifer patiently rode with me on all of the slow uphills and we flew down the downhills.
Anyway, the riding felt good. Having said that I felt pretty tired so we spent most of Tuesday chilling. That was until it was time to head into Edinburgh to see the Foo Fighters! Dave came on stage and played for a bit, then his guys came out and kicked butt for a solid long set. Really looking forward to the new album later this month.
After spending a couple of nights in Peebles, we sped down to the South West of Scotland to some of the 7Stanes that I hadn't ridden before. The weather was once again beautiful and I was feeling good again so rather than finding our little hotel we rode again at Kirroughtree. This was a beautiful trail with lots of technical rock sections. Riding the red route meant that we didn't get to ride the McMoab rock though unfortunately - that'll have to wait until I'm feeling better.
We stayed in Gatehouse of Fleet and over the next couple of days I felt good, with riding making me feel better even if I woke up tired. Therefore we rode the trails at Mabie and Dalbeattie. Mabie was a great little trail feeling very natural and with some great swoopy fast sections, this despite it being terribly signed if you want some lunch from the cafe (don't stay at the hotel there - that's all I'll say). Dalbeattie was a classic long forest trail with lots of fun and tricky rock bits in equal measure. The highlight for me was the scare inducing slab rock - a huge rock that I spent about 5 minutes shaking at the top of before finally riding it.
After such a great time in Scotland we headed back down to the Lakes for a night, then my parents hosted us back in Chester. Whilst we waited for them to head down there, we spent the afternoon watching Chester hammer Dagenham & Redbridge 4-0. Even Jen enjoyed this, despite being used to the "near-premiership football of Swindon Town".
Whilst staying in Chester we took the opportunity to ride at the newly refurbished Coed-Y-Brenin biking centre in North Wales, followed by the Llandegla trail just down the road. By this point we were both feeling the effects (sore bums and tired legs) of riding for 6 days out of 9 so we headed back home to Swindon to chill out again.
I'm delighted to have survived so much riding with no apparent ill effects. I'm still feeling tired but a certain amount of physical activity taken on a regular basis actually seems to make me feel better. My plan for long term recovery then is to continue to ride at a low intensity level (as dictated by the heartrate monitor) and not do anything when I'm not feeling good.
