Kev's Extreme Pow-Wow!

Well I’ve just completed my seventh consecutive weekend of biking on the Nomad and it’s as good as ever, albeit the Pace fork needs some urgent attention!

Anyway, since getting it, I’ve been biking in North and South Wales, Wiltshire and the South Downs (today), on manmade trails and natural. Last week I was out with Dawn for the first time in 18 months (she’s been travelling and recently gave birth to baby Taylor) and had a relatively light ride but today’s ride more than made up for it.

Today marked the first of my local bike shop’s monthly Sunday rides and was organised by Rob Lee, who this year won the over 30s’ World Endurance Championship! We headed off down to Chichester for a ride just off the South Downs; an area that I’ve not visited on the bike before although am familiar with having been to the Goodwood Festival of Speed a few times and it’s near Worthing where Nicole lives. There were 19 of us in all and seeing everyone riding in convoy was quite impressive.

As we pushed on we gradually started to drop people off the back until 4 hours later there were only 8 of us left to be dragged up and down further brutal hills. Fortunately the singletrack was sublime and the weather, although a bit chilly, was dry and kept the trails rideable. I felt like I held my own; my Nomad behaving beautifully on the singletrack and climbing well too.

I had to admit defeat though on the climb known as “the heart-attack”, an evil steep and long drag to a corner where suddenly it gets steeper and longer just when you think you’ve done all the hard work! Not that I got off, but I decided that I could hold Rob off no longer, so yes, there are riders out there that can beat me on climbs. However, I think it’s acceptable that the only rider that I’ve ridden with that has really been faster than me on a climb is the world champion!!!

A tiring, long (4hrs 45mins at 140bpm average!), but great ride, and on reflection, a great year of riding. Let’s hope I can squeeze in some more decent rides before the year is out. Next priority is to get my cataract operation arranged…