A little bit of cross-training

Once upon a time, when I lived close to my workplace, I had one of those fleeting thoughts that many of us have had: “I should ride a bike to work”.  So with good intentions I went out and bought a new mountain bike and started riding to work every day, which of course only lasted a few weeks much like many of my other fleeting-thoughts (slot-cars, blender, anyone else?).  For the last few years I’ve resisted the urge to sell it, and instead it’s taken up valuable space in the shed … until I recently discovered a network of trails about 5 minutes from where I live!

So I pimped up my bike with some chunky dirt-lovin’ tires and BMX-style pedals, printed out some maps, and did a bit of exploring around the trails.  Funnily enough I’d stacked it within 100 metres of where the trails start, but thankfully that was the only one I had and there wasn’t anyone around to laugh at me!  A couple of hours later I’d worked out some pretty good trails and had a ball blasting through muddy puddles and charging some downhill sections, although probably still fairly basic-to-intermediate compared to some of the deeper trails I chose not to follow (this time!).

+1 mountain biking!  I’ll be out there again this weekend and will report back again once I’ve injured myself, and based on my ocean-based record it shouldn’t be to far away…