8 April 2007 Rippin' The Red Run

Return visit to Glentress Red Run with Neal and a couple of MTB newbies from the extended family.

This meant we spent some time in the morning in the skills loop which was quite useful - working up to bigger and bigger things to climb up and fall down. Picnic lunch at the Buzzard's Nest car park then Neal and I took the car down to the bottom to do the Red run.

... and what a grand time we had :)

Firstly, I managed to keep him at least in site until he topped the Buzzard's Nest again as I was at the last bit of climb up to it. Big change from last time when the first climb was a real killer for me. And the whole thing felt pretty do-able, keeping going up the long slow climbs, very few stops and only walking at the stupidly steep switchback climbs.

All of which was reflected in our times; Neal coming in at 1hr 51 min (compared with 2hrs 12 min last time) with me just SIX MINUTES BEHIND!!! at 1hr 57min (compared with 2hrs 22 min last time). It's actually hard to work out just how I managed this, but I'm putting it down to the sprint training on gym bikes, effectively a long warm up in the morning and being highly motivated to catch Neal. And maybe the egg-beater pedals. But cutting 25 minutes off was a big deal - I'm almost afraid to try it again in case it was a complete on-off fluke.