TRI Thrunton expedition

So myself, Phil G, Davey B and JB made our way up to Thrunton woods last weekend to take our mountain bikes out for a bit of a walk. Nope, that's not a typo, a 3 hour "ride" followed, half which involved a hell of a lot of walking, pushing, carrying and rolling about in heather, grass and not a little mud!

It turned out to be a great day and one which tool a hell of a lot out of us (or it did me and Phil who ended up sprawled across couches asleep leter that afternoon!).

See the happy smiling faces below before we headed into the bog:

I think the word boggy hardly does justice to the condition of the trails. We all struggled with the conditions but I think the general consensus was that a lot of it was definitely rideable given a bit more time spent working on our handling skills (the other lads are free to disagree however). Hopefully mtb camp weekends like the one coming up in the Lakes in less than a fortnight, will go some way to helping with this. Like most things though I guess you can't beat just spending time in the saddle!

Some highlights of the ride include the shameless posing on the crags:

Reaching the spot below after an extended period carrying/climbing with the bikes on our shoulders (which gave Davey a chance to get in touch with his inner child and climb some trees!)

And the long long long long long...... climb up yet another steep hill followed by a hammer and tongs descent back to the road (at the end of which I'd scrapped by brake pads off completely and was boiling away the plastic housing!).

Overall a great day out. I definitely lost count of how often we all fell off, but luckily we were usually going too slowly to do any real damage (only our ego's were a bit bruised!)

A bit more fitness needed, much better technical skills needed and next time maybe we'll feel like doing a bit of running afterwards... At this rate I'm not sure I'll ever want to get back on a road bike!