Redirect

Blogger just can't do what I need it to do any more - which is to keep the LLC clutter out of this blog. So I've moved to a Wordpress site which can do a little bit more. I'm still playing with it to make it look pretty but suspect that wont happen before next Monday when I set off.

August 150

I am, despite my better judgement, taking part in @phillconnell's August 150 target for miles ridden in a month. I must confess, the canal ride will form the body of my 150 miles and I am slightly ashamed of that, but riding that distance in 3-4 days will mean, hopefully, that next month I can do 150 easily just at weekends.

The rules can be found over at Phill Connells Blog (the link is to the description of the June 100 but the rules remain the same, only the distance has increased). Commuter miles don't count which is what has stopped me entering before - I'll be riding 30 miles this week meaning legs left to do leisure miles will probably be zero - so it all has to come from weekend riding and I'm just not fit enough yet to rack those kinds of miles up in a normal month.


So, because Every Trail threw a fit every time I tried to insert a camera picture, my only proof of the miles I've done today is a pic from the odometer of my new Strada which I used for the first time today. It strikes me as quite fitting that I opened it on Saturday evening, thus meaning all miles on that odometer until the end of the month contribute to the challenge. It seems.....appropriate. 

Yep, it says 10.2 miles. Not 6 months ago, there is no way on earth I could have done what I did today. I got to 5 miles and was still talking about going around again. The only reason we didn't go around again was a pressure headache due to impending clouds and possibly storm which can be rather beautifully illustrated in the shot below.

The 17% climb which preceded this view did nothing for my head either. However, the descent down the other side, once I'd brave the herd of cows (yes, I know) was a wonderful reward. Steepest I've ridden down, slightly loose and shaley, nice exposure to reward those who take their eye of the ball with a broken something and a fabulous babbling brook at the bottom for those with no pads left to crash into. Bottle, reacquired. All the damage to confidence of Llandegla a distant memory. Reminder of why I do this received and understood. 


The walkers were all surprisingly chirpy too. We went from Rivington Barn, past Yarrow (easiest hill ever thanks to the surface, my bike seems to eat those little rocks for breakfast), down across a damn, around the corner along another lane, off onto another bridleway than runs under the new trails at Healey Nab. Looked at Healey Nab. Decided not to ruin confidence building day with Healey Nab. On down the other side, across another damn, up the hill of doom (I pushed some of it, I don't care what you think of me), past the bloke in the United Utilities van looking at me like I was a loon, through the herd of cows, down the permissive bridleway (what does the permissive mean?), give the brakes a work out, along the stream to the right, pop out somewhere I can't remember, somehow end up going back down the lovely easy ascent past Yarrow which has now turned into a gorgeous descent, endless wriggles through little rocks where the rain has eroded the sandy path, through a gate, past the walkers who can see my grin from 5 miles away and return it (I think they must have been temporarily bike removed people, because they really did give me the biggest grin), off the brakes, in to the land of 'I know what I'm doing, I do, I do!', popping back out onto the tarmac and down into Rivington village back along past the Go Ape. 


Arrive at the Barn to bemused glances from the bikers with engines. Don't care any more, don't care about being mud splattered, don't care that I'm fat and eating flapjack, don't care that my hair is a mess, don't care that my bike is no longer white but brown.

Hi, my name is Louise. I'm 18.5 stone. Or leastways I was 6 months ago. I ride my bike. I like exploring. 6 months ago, my blood pressure was right on the edge of high. 6 months ago, I couldn't ride up even the smallest of hills without needing to stop for a breather at the top. 6 months ago, I was not the person I am now. I'm probably still 18.5 stone, but you know what? I.just.don't.care.


Catch me if you can :O)

It aint all sweetness & light

I'm not a boy. I'm a girl. Possibly a tomboy thought past your teens that terminology seems inappropriate and I'd never dream of using it to describe anyone else for fear of insulting.

I'm a girl who likes getting muddy and going fast. Probably too fast. I also like challenges. I don't like competitions. I'm quite aggressive on a bike, in the right environment - if I am happy with the track I'll push as hard as I possibly can and be quite relentless about pedalling everywhere I can and pumping every last little bit of speed I can out of the track with my pathetically limited skills.

I'm still a girl.

I wear nail varnish. I even wear make up occasionally. I collect MAC pigments because they're beautiful and I moisturise every morning. I try and colour co-ordinate, I read Grazia as well as Singletrack and occasionally New Scientist too. I understand a higher percentage of the New Scientist than I do of Singletrack when they start talking about rebounds and frame geometry but I try all the same.

I get upset sometimes. Irrationally upset, but upset all the same. I try very hard not to get upset when I'm riding but it happens sometimes, mostly when I am thrown into a situation I know I simply can't deal with. Somehow I feel as if because I am a girl and fat to boot, I must never be seen to back down, never walk unless everyone else in the (male) group is, that somehow it will be noted and clocked and commented on if I girl who is fat is anything less than absolutely stellar and completely ballsy.

Well I'm not. Not stellar, not ballsy. Today I am being a complete baby, but yesterday it was even worse. I quit at something for only the second time in the last 3 years. I've endured MRI's with needles (I'm screamingly claustrophobic with a pretty bad needle phobia) and lights which left me looking sunburnt. I've walked out the house in clothing I would have rather have burnt not so long ago in the interests of being appropriately dressed for 'sport'. I've hauled my ass up climbs sticking to my rule of no damn walking. I've ridden over truck loads of dumped loose stone and stayed on, I've not touched my brakes for 10 minutes on descents, I've jumped my bike, I've ridden alone and managed to stop constantly looking over my shoulder.

Yesterday I quit because I couldn't take it and I am upset about it, damn it, and frustrated and angry at myself for making bad judgement upon bad judgement leaving me in the situation in the first place which I should have known better than to land myself in.

It wouldn't have perhaps been so bad if the same thing but differently hadn't happened at Dalby (who, incidentally, have resolutely ignored my rather irritated email to them explaining that the A5 sign which was their brief nod to people with mobility problems who had the audacity to want to watch a British World Cup event was woefully inadequate). I didn't quit then even though I cried. Yesterday was just insane.

And of course now I'm thinking, what happens if I get one of the 20 random symptoms completely out of the blue on my canal ride. What happens? What happens if I can't carry on and I have to make the judgement call? Even if it's the right one, can I cope with the explanations, the nagging suspicion that no one will actually understand how bad it has to have got for me to quit these days, that I am not the person I once was who quit at the first sign of trouble, that pain that makes me cry and numb dead legs aren't enough to make me quit but that if I can't think, if I can't string a sentence together, it's just not safe - that physical failure is easy to continue through but it's the mental vagueness which I simply cannot conquer through sheer will and determination because if anything happens I simply wont be able to think fast enough to deal with it......I can't explain brain fog to anyone. I've tried and I've tried and it's impossible. It's something akin to being stoned, I think, when you desperately desperately do not want to be, haven't chosen to be, and really absolutely need to not be in the next 5 minutes or something very very bad will happen.

I can work through it, of course I can, simply reorganising the easy stuff to coincide with the time of day it usually hits, but yesterday wasn't at the usual time and it was so out of the blue and I don't know what triggered it, have lost absolutely lost track of what happened yesterday, don't understand how it all got out of hand so quickly, how I didn't see it coming.

The rational part of me knows that it was a lethal combination of a stressful and tiring week at work, accidentally drinking 7 cans of Red Bull thanks to bottles of the stuff not cans, too much heat, my broken thermostat meaning I was in a t-shirt on Friday while everyone else was in windcheaters, a 2am bed time, the hilliest festival arena I've ever had the displeasure to meet, and a terribly nights sleep in the Premier Inn we stayed in.

I'm a girl. I'm not always rational.

There's a ride around Rivington tomorrow with my name on it. I've no idea if it's inside my skill level or miles outside of it. I don't actually care, as long as the fog fairy doesn't come and visit, because she's the only one who can mess my plans up. The physical stuff is a walk in the park, but that fairy needs shooting. And I don't have the gun.

Sneaky trails

I've finally found the local trails. Looping figure of eights to get lost in 800ft slog up the hill outside the door. It's a tarmac slog but not so bad at 7:30am. Left the rode and the curious horses staring at the panting girl, found a cat, lost the cat, found the cat again, dinged the cat to save it. Rode left, turned left again, somehow ended up coming back down the first left I'd taken. Round the other side up the side of the stone wall, turn left, miss a turning that looked interesting, take the 2nd turning, come out down the 1st turning that looked interesting. Growing suspicion that someone else has been here before me, many times, by the berms developing in the ruts in the corners of the mud. Sticky gloopy mud stuck to tyres, back down the road, ding ding ding as the bits of stone and tree hit my spokes then my rims then the road and me.

Arrive back at the house dripping, covered in mud from my tyres and with a bloody big grin on my face. Arrive back just in time to see boyfriend off to work. Laughter as he looks at my bike 'found the mud again then'.

Always find the mud. Doing that again.

Next time I might even remember my bottle.

Idiotic ideals

I suppose everyone has a list of things they'd quite like to have. Once upon a time it was my fitness back. I wanted to run up stairs and not be out of breath at the top, I wanted to go on holiday and yomp around all over the place without being the red faced knackered person at the top of the random hill in the middle of the pretty random town.

I think I'm mostly there. Certainly, walking has no fear for me any more, except uphill where ironically the issue now being something else utterly unrelated to respiratory systems being the issue. But I wanted something and I've worked a bit hard for it and I've got it.

I still get the usual comments though. People look and don't see what I am doing to fix the problem, instead assuming that I haven't realised there is a problem and am still compounding it. They don't stop to ask how many miles I rode last night - instead I get sniped for not riding tonight. There is a relentless expectation of fat people: lazy, can't be arsed, find something too difficult and never bother again, only excercise is lifting a pint or a fork, smelly, sweaty, uninteresting, no energy, no determination, no willpower, no participation in life.

I'm tired of feeling judged and desperately wanting to scream at people about sometimes things being wrong that you can't actually see and there are many things I can't do right now and you know what, sod you because I'm doing everything I actually can and you don't know what it costs and do enjoy those painkillers for that hangover you've got, do enjoy the luxury mate, because I don't drink more than 2-3 glasses of wine a week because I know there's calories in them glasses and it's calories I've not got time to burn and oh boy wouldn't it be nice, wouldn't it be oh so nice to have the soothing mist of Ibruprofen descend and take it all away.

It wasn't always like this of course. I got fat because I just wasn't paying attention. I was a size 18 before I did pay attention and started going to the gym 3 times a week and it made not the slightest bit of difference at all. I went for 3 months, 3 times a week, cut right down on food and watched everything I ate and lost not a pound. Knowing what I know now, I should have packed myself off to the doctors and asked the obvious question, but of course I didn't, I just got miserable and irritated and disheartened and gave up.

I didn't know what I know now, about very many things. I didn't know because the medical profession hadn't discovered it yet because the research simply hadn't been done. If I had known, I'd have understood a little better why the exercise wasn't working and why simply cutting down on food didn't work and changed my diet entirely, changed the contents of the food I ate entirely so that it did make a difference, so that bits of my body stood a fighting chance of processing the food I was giving it. Stupid, really, in retrospect.

I wasn't always so stupid.

I was the sporty girl at Middle School. Played hockey, starter bod on the 4 x 100m relay, somewhere in the midst of the 4 x 400m relay team, top 10 in the boys and girls cross country running races (never happier than sliding down a hill on my behind - nothing changes). Got glasses, got braces, got.....quiet. Very quiet. Got distracted by books and learning stuff and more books. Lots of books.

Secondary school came and went with a passing venture into javelin throwing and the humiliation of the Country Championships where I discovered everyone else knew how to run and throw bar me. Brief dalliance with rounders in the last ever match of the last year as my House team discovered they were one down and needed someone with two legs to stand in. Discovered javelin arm also meant batting arm also meant no hope of anyone running faster to reach the ball than for me to run around a tiny little loop. Too little, too late, confidence dissipated into the wind and that was it. No more exercise bar podium dancing 3 nights a week in a local club full of rave music while at university. It was enough combined with skint student diet to ensure I was a size 12. I looked ridiculous. I am not designed to be a size 12. Seriously. No, really, seriously. I looked like a cartoon character and not in a good way, in a ridiculous way. Never again.

Then I moved to London and it all went wrong. Too many take aways (what a novelty), earning money, living on my own, too many ready meals because I hadn't a clue how to cook, and eventually when earning more money too much eating out. I just didn't.....notice. I didn't. And by the time I had the gym wasn't working and I just didn't know what to do.

So what would I like now?

I'd like to be smaller. But more than that, I want to be fitter. I want to be fit enough to sit in my saddle for 8 hours straight, hammering around and around red routes, pedals turning as fast as my legs can push them, faster and faster and faster. I want to be faster and fitter for me - a recurring them of the exercise I have enjoyed the most has been the element of competition with myself and no one else. I don't want to beat anyone else, I don't want to be first, I want to only know that I pushed myself as hard as I possibly could and that there is no whispering guilt that I could have tried harder. I want to know how hard it's possible to push my body and for how long and find the edges of what I am capable of, both mentally and physically. Eventually, I'd like to run across fields and up hills again, the exhileration of flying down the side of a hill in the mud, occasional slides into piles of nettles optional. I'd like to find myself again, the 12 year old version of myself, who wasn't self conscious or hesitant, who did things for the love it and for no other reason than that.

Sometimes there doesn't have to be any other reason. Sometimes I ride my bike, not to get fitter, or lose weight, or to get home. Sometimes I ride my bike because I can, because I love it and it really is as simple as that.

I've got the day off tomorrow. I'm spending the weekend bouncing around a field to really rather good music. But my alarm will be set for the normal time, because a day off without sneaking an hours riding in would be a waste.

Life. Changed. Attitude. Changed.

Disproportionate expectations

Last night I posted on Twitter that 127 miles was looking doable and what next. Or at least that's what I thought I'd posted, but my sister seemed to read it entirely differently. Her reply seemed to intimate that I was somehow boasting, that somehow riding 127 miles across 3/4 days was all I should be satisfied with and I was somehow wrong for looking to do anything more.

It's brought me up short. She knows I'm a big lass. Admittedly she's not seen me for 2 years or so because the promised visits from her and my mother never seem to transpire, but she must know I'm no sylph, haven't been since my early 20's. She also knows I was never into exercise either. But she also doesn't read the blogs or forums that I do and doesn't know that most of the mountain bikers I now know/know of could ride 127 miles in 2 days without breaking sweat and some of them could ride it in 1 quite quite easily.

So the question becomes - who am I comparing myself to here? And does it matter?

I am forgetting that there are people who ride a few miles each week and don't need to do any more. There are people who go to the gym once a week and it keeps the weight off. I am never going to be that kind of person. I need a challenge, I need adrenaline, I need to compete with myself and I need to motivate myself. I also need to do a world more hours of exercise per week to simply stay the same weight. I don't mind that, don't even notice it most of the time because biking doesn't feel like exercise, but it annoys me a little that sometimes people seem to think that talking about what I do and intend to do is somehow bragging.

It's going to hurt. Lets make no bones about that. I don't care. I don't care because it's worth it to me - because I have made my profit and loss statement and the profit far outweighs the loss. I want to do more because I want to become fitter, because I want to lose weight, because I want to have a goal and something to aim for.

There could even be the argument that perhaps somewhere deep down I believe that the faster I ride the slower the bad things happening to my body will catch up with me. It certainly can't do any harm at this stage.

I have always been a determined and driven person intellectually. I have always wanted to know everything about everything. I still ask questions at the rate of a 8 year old, if I am allowed to, but mostly I direct the questioning at the safety of books. That attitude is simply transferring to physicalities. I am not changing, nothing is changing, I'm simply approaching biking with the same attitude I've approached most things in life, at 100mph.

Believe me, please believe me when I say, there is no arrogance here, no complacency, no taking things for granted, no bragging and no boasting. Anyone, and I truly mean absolutely anyone with the physical ability to pedal could do what I'm currently doing and planning to do. The only difference is choice. But I appreciate every second I have of the luxury of spinning my pedals, of feeling my muscles work in beautiful harmony, of the point where my breathing settles into its rythmn and there is the suspicion that the rythmn could be maintained for very many hours. It's a wonderful place to be, everything shifting focus into a tunnel visioned view of the world where this is no behind, only in front and the curiosity to see how fast I can cover it.

In the grand scheme of the mountain biking world, I am nothing. A little drop in a massive ocean of better, faster, more focused, more determined, thinner, fitter and stronger people. I wont ever forget that.

Difficult dimensions and MP's in lycra

Yes, you did read that right.

This morning I entered into one of those conversations which by turns seems the most natural in the world but also quite the oddest. I ended up advising an MP on how to ride a bike through London safely and without chafing and how to not have his steed nicked at the other end. The MP in question isn't quite the normal MP aside from this, which is why I am following him on Twitter, because despite not being a massive fan of the party he is a member of, he asks the right questions and listens to good sensible answers when it comes to matters IT which is something for the other blog I write but which basically encompasses the ludicrous Digital Economy Act and the fact that the man disobeyed whip instructions for the first time in his career because he believed something was so wrong and stood up and clearly stated so. I respect the man immensely for that, not all of us would be so brave in that position, thought it may be easy to catcall and deride from the comfort of our sofas.

Anyway, jokes about hiding lycra aside the bloke asked, to his credit, so I answered as best I could with helmet and glove recommendations and pointed him at either M & S cycling shorts or other makes should he get bitten more seriously by the bug. Which of course he will, because everyone does once they've tasted the joy of just getting on and going. Or at least I hope so because we could be less blessed with a vocal promoter of our favoured mode of transport, believe me.

Leaving politics well and truly behind because that's a story for another day and usually relates to public access in terms of this blog, I am having dimension issues.

You'd never believe the agonising the size of my hydration pack rucksack could cause. Actually, possibly men wouldn't believe it - I suspect those among you of the fairer persuasion may understand where this is going immediately. I am, in 1 week, embarking into hitherto unchartered territory and I haven't got a damn clue what I want to pack into where. So, because the inevitable will happen and this blog will become slightly Leeds Liverpool focused for a bit, my packing list stands at:
1 litre bottle on bottle holder on bike
2 litres water in hydration thingy
Rucksack to hold this and to also hold:
pump, basic toolkit, inner tube, waterproof gloves, spare socks, camera (?), iphone, earphones, buff, jelly babies, cash, lock(?), flapjacks, waterproof poncho thingy (?), mile matrix for the canal from town to town.

I'm going to be coming home each evening. I live 2 miles from the halfway point of the canal, my other half was supposed to be coming with me and sodding off for 4 days entirely without him seems callous, and frankly cheap is good and I want my own bed. I'm also not quite brave enough to do something entirely by myself. There, I said it :O) I'm also planning on getting in a bath full of painfully hot water & not coming out again until my muscles are convinced they'll never be cold again. I am however, utterly overwhelmed and grateful for the offers of crash space. The people responsible have been filed under 'epic' and plans are afoot for cake swapping to not be entirely 1 way (I've got to learn to bake a cake first!)

I am so excited. Honestly. There's bits of trepidation in there and I know from experience of things long ago that I shall be a pile of nausea & dizziness at Liverpool come the start, but I don't know anything quite as blissful as discovering the unknown on the back of a bike. And as someone pointed out earlier, if riding my bike normally destresses me and allows me to think and come up with bonkers ideas heaven only knows what's going to have occured by the time I get to Leeds. Probably the next idiot idea.

Still haven't decided on nail varnish colour. But it's going to have to go with pink and grey with lilac highlighted gloves.

Ask and ye shall receive

Except I didn't ask.

Nevertheless, I have received - offers of beds for the night from people I've never met (some of whom are about the most quietly inspiring people I've ever come across), cake, tea, send off parties, greeting at the other end bods, endlessly epically useful advice which I am already acting on - there's an order for another pair of fingerless riding gloves out there - and I'm slightly overwhelmed by the encouragement and shine coming from people I've never met.

It's a wonderful thing. I think it might be a thing. I noticed it among climbers before I stopped going thanks to the inability to stand on tip toe suddenly for more than 10 seconds (it's kind of crucial, you know?). The camraderie, support, encouragement and twinkle which comes from a community who perhaps know that from the outside looking in their sport looks a bit bonkers but love it so much and with such dedication that sharing it and passing it on is as natural as breathing.

I'm planning more for this little trip than I've ever really needed to plan for anything before. It feels like a mini adventure, something entirely for me - and I don't ever do anything entirely for me. I am not the sort of person to choose to be alone for long hours at a time. But I'm also not the person I was 12 months ago either, and the joy of pedalling and exploring unknown territory will keep me going.

I'm not going to do a recce of anything but the pass over the top of Foulridge tunnel - because there isn't time, and because of the lure of the unknown. I've always been the kind of person who, as a passenger, would buy a Michelin map and proceed to direct my lovely other half down 'interesting' roads - one memorable occasion resulted in arm cramp from the number of successive hairpins in the Pyrenees. But you can't view life from behind a car window - the spirit is obviously there - I read of others noticing tracks disappearing off the side of the road and thinking 'that looks interesting' and I do too. The only difference is fitness and a skill level which could deal with anything the trail could throw at me.

So perhaps, ultimately, riding for the longest I've ever ridden (I'm not convinced I'm going to stop at 30 miles a day which is why people asking me where I'll be on certain days is proving tricky because I would like the option to keep going if there's anything in my legs to do so) on my own is not the challenge it appears to be. I know have the determination and focus and bull headed obstinancy, though I don't know where it came from, but here it is. It's fitness and stamina I don't have, but all I need to do is track the miles, pace myself, track my breathing and not let it get out of control and look ahead and that's it. That's all. The rest will come from the joy of freedom, I suspect, which I know sounds cheesy, but for someone who was once very timid, shy and nervous of the world, I think the victory will be mine 5 miles from Liverpool. Getting to Leeds will be the icing on the cake, but I'll get there.

Je ne regrette rien

It's all Minxs fault.

Well actually it is, and it isn't. Fault is also the wrong attribute, really, it was more a collision of circumstances. Firstly, I was directed at the Minx Compendium, which is a blog of girly mountain biker inspiration.  It contains tales of amazing things, amongst tales of simply pedalling. The combination lead me to muse much last night and I went to bed with ideas and aspirations whizzing around in my head. There were other things, of course, which contributed, which involved enthusing and much use of the words 'well why can't we?' or rather much of the sentiment embodied in those words, at least.

Fast forward to this morning and I saw a word I didn't want to see on my notes. I cried.

5 hours later, I discovered that the week I've booked off between old and new jobs because the next two weeks promise to be incredibly stressful as I try and squeeze 6 weeks work into 2, will be spent alone as he can't get leave to come and camp with me in fields of green near towns full of books.

So while I was packing my office up (long story, new roof on our portacabin, I currently work in a refuse depot, yes super glam I know), I started thinking. Better half and I had been talking about riding the Leeds Liverpool from end to end. It's 127 miles and we're pretty much exactly half way from either end. It's a known quantity, I love the view of life you get from the canal, I love the narrowboats, am fascinated by the engineering of the locks and the urban sprawl looks very different from it. My legs also don't hurt when I'm riding my bike, something which I must confess is quite attractive at the moment.

So I decided.

Thing is, once I've decided, well that's kind of it, really. So a vague plan is forming, lovely ladies are offering cake, and more importantly, many people are understanding why I want to do this without needing to know any of the background. And somehow, just knowing that there are people who think this is a perfectly normal sane thing to do means I am now viewing it as something perfectly sane and normal to do. Telling our admin girls what I planned to do was a bit of a bump back to earth but I think they too know why I want to and that even if you're not the sort of person who needs to ride/climb/hike/camp on something because it's there, perhaps there's an element of 'well I can see why you might want to but that's really not my idea of fun'.


I'll admit right now, it's point proving. It's utterly selfish. It is because it's there, but it's also because it's the first. I want it to be the first of many adventures, because I want to go on adventures. Recently, there has been a slowly growing realisation that there is a thin girl inside me trying to get out. I have a friend called Clare who does amazing things, who has run the Bob Graham Round in under 24 hours, who's run across mountains in the middle of the night and I know her and I know she is not super human, only super determined.  For years and years I've watched this intelligent smart woman bound up and down mountains, run the OMM and nearly dissolve and push herself the absolute limits of her capabilities. Slowly but surely a curiosity has been building in me too, wondering if I could do that but on a bike. So this is where I start to find out, I guess, whether I can ride 30 miles something a day, every day for 4 days and just keep going, through the inevitable rain. Maybe this is where I start to prove that fat girls can ride hard and fast too and that in the process of proving that, the fat girl will actually become thin.

All I need to do now is decide what to wear and what colour nail varnish I'm wearing :O)

A reasonable silence

It's a bit quiet in here.

I'll be honest, because generally I am. I've started Physiotherapy for my legs. Official verdict? Climbing and mountain biking, because they're all exercise which involves pushing through the toes, have caused contraction. My upper back calf muscles contracted pulling on the lower ones. The lower ones got narked with this and as a result eventually contracted. This meant twice as much pull on my achilles tendon. It didn't like it much either, so guess what it did? Contracted. The muscles across the bottom of my feet are now moaning at me. Eventually it will reach my toes, I expect.

I've not been climbing for 2 years and I did explain I'd only been seriously pedalling since Feb and before that hadn't been since September last year, and that the pain has been getting progressively worse for 2 years, but it just fell on deaf ears. I'm all out of argueing. So walking uphill was hideous for a reason which is surprisingly reassuring to know. Llandegla riders will no doubt understand why the double steep hill or whatever amusing name it's been called nearly had me nailing my other half to the path for telling me it was half the length it actually transpired to be. It was a great incentive to not get off my bike and ride the first bit without dabbing though. Amazing, the motivation you can find. In fact, the second part of double steep hill is the only, and I seriously mean the absolutely only time I have got off my bike and walked up a hill since February. I am proud of this in the same way that I suspect others are proud of their not stopping til they've got to the top of the hill rule. Or in some loons cases, not stopping until the absolute end of the ride rule.

Result, of course, is having my legs hammered by the physio on a weekly basis. I've got knots in my leg muscles, same way others have knots in their back from sitting at desks all day. Some of them are rock solid, literally, according to Miss physio. I can't feel a thing, they're numb, but apparently it's bad. So I've been given stretches. Lots of stretches. They hurt. Mrs Physio knows this, I know this, we both know this but still they must be done. Eventually the hurt turns to numbness, but for a while, because the muscles have been allowed to contract for so long, they fight back and whine and moan at me and desperately try to contract every second I try and convince them they want to stretch.

I'm trying to carry on riding my bike. In fact, as ever, the only time nothing hurts is when I'm riding my bike, because my legs are warm, and my shin pads get worn all the time, earning me snarky looks form other bikers on towpaths who assume everyones bodies behave just as theirs do and have no clue about the wonderful stupidity bodies can inflict on you with no warning. My shin pads are my little heaters and they get me home and no snarky comment or snidey glare is making me take them off. Difficult and challenging and stupidly the most fun things of all, the off roading, is being parked a little, mostly because I am nervous as all hell the second someone says 'lets just go up here and see what it's like' and the embarassment of having to admit to something people can't see is wrong is just cross making. And cross isn't what mountain biking is supposed to make me, happy is what mountain biking is supposed to be making me.

What I am not managing is to remain positive. Well, I am positive, positive that it's fixable and eventually my muscles will get the message but I'm not quite as happy bouncy full of the joys of spring as I usually am. So just bear that in mind.

Now. If the weather could just warm up because cold makes muscles, yes you've guessed it, contract, I'd be a much happier bunny. So if someone somewhere could just do a nice little sundance for me, I'd be so grateful.

I've turned comments off, and I shant be tweeting about this post either. The simple act of writing this post has made me determined to ride my bike tomorrow, because worse things happen at sea, and this is where I stop moaning, WTFU and just get the hell on with it. Northern grit. I lost mine for a bit, but I think it might be back.

Hello, Bonjour, Hallo, Hola!

The other thing is also, sadly, a mini-rant. Mostly, when it comes to biking, I am relentlessly positive, enthuse at everyone within a mile radius, drag other people into the 'sport' and say hello to every non mountain biker I ride past because I refuse to be the biker walkers moan and whine about when they get home.

But somethings gone a bit  wrong round 'ere. I'd be really interested to know if it's just round 'ere because I suspect it's not.

I am quite strongly of the opinion that everyone should be allowed to ride a bike, be welcomed at trail centres and given gentle advice when things go a bit wrong. In fact, when we first started riding gently last year, the amount of people who offered smiles, hellos, assistance with mechanicals and generally were totally ace blew me away.

Not any more. Today, 3 people said hello. Groups of 4's passed me and only 1 person said hi. It wasn't quiet at Gisburn this morning, it really wasn't and I've never come across a bunch of more miserable sods in my life. I left wondering why anyone had bothered, to be honest, because there didn't seem to be an awful lot of fun being had, I'll tell you that for nothing. In fact, most people were kind enough to look at me as if I had a spare alien growing out of the side of my head. I got progressively more and more annoyed as I rode the wrong way back down the blue route - yes, I was contraflowing. I was deliberately contraflowing. I suspect some of the horrid stares and glares were down to this - for information, I broke one of my brake levers and I wasn't carrying on the horror that is Gisburn with only one brake. But no, never crossed anyones mind I might be riding the wrong way through choice. Nor did it cross anyones minds that perhaps I might be lost - which I might well have been. No one asked. No one said hello. Just glares. Same in the car park. Same when I was going the right way around. Frankly, by the end of the ride I was starting to wonder if I'd wandered into a parallel universe of mountain biking where only unfriendly people had got on their bikes.

That's before we get to the group of, frankly, idiots riding a slew of hired Treks off down the road from the Dog and Partridge with no helmets, having drunk two pints each, bumped into our car more times than I can count, completely blocked all access to the bike wash in their determination to park all their bikes together and just generally been inconsiderate pack animal idiots. Their progress down the hill consisted of ridng 3 abreast down towards Cocklets and lots of weaving across the road. I await reports of a mass death.

I don't know what's happened but it needs sorting. When we go out on a Thursday night riding around Roddlesworth, everyone to the very last from dog walkers to roadies are friendly and polite and frankly lovely. I hate to say it, but none of the accents I heard today were local. So on the one hand, thank goodness our local sense of politeness and friendliness is not lost, it's people coming from other places who don't know any better who are being.....taciturn. But that's not the way we do it here. We stop and chat. We're friendly. We offer spare bits and pieces and we pick it up and pass it on. We smile even if we've no breath for a Hello. We are quite a loose community but there is, at the very least, an acknowledgement that we are all doing something we love very much and that's why we're out in the wind and the rain. No other reason would get you out of the door on a morning like this one.

So, if you're going to come and ride in East Lancs, pack a smile. Remember a hello. Because a few of us are getting hearty sick of your riding two abreast and not moving over to let us past, your determination to leave your bikes at exits of singletrack and your attitude that you don't need to bother to acknowledge other people because it's all about being too cool or something. We don't do cool here. We do heart, and soul. We do love of riding like few other places can. We don't care if it's blowing a gale or pissing it down, we're still going riding cos we said we would and if we didn't, we'd never ride. We love our mill towns and our hills and we're actually really quite proud of the network of fantastic, absolutely completely fantastic trails which are springing up around us at quite a rate of knots. I think I can safely speak for almost every single East Lancs (and, actually West Yorks) rider when I say, we love where we live because we are absolutely spoilt when it comes to places to ride. We're quite proud and we're quite attached to it.

If you come and take advantage of those trails, we don't ask you to pay. We don't charge you for parking at the moment. But blow me backwards, if we started charging in smiles, half of you lot wouldn't get in. Lighten up, if it's not fun, go home. If you drove however long it took you to get to us, one assumes you wanted to be here. You've wearing the kit from head to toe, you've obviously spent a lot of money on something you seem to love doing. Your bike is shiny and looked after. You look exactly like a mountain biker, but I'm sorry, in my book I didn't meet a lot of mountain bikers today and I don't understand if it's cos I don't look like one but I'm out on the trails anyway, or whether you're all just a little bit ignorant and rude.

I am confused, dear readers. Very very confused. And quietly praying that this is not the start of some horrid trend but a mere abberation due to the weather or how early it was, and indeed that somehow it was me, us, our little group, that something about us meant people didn't say hello. But I've got a sneaky suspicion it might not be that at all.

And this isn't going to win me any friends either.....

I hate Gisburn.

There. I've said it. I've tried and tried, and I've fallen off more on their blue than I have anywhere else. It's destroyed my confidence, left me hating mountain biking and generally I wish I'd never stepped out of the house this morning.

I appreciate trail grading is a subjective art. I appreciate Gisburn wouldn't exist at all without the love, hard work and attention of a very small and dedicated group of people and I have thanked them repeatedly for that - hell, at least they've bothered with a blue, many trails centres don't even grace us beginners with a nod, instead assuming we're all useless and at best providing us with a green route which involves nothing but fireroads.

Great for families, but not what I'd actually call 'mountain biking'.

Unfortunately, what I think is an appropriate trail to send someone down whose taste of 'mountain biking' has hitherto been nothing but fire roads and what other people feel is appropriate do not match. Or, rather they do not match when wet. And here, right here, we arrive at the fundamental problem with Gisburn in its entirety. It's in East Lancashire. It might be in the Forest of Bowland, that might make it sound quite upper class and fabulous, but frankly mate, it's East Lancs. Lets not get any airs and graces here. Actually, that's another thing but we'll get to that later.

It rains in East Lancs. It rains really rather a lot. So tell me, please do tell me why, we have a trail centre which is slippy as all hell and twice as treacherous, which is disintegrated a little more every time I ride it, in which erosion seems to be providing a never ending challenge to the trail builder, and which rain and wet seem to be the arch enemy both of the trail builders and the riders, in East Lancs?

I've read a lot of threads today on forums, discussing the relative merits or not of Gisburn. Wrong kind of soil, apparently. No flow. Some love it with a complete devotion but others call in on the way from the South to Scotland and end up coming away disappointed and frustrated. In the process of reading these posts, the penny dropped. It's me. It's not the trails. Okay, so the trails really are becoming looser and more eroded every time I ride across them, and in the wet I fall off at a different bit every time - there's no one hotspot, no one nemesis, my focus wanders off and 1/2 inch misjudgement turns into a painful slam into the most unforgiving mixture of sand and rock I've found yet. The mix of tight berms, little humps that as a blue route rider, I'm really not going to attempt jumping, the small rocks which are jutting out everywhere meaning a line, whichever one you pick is full of them, the bits falling off the track at the side, the punishment for 1/2 inch of misplacement meaning sliding off the track.....it's not somewhere to go and regain confidence. Actually it's not somewhere to go to gain confidence. The trail is slippy, the Northshore is slippy and the point where I found a route easier to ride in the snow than in the wet is the point where I just give up and go home. It's not fun. Mountain biking was supposed to be fun.

That's before we've even got to the proportion of 'interesting bits' to fireroad on the blue route. So, this is where I concede defeat. Gisburn is for techheads. People with way more skill than me. People way fitter than me. It is not for me. The reason I fell in love with mountain biking was the speed. Lacks finesse, yes, I know. Lacks challenge, well yes, I know. But nothing on earth, absolutely nothing on earth is better than swooping down switchbacks on beautifully compressed, properly compressed mud, finding your lines, pumping the dips which have been artfully placed with care and precision, railing around berms because you are confident in the trail builders by that point and know you're not going to be punished for commiting 100% to it. I can ride just about well enough to hammer down the side of Electric Blue. I don't jump the little jumps there either but somehow, it's less of an issue there, and it's less of an issue because of the trail quality, the substance of it, and knowing exactly where my wheels are and relying on their footprint to carry me through. I am not good enough to deal with disintegration and crumble on the other side, nor with the tight turns thrown in for fun.

I also know, absolutely know, that I am not alone. There are two camps developing in mountain biking - hell there may well have been two camps right from the start. Actually, no, make that three. There are the people who are comfy in Calderdale. There are the people who grin at Glentress and there are the brave people who stick to the countries bridleways and footpaths, piecing together routes themselves.

I'm a Glentress girl. It's where my heart is. It's where I don't have to throttle back. It's where the magic happens and I can do anything with my bike. I have absolutely nothing against the other camps, nothing at all. As soon as I am fit enough to dig and barrow I'll volunteer at Gisburn because it's important to, because it's local, because they need help, because I can help to build the beautiful shiny playgrounds for other people to play on even if I can't ride them, and it would be ignorant not to at least offer. But somewhere along the line, maybe way way way down the line, I can still dream that one day, there will be a little piece of track with the ethos of Glentress's blue routes built round the corner from me. Until that point, Llandegla is going to be getting an awful lot of my money because there I found a glimpse of the same ethos.

So, the next time someone asks why people love Llandegla, I'll be explaining this - people love Llandegla because it's the closer you can come to flying on wheels without the slog up the M6.

Fear of falling

It comes to us all, I think. So I've been told and so I believe. The moment when you finally appreciate what it is you're actually doing. The moment when reality knocks you fist first, where you suddenly realise that all that's between you and A & E is your own skill and concentration. Then the doubts set in, you start throttling back, you start hesitating, you watch your friends disappear into the distance troubled by no such qualms and suddenly you're on your own with your doubts and fears.

So what have I learned?

Not talking about being afraid of something is worse than being afraid of something. It is not irrational to be afraid of flinging yourself down the side of a hill at speeds sometimes exceeding 15mph. It's not irrational to find cornering on slippery planks of wood in the rain a little daunting. It's certainly not ridiculous to have a moment of self doubt when you're hanging so far off the back of the bike the saddle starts to become an issue. None of these are normal states of affairs, none of these are things that the general populace would ever consider doing.

Which is not to encourage elitism, because that is not the point. I am no better than anyone else because I happen to have found a form of exercise, after many years of trying, which I enjoy. No, it's more a case of not disappearing into the rationale of the mountain biking world which assumes all these things are situation normal, where the default is speed and attacking everything that comes at you. Little is said in the mountain biking press of how to deal with a bad day. Loss of mojo is rarely acknowledged. Perhaps it reflects that this is a blog written by a girl that it is even mentioned here.

I am honest about many things. I don't see the point in not being. I write this blog to share things and sharing things means sharing the negative as well as the positive. We don't always live in a shiny world where everything clicks, everything comes naturally and we are all freeriding backflipping superstars. Lord knows I'd love to be, but I don't think, somehow I ever will be. That's okay. I don't have to be comfy with my wheels off the ground to go ride some of the most beautiful countryside in the world. I don't have to backflip my way down the side of any hills if I don't want to. I don't have to be the first to the bottom on every ride I go on. I don't have to always be fearless.

Ultimately, the crux of the issue, the horrible fear, is that I don't ever want anyone to look at me and think 'she's doing well for a girl'. I so desperately want mountain biking to be the one place in the world where that doesn't matter. I don't think it does matter, on reflection, to anyone but me. I think the only person thinking 'heh I cleared that without dabbing, not bad for a girl' is me. So I guess this is me kicking my own behind into touch. No more thinking about gender. It's irrelevant. No more trying to prove something because everyone is judging the fat girl. They're not. No one else matters except me. When I'm out mountain biking I am allowed to be selfish, I am allowed to think only of myself, I am allowed to go at my own pace both up and down hill. I am allowed to stop and pant, I am allowed to stop and look at the view. I am allowed to combine the two if I damn well want to. I am allowed to fall off and yelp a bit, I am allowed to go a bit squicky if there's lots of blood. I am allowed to go all maternal when I trip over someone in pain and hurting, I am allowed to enthuse at people randomly. None of these things are illegal, none of these things hurt anyone else. All of these things are things everyone else does too, I am just so busy feeling self conscious that I just don't see it.

You might have noticed that this post is very much all about me. Selfish. But in being so afraid of failing, I was. I think I can stop that now, get back on my bike and just go and ride with no expectations of myself or anyone else. Back to simplicity. Push the pedals, chill the hell out, be friendly and just stop stressing.

Ways to get your girlfriend riding a bike?

The title should actually be, ways to ensure that your girlfriend will never ever ever get on a bike ever again. The following is from personal first hand experience, both from what I've seen and what I've heard, what's been said to me and what's been said to others. It is not a criticism - think of it instead as a little bit of insight into the way the female mind works. Well, actually, it's the way my mind works, but I know from speaking to at least one other bike riding of the female shape that the below holds true for them too. And so, with an attempt at minimal ranting and irritation, here follows some bits of advice:

• I don't care about the details of what I am riding. Your girlfriend may be different and may be naturally mechanically minded. I am not. Lots of other women are not. LBS's are full, I suspect, of bikes belonging to similar people to me. I am aware of how to maintain my bike. I am smart enough to tell you what is wrong with my bike and the symptoms of the wrongness. I am not interested enough in cogs, cassettes and allan keys to ascertain the cause of the problem. I will nod nicely when you tell me said cause, but it will be more in the vein of 'thank god someone in this household knows what they're doing' rather than 'cool, next time I can fix it myself'. I will fight over constructing flat packed furniture, I assert my right to have my own screwdriver which you will never touch, but bikes are different and complicated and I just can't get my head around them. Mea culpa.
• My bike is my bike. Deriding my choice of decals, colour schemes or the hours agonising over which colour of bottle holder will irritate me. Riding a bike is by necessity a muddy/dusty and dirty uncolourful experience some days. Let me have some small joy in customising my bike so it's mine.
• If you actually get a girl to put her leg over a saddle, choose the bike attached to that saddle with care. Taking her to a trail centre and hiring an already ridden to death with no care at all mountain bike which is probably the wrong size and shape and which no amount of tweaking is going to fix is not going to help. She will come out of the experience with a bad back, cramping feet and excessive irritation at the fact that you seem to control your beautifully set up bike effortlessly, whilst she has been wrestling with a pig for the last 2 hours. If you can, borrow another girls bike. Some of us are nice like that. Failing that, ask a local bike shop if you can demo a nice bike - as a result of their care and attention in a few days time she might well be returning to buy that demo bike from them and you get a girlfriend/wife who's at least had a taste of what riding a properly set up bike is going to be like.
• Don't fuss. Stop it. She might be a little nervous (I actually think probably quite a lot nervous) as she is stepping into your territory. Your world. You are comfortable in it, with its politics,  community, terminology and etiquette. She is not. Don't overwhelm her with it all at once. Tell her the basics, practice standing up on the pedals in the car park, explain feathering brakes, get her to go around and around and around in circles switching up and down gears until she is comfy with what lever causes which effect. Take the time in the car park to familiarise and you wont be returning to that same car park with a limping swearing girlfriend vowing never to get on a stupid  bike ever again.
• Be patient. Endlessly. I really do mean this. This isn't a lifelong request, you're allowed to lose your rag at us 4 rides in when we accidentally switch up a gear before a steep incline and fall sideways. That's okay. It is absolutely not okay on our first ride when we are focusing on 17 different things and had a mild flap and got it wrong. Pick us up, dust us down, wrap any wounds gently, give hugs, don't make a fuss and walk us to the top of the incline and pack us off again. Oh, and when we do it right next time, mark it. Note it and celebrate it. It's small fry when you're used to ripping around berms at 15mph, it's not small fry to us.
• We didn't spend childhoods on Grifters, nine times out of ten. Nor are we familiar with bikes with pegs sticking out of the back wheel. It's not as natural as breathing to us and we don't have the background you do. Mention it more than 5 times on the first ride out and we're going to start muttering under our breathes about 'we all have to start somewhere'. We do. Have to start somewhere. This is the start, don't make it the end with careless chatter which might seem innocuous to you but will come across as a bit soul destroying for the person next to you trying their damned hardest to keep up with your perfectly tones calves.
• Don't leap in head first. Red routes, if you've only just got on a bike for the first time in 10-15 years are not the best introduction to bike handling in a safe and comfortable environment. Take the hit and ride a Green. Maybe even a Blue if fitness isn't an issue. Scotlands Blue routes are about the best in the country for introducing someone to the joys of mountain biking without terrifying them out of their tiny little minds. It's about the speed of incoming obstacles, it's about putting someone off with information overload, it's about putting someone off by sending them over the handlbars when they panic on their first berm. Your first ride stays with you for a long time if you fall in love with mountain biking, it needs to be memorable for all the right reasons and not the wrong ones.
• Leave your mates at home. No, seriously. You might not know you're doing that competitive thing, racing each other, firing off into the distance, chatting about places your girlfriend didn't go with you to or stag nights or whatever. But you are. Trust me, you are. Leave them at home, and turn your first ride out with your girlfriend into something special. Something memorable. Point out the smell of the pine needles baking in the sun. Point out the bird calls, and the sound as a powerful bird flaps its winds on takeoff. If it's the right thing to do, take a camera or binoculars. Keep an eye out for squirrels, take time out on a quiet bit of the trail and get her to close her eyes and tell you what she hears. Find the things which will bring her back, whether it's the lack of mobile phone signal, the camraderie, the friendliness, the views or the silence. Biking is not all about aggression, sometimes it's about the space inbetween.
• Treat the obstacles as problem solving. Ask her to solve it. Find a big berm, get her to watch you ride it. Do it again and ask her what she's noticed you're doing. Then explain the technique in detal, catching anything she's missed, and ride it again. Then ask her to ride it. Then again. And again. Repetition leads to familiarity and takes the sting out of the unknown. Don't be patronising about it, don't make her feel like you're doing her a favour, instead you're communicating the skill to do something you love doing that makes you buzz and fly, passing it on to someone else who will feel exactly the same way once they've conquered it too.
• Do not make her feel like she's the B team. She's not. She's hopefully the most important person in your life and you're sharing one of the most important things you do in yours, with her. That's not B team, that's A team. Don't suggest she rides the Blue on her own while you disapear onto the Red. This is not the time for that. If you want your girlfriend to come riding with you, it's going to take time, and a weekly commitment and some effort. Suggesting she rides on her own is going to turn the whole experience into one of isolation, not teamwork. She will feel demoralised because she will feel like teaching her is too much trouble and you'd rather be off having fun blatting down the trails with your mates and that she is in the way. She wont come again, I can guarantee that.
• Send her on a skills course if she comes back to the car park with a grin on her face. In the same way you would probably not teach her to drive from never driven before to taking her test, this is the same. There are things you cannot show her, things that will be easier understood from someone who does nothing but teach people to ride all day. A specific Womans course will.....help. I don't want to go into the arguments here, but see the point above about taking her out with your mates on her first ride. It wont end well. Give her a space to learn in where she can make mistakes comfortably, where she knows she is in safe hands, where the terrain will be explained and patience will be endless. Give her the experience of riding with people of exactly the same level as her. There is absolutely nothing like it for building confidence and giving you a feeling of belonging to a group of people who love mountain biking for all the same reasons you do.

There is no guarantee with all this. You might do all these things perfectly and she still might not like getting muddy/dusty. She might not like the flies and the midges. She might not like the feeling of being utterly crap at something to start with, or the feeling of people 40 years older than her whizzing past. Only you know what's important to your other half and the best way to sell it, whether it's the peace and quiet, the problem solving, the fitness increasing, the muscle definition, the views or the wildlife. If none of that is an incentive, if none of that makes her heart sing, then nothing will make her want to get on a bike and you're on a loser. But if it works, if she catches the freedom and the flying, then you will have a companion who, possibly, will be the one dragging you out in the mud and rain with a damn big grin on her face. She might even beat you to the bottom.

Mental self

In discussions with someone a few weeks ago, who asked me to sell biking to them, I realised that things like stress relief and a sense of empowerment are not high on the list of others priorities, because they are not me, and do not have the background which I have.

Today I had a little bit of an epiphany. I am not the woman who tentatively climbed on a bike 2.5 years ago at Center Parcs. I am not even the woman I was at Christmas this year. For a start, I am finally comfortable with calling myself a woman, though I still prefer the term girl because I am not married and am not a mother and for some stupid reason those two things are closely tied. But somewhere along the way, I have grown up.

I have always been a little bit shy. Well, actually, scrap that, lets be honest here, I have been a really quite a lot shy for a very long time. I have also, mostly, been timid, never voiced opinions because I never had them because I always hovered in the middle, never spoken up when I knew absolutely something was wrong or someone had come to the wrong conclusion, and certainly never sung my own praises. I was a girl born to a man who made no secret of his wish for a boy, but I also was a girl who was rigorously and repeatedly told children should be seen and not heard.

I think I forgot somewhere that children grow up. I forgot that we are not eternally children and that at some point, some indefinable point, it is okay as a woman, as a person, as an intelligent person, to be seen and be heard. I have spent my life thus far carefully crafting the art of keeping below the parapet. I believe, quite honestly, I did a damn fine job.

What a thing to be proud of. The ability to be invisible.

So here's the thing. I ride my bike for many reasons and fitness and losing weight is perhaps the obvious one when you see me out on a trail. But you will also see a really bloody big grin. So the bit at the top of the hill when I'm panting and recovering might be a bad time, but mostly that grin is there. It comes from a lot of things. Some of these things are specific to being female, I think, though I might be wrong and if I am, please do tell me, it's important this I think if I ever come to be sitting in front of a group of teenage girls explaining how mountain biking changed my sense of self so dramatically.

Girls don't get muddy. They wear dresses and play with Barbies. This wasn't my experience but only because I had a mother who hill walked for many years and understood. For others, this is their experience. Girls don't do mechanics. Don't fettle. Don't go fast. Don't do Maths, don't do Science, don't geek......endless don'ts. If you are unfortunate, for example, to have parents who only ever focus on what it is not possible to do, it can be very difficult to understand the space where the thing is that you are allowed to do.

I'm 33. It's taken this long to find something which gives me something that you can't buy off a shelf in a neat little package of bows and pink ribbon. It's called empowerment. It's called believing in yourself. It's called self confidence, self esteem, self belief and self knowledge. Riding my bike has ramped up all those things to a level where finally I do have an opinion. because I am confident in having one. I do speak up and challenge others preconceptions and sometimes misconceptions. I sit and discuss and listen and query still, but I also form a result of all that input and am not afraid to write down the outcome, not afraid to commit myself to something any more. How on earth could you ever be afraid of something as simple as having an opinion when you're riding your bike down 1.5 feet drop offs? Perspective is a beautiful thing, and biking has given it back to me. How on earth could you ever be afraid of public speaking when you've zoomed along a track covered in roots dodging off in all directions? How can you be worried about whether you've worn the right shoes, when you've fought your way through a rainstorm and a headwind and arrived back at the car park safe and sound through nothing but sheer determination to maintain body heat?

Riding my bike has given me a reasonably safe space to play. I can push boundaries, bit by little bit and explore the edges of my fitness and skill level and with a bit of care and some nouse, never come a cropper. I can make decisions faster than I ever thought possible. I can fly, sometimes. It's just not possible to remain timid and shy and unsure of yourself after doing all those things, it really isn't.

So I think this is the point. The point where I am no longer allowed to refer to myself as shy, or timid, or lacking in self belief or confidence or knowledge. I know myself. I know who I am. I know this more surely than I have ever done and whilst things will continue to improve, I think this is the point where I draw a line under all the things I have been told  I couldn't be, but I now am.

I am becoming everything I always wanted to be but never thought I could. And biking? Biking gave me wings, and now it's time to fly. Time, perhaps, to pass it on, however that may transpire. Time to share the magic with other people, time to explain, time to be honest, time to open up a little.Time to just be me. The parapet has been firebombed, frankly, and I don't think there's any going back now.

Playing in the sand

I'm a bit of a geek. So I'm going to use a geek analogy to explain why towpaths have their place in my little biking world, and why I'll tolerate others disdain and admit to it in public.

Geeks tend to use sandpit environments to test things out. These environments can be training copies of databases used to train new users on, they can be staging platforms used to roll out a big change to some software before it goes live, they can be exact replicas of the live software, or they can be vague approximations of them. You get the idea. A safe space to rollout some complicated changes in an environment where, if something goes wrong, things can be rolled back and taken out of the system, without affecting end users who cannot afford the interuption and downtime.

Towpaths are where I learnt to do a number of things on my bike. Not falling into the canal is the obvious one. When I first started riding my bike, I was so wobbly that I couldn't look behind me without veering off in a different direction. You don't tend to need to look behind you when riding on a towpath - it's the obstacles in front of your wheel such as dog droppings and children running around randomly which are more of a danger. Not being able to look behind you on a road, to check whether a car is coming before making a right turn, is a slightly more lethal issue.

They're also where I learnt to ride my tyres down singletrack twice the width of my tyre. They're where I've set myself my own little goals, when the path has left the tarmac behind and become a mass of dried in ruts, where I've tried repeatedly to keep my tyres in the rut and not wander out of them. The penalty for wandering out of it is nothing more than a slighty back wheel skitter, on that towpath. The punishment on a log path the same width would likely be a little more severe.

I also learnt to manual and deal with small step ups. There's a motorway  bridge near the start of where we join it, with some big concrete two by fours spanning the path. There's no avoiding them. So instead of getting off and walking, I tried approaching them in different ways, with no danger of injury, testing different weight balances, testing how much downforce to create, working out how comfortable I was approaching them at slow and high speeds, and gradually getting to the point where getting over them didn't warrant a second thought. Far better to play around there, where the path widens to the allow for the motorway bridge above, then to block a red trail or a local bridleway practising the same thing over and over again and getting in everyones way.

Where I'm going with this, you see, is that towpaths have their place, and they are my sandpit. The first thing I did when I got my new bike was take it for a blast down the towpath. We know it well enough now to know where the dogwalkers and canalboat owners loiter and park, and where they don't. We know which bits its safe to slam along, and which bits are suited to more of a gentle pootle. We know where the mile of compressions is and are using it to learn how not to peddle, instead using the ground beneath us to conserve momentum and deliver us happily to the aforementioned motorway bridge.

If I rode nothing but towpaths, I would be a 2 dimensional rider who didn't step outside of comfort zone.....perhaps. Or perhaps I would be a commuter, using my bike as transport instead of merely a toy. A towpath ride is what you choose to make of it - a safe passageway from point A to point B, or a series of challenges both physical and the ones you create, a sequence of tests and obstacles which are as difficult or as easy as you make them.

Towpaths are my sandpit. They're where I go to play, in safety, where I go to learn the limits of my bike, where I've learnt all the skills which I am now, with hesitancy and tentativeness, taking out into the big wide world and using on our local bridleways. I am less afraid now, of those bridleways, because I am assured that I can deal with what that track might throw at me. I am more familiar with my bike because I have played and pushed and befriended it.

Don't knock the towpaths. They are exactly what you make of them. Just mind the midgies.

Invisible to the naked eye

This is supposed to be a relentlessly positive blog. The rant about the attitude of the UCI World Cup organisers at Dalbys' attitude to people with mobility problems didn't go in here. The attitude of sneering mechanics didn't go in here either.

If I don't get the following of my chest, nothing will come after, and hell, I like writing this blog because the relentless positivity reminds me of why I get my fat ass of the sofa, so I'm afraid, you're going to need your scroll bar, because this one, this one is for me.

Yesterday, I was invisible.

I have a friend. Bear with me here, it's going somewhere. I have a friend who is a senior lecturer and child psychologist. An incredibly well respected one too. She's been on Womans Hour and Radio 4. She deigns to talk to me with no patronising, no condescension, and no judgement on the things which I find fascinating about people, and she is kind in her willingness to tolerate my more random meanderings on the subject. We get on really well, frankly. I look up to her a lot, she is never over emotional or inappropriate, instead she expresses herself so eloquently and with such grace that in that respect, she is everything I wish to be.

She's also obese. Shocking, isn't it? I could tell you why, but it is absolutely none of your godamn business. She's successful, earns a long way towards a lot of money each year, she is middle class, beautifully spoken, elegant, composed and self possessed, and she is fat. There is a bloody good reason why she is currently fat. Such a good reason, that frankly I would crucify anyone with no holds barred for suggesting she should be anything but right now after the frankly appalling cards life has decided to deal to her. And believe me when I say, when I am angry, I tend to step away from keyboards because in the same way I like to play nicely verbally, I also like to play nicely using the written word, and an ability to use written words to evoke responses and reactions is absolutley no excuse for letting fly at someone. If anything, it is the biggest reason of all to walk away. Grace comes not only through the way you hold yourself, it is in the way you choose to communicate. I'm not walking away from this one.

Yesterday I gave everything I could to someone who needed it because it was the right thing to do. I didn't give a flying donkey about anything else, at the time, than keeping that bloke warm and talking to me. 24 hrs later and some things are, frankly, really pissing me off, and I don't swear lightly either.

Point the first. Why the frikking hell did it take an ambulance 30 frikking minutes to get to a man sat outside in the cold and wet and wind, in the middle of a forest, where he would clearly be struggling with hypothermia? Why did it take 30 minutes and when they did finally manage to turn up, they went the wrong frikking way? Why did they not have maps? Why did they park at the frikking entrance of the frikking car park and not drive down the frikking fire roads? Why did they get there at the same time as the air ambulance? Why did no one at Gisburn know there was even an accident until today when I told them? Why did it have to be me that told them? I didn't want to get involved, I didn't want to stick my sodding head above the parapet and get involved in yet another battle which is not my fight, when I have enough frikking battles of my own to fight. I can't even work out where the nearest ambulance station is to send a barrage of questions at them and get some answers to this. I've suggested better information for the ambulance crews - it turns out there is a procedure and they didn't frikking follow it. Communication. Where the frikking hell was the communication? What broke down? Who didn't have the number? Why was nothing said or done?

More to the point, why is that when they all finally turned up, I explained what was wrong, and all the crews, to the very last, turned to the thinner than me man and proceeded to completely blank me, refuse to look me in the eye, and in fact, looked distinctly uncomfortable every time I tried to talk to them? Is someone going to explain to me why the injured blokes friend could barely look me in the eye either?

I don't want thanks for fucks sake. I don't. I am just sick to bloody death of being invisible. I am not invisible. I am a human being. I have a brain. It works quite quickly, ta very much. I like to think I'm reasonably smart, certainly reasonably well informed about the world around us. I understand quantum mechanics, I ride my bike reasonably well for someone who hasn't been doing it for so long, I push myself as hard as I can, I am relentless in my determination to keep a commitment I made to my nutritionist and I am. not. invisible.

I am fat. I am a girl. I am bored of the rules which say you don't need to acknowledge me. I am sick of not sticking my head above the parapet, and I am sick of trying not to rock the boat. So on Tuesday, for my own peace of mind, I am going to be firing off difficult to answer emails to people. And I bet you I get a response, and do you know why I will get a well reasoned, well thought out, well researched response? Because you cannot tell I am fat from the way I write. You cannot see the wobbles and bulges, and you do not have to keep the barely disguised disgust from your face when I am talking to you.

This is not the way I expect NHS professionals to act. And frankly, I don't give a flying donkey whether it was my gender or my weight which led to my being instantly dismissed as not knowing anything and not having anything to contribute to the situation, despite sitting there completely alone with my other half and the injured party for 20 minutes, worrying and fretting and panicing and keeping all of that out of my voice and out off my face, it is not the way you act. It isn't. And I'm not letting this one drop, one way or the other, because an ambulance crew going the wrong fucking way when there's a man in serious trouble is not a fuck up I am prepared to turn the other cheek to and pretend never happened. It needs rectifying and it needs rectifying frikking quick smart, because woe betide what happens when the next serious problem is a spinal injury or a heart attack. The failure will be a little more public than one not so tiny pissed off little woman writing on her blog in the backwaters of an East Lancashire mill town, I will tell you that for nothing.

Sort.it.out. I don't care what it is you have to do, I don't care what it is that led you to your assumption that either girls can't contribute or fat people don't exist, but sort.it.out. Sort out the communication, and sort out your preconceptions. You judge too quickly for people who are supposedly there to care for others. It's left a bad taste in my mouth on a day which was absolutely nothing at all to do with me. Some of this edit is about me. But most of it is about my incredibly anger at the cock ups which happened yesterday. I believe the trail guys will sort it. I believe they will ensure that this wont happen again. I believe them absolutely when they tell me that. Sadly, it is not the volunteers attitude that I have an issue with, they are stars and I have the utmost respect for them. It's the paid professionals who left me feeling irritated and angered yesterday, and that is not the way it should be.

Now. Hopefully I can sleep tonight. I do not get angry, as a rule, and nor do I whine about peoples attitudes to fat people. I am used to it, barely notice it. Had 'who ate all the pies' shouted at me once too often. But fuck me sideways, I didn't expect such an attitude to come from the people it did yesterday.

Gisburn gets gnarly

It's always the way. You arrange a ride out with someone in the suns shining rays, and by the time the ride out comes around, the rays are no longer shining, and instead the air is filled with the damp wet reminder that you are on the British Isles and nothing will ever be predictable with the weather. Turns out, the riding is not that predictable either.

I'd read trail grades depend on the weather. I never appreciated that until today. In fact, I've learnt many things today including how frikking fast a mountain rescue helicopter can fly when it needs to.

The car park at Gisburn was uncharacteristically quiet. It wasn't raining that hard and it's been dry here most of the week so we didn't think much of it. Some brake fettling later (mate rides a hybrid, swapped slicks for knobblies last night, didn't go too well) we were ready. In the process I heard a couple having the same conversation me and Al have every time we go out alone and no one is listening 'why am I doing this, do I have to, I'm going to get covered in mud, this isn't fun'. She was riding a Trek of some kind, nice bike, slip of a thing, and in passing I registered that perhaps it doesn't matter how small you are, only how fit you are, and that confidence or the lack of it can bite everyone no matter how small they are. That was lesson one.

Lesson two was that, as quickly became glaringly clear, our mate was epically fitter than us. I made the mistake of trying to keep up. Bad move. I should know better by now, but we ride with other people so rarely due to my hideous levels of self consciousness when it comes to my fitness level that I missed the trick.

The third lesson was that the first bit of proper singletrack on the blue had turned from a smooth rip roaring rollercoaster into a disintegrating wheel shifting nightmare in the wet. Fell off. Twanged wrist, twisted hip (though I didn't notice for a few hours afterwards), dented confidence. Decided to take the shortcut and go home - mate was long gone by this point and completely missed this little detour.

The fourth lesson was a rather more serious one. I don't like Northshore at the best of times, as previously documented, though Scotland cured me of some of my dislike. Gisburn has a nippy bit of singletrack which is awesome fun, and then you're thrown into the forest on this silly path constructed of horizontal tree trunks and small ones at that. It's twisty, turny, shares itself with the red route, and for good reason. It turns out, it's easier and safer with a covering of snow. Rain turns it into a bit of a slipfest, especially with no chicken wire on it.

So we round the first corner to find a chap sitting on the side of the wooden track. My first thought is 'what a frikking donkey, what the hell is he doing'. My second thought is 'there are some people here who really don't know what the frikking hell to do and who are looking a little bit shocked'. Turns out, man sitting on Northshore has flown off the side of the Northshore and neatly created a second ankle above the first one with a very neatly broken bone.

Friend of A (I'm not putting his name here, it's not fair) returned and explained the farmhouses were all locked up, which we'd just passed. So he went off to find signal in the car park and phone for help. The other people milling around sodded off. So there seemed nothing else to do but to plonk down next to A and do the only two things I know what to do with broken people, which is keep them talking, keep them with me, keep them warm and keep them from passing out and try, desperately, to stave off the shock for as long as possible and when it hits to distract them so much they wont notice.

Time passed. People passed. I tried to keep them moving on because I remembered something about not crowding people and he was feeling horribly self conscious, I think, though I'm only guessing but that was the impression he gave. Al sorted traffic control, kept an eye out for ambulances and friends and more time passed.

Seems 30 minutes passed, though it seemed longer. We talked, we made silly jokes, the rain fell, he shivered. Another person turned up who knew what they were doing because they were a mountain biking leader, who had a shelter to wrap around A and some sensible advice and calm words and who very blatantly knew exactly what he was doing. We piled all the clothing we had onto him and the shivering stopped. We heard tales from passing bikers of the ambulance going the wrong way, so the same bikers turned around and dashed off to retrieve them. The sound of a helicopter floated across.

Lesson five. Nothing on frikking earth is a more welcome sight in the middle of a forest, than a number of green and high vis bedecked people, some from ambulances, some from air ambulances. A took pictures for his website, to explain to his cycling club why they donate to mountain rescue teams. He fretted about returning fleeces and waterproofs. He passed on his email address and fretted some more. Shock.

At which point, because there was nothing else to do except get in the way, we retreated - back to the safety of the singletrack and the quick way home, not along the Northshore. I'll email, not because I want my clothes back, I couldn't care less, but just to touch base, just briefly, with someone I learnt a lot about in 30 minutes in an effort to keep him focused, talking and conscious. I succeeded at something that I couldn't have not so long ago - keeping calm. And I retreated because bits of me go white in the cold and I was damed if I was going to be no 2. I still feel bad about that, you can probably tell.

So we land back in the car park. There's a note from mate who no doubt has wondered where the hell we've got to - he's gone to ride the red route. The helicopter flies by with A on board at a speed I've never seen a helicopter travel at. The girl who didn't want to go out riding but did anyway landed back in the car park, doing the comedy 'I'm frikking knackered I am' stagger but grinning her face off - I grinned back, because I know how that feels, our mate arrived back at the car park with a badgered back brake to add to the front brake he'd left with and tales of falling off the Northshore in exactly the same place as A had just got lifted from, but he'd somehow landed on his feet, and finally, the mountain bike leader and A's mate got back to the car park, where the friend looked supremely uncomfortable and didn't say much and the mountain bike leader, J, was lovely at me because I wobbled a bit at him.

The sixth lesson?

Mountain bikers, whether they ride their road bikes during the week and only bike at the weekends, are mountain bikers. I don't care what you ride, I don't care whether you ride faster or slower than me, whether you can't ride slow or you want to bomb around the track, you're a mountain biker. I don't care about anything, except that if you fall over, you get looked after. You get sorted. People stop and care. People stop and offer help. A very very small amount make it clear you're an inconvenient obstacle in their way. They weren't mountain bikers, for that attitude alone. Mountain bikers wear different colours, come from different backgrounds, go out in trainers and t-shirts and Adidas tracksuit bottoms because they can't afford anything different. Mountain bikers go out on days like this because we want to ride our bikes and the need to ride our bikes sometimes overrides any sense. Mountain bikers are friendly, caring, supportive, insane, loony, sound as hell, have varying levels of passionate enthusiasm but there will always be some there. Mountain bikers are probably some of the fittest people you will ever meet, who will only ever bother the NHS when they break something mountain biking. Helicopters cost money. The first thing mentioned from Mr Broken Ankle today when he heard the whir was 'oh my god how much does one of those things cost to send out, oh no'. But I resolutely, absolutely, and totally believe that that man will cost the NHS less in total than most during his life.

Mountain bikers deal in risk. Whether we acknowledge it or not, think about it or not, there but for the grace go I. I know this, I accept this, we all do, I think. But you can't stop walking across the road because you might get hit by an out of control stolen car. You can't live your life like that. Life is for exploring, pushing, breathing, adventuring. It's for doing whatever it is you need to do to have fun within reason. It's for knowing you are alive to some. Not everyone needs to do this, not everyone wants to do this. I do. I am one among many.

But today I learnt mountain bikers come in every shade under the sun that wasn't shining. 99% of them have a heart of gold. Cheers folks, you restored my faith in the world. I hope I am a sound enough person to belong to your tribe, because it is a tribe that I assure you, you can be very very proud of.

Girls gone biking

This is one of those cobbled together in 30 seconds posts. It may also contain some wrong conclusions, some assumptions and it's all about girls, their mentality and their attitude to each other. Some of it might be wide off the mark and I might not make friends with this post but I'm intrigued by what I just noticed - I think it's interesting.

The first link in the chain was discovering the outcome of the womens qualifing for the World Cup Downhill racing currently being held in Maribor, not from the myriad of mountain biking organisations, magazines and manufacturers/sponsors I follow, but from Miss Atherton herself. No mens results had been posted either at that point, I Googled. Cool, I thought, it's ace she bothered to tweet that, it looks like I'd never have known otherwise. I was a bit less happy about the content of her tweet, being as how it referenced an injury I didn't know she'd picked up, and that said injury was seriously twanging. Here we go again, I thought.

The second link in the chain was a tweet from @dirtmagazine linking to an article on the Mens Downhill results. The results are notable, admittedly, because the difference between 1st and 2nd is, quite literally, into the 100ths of a second. That's close. That's exciting. That's what people want to read about.

I wonder how Rachel Atherton did, I thought, and looked for a link to the womens results, and sure enough there was an article already written on Dirt Magazines website. No tweet link to this one though.But they wrote it, which hopefully means someone other than me cares about the womens Downhill as well as the mens.

So I read though the results, misread the difference between 1st and 2nd as being in the 100ths again, reread and discovered that actually, no, it's 10 seconds that Rachel Atherton has won by. And there's a sense of here we go again, because the 2008 womens World Cup Downhill, I seem to remember that involving the gap between 1st and 2nd being quite hefty too.

Now, I want you to bear with me on this next bit. I think it's absolutely fascinating. Compare this picture of the men on the mens podium (courtesy of Dirt Magazine) to this picture of the women on theirs (courtesy of Dirt Magazine).

Notice anything?

Nope, not talking about the blonde girl scratching her head. Not talking about the slightly unfortunate look on Pugins face. Certainly not talking about Jonniers Monster Energy socks though I am still argueing with myself about whether they're the worlds biggest fashion faux pas or so totally cool I want a pair.

Look at all their legs. And tell me the only person who is still covered in mud. Now go back to the mens podium shot and tell me how many of the blokes bothered to go back to their pits and have a quick wash and brush up. None. Now this is a leap. I know it is, and it's a massive one. But I wonder how much of the attitude that puts you on the podium still covered in mud, also takes 10 seconds off everyone elses time. I wonder whether when other people are focusing on something entirely different, whether she is focusing on nothing but racing and pushing and finding more mud. I wonder if it's all about attitiude, focus and determination, and less about skill and technique. I wonder if technique comes from attitude, focus and determination. I wonder if fearlessness comes with getting covered in mud and not caring. I wonder if growing up with 2 brothers who push and push and push the limits of own boundaries and bodies has an intrinsic and irreversable effect on the way you approach life. I wonder if watching 2 lads hurtling and hooning switches something on inside someone watching, whether they one day decide that not only are they going to have a go, but they're going to try and beat the boys at their own game. I wonder if the limits which most girls have imposed on them from the moment they're born (pink, don't do science, don't do math, don't play football, wear dresses, don't live in jeans, wear high heels not trainers, always wear make up, don't play with lego, play with the Barbie) disappear when you spend a lot of time in the company of two blokes who expect so much of you that the lines between genders disappear, because they're not acknowledged as existing, never mind being a constraint.

That picture - just one picture. If I could interview anyone, dead or alive, sit them down in a worn out locals pub in the middle of nowhere, with a decent darts board and a pool table and a few hours to kill, it would be Rachel Atherton. Because I want to know how 1 women out of a row of 5 comes to be standing there still covered in mud. I want to know if she notices. I want to know if she cares.

I'll never get the chance, of course. But it really has made me ponder the nature of gender when it comes to sport in general, but mountain biking in particular.

What is it that makes someone want to beat everyone?

Day Six - Drumlanrig Castle Blue

Of all the days we spent riding last week (we've now arrived home), Drumlanrig is the most difficult one to write about. It's nothing to do with the route, and everything to do with my body finally crumbling under the pressure I'd put it under the previous few days.

Drumlanrig Castle is, I suppose, predominantly just that. An imposing pile of pink stone, parapets like icing with a sweeping pink driveway to match. The mountain bike trails are famously built and curated by Rik Allsop, an ex XC and DH nutter - as a result you'd hope he knows his trail building. As it turns out, he does.

The Blue starts innocuously enough - the ascent somewhat predictable by this point. Except, actually, it's not. The surface of the Red route is much talked about, involving as it does most of the tree roots on the estate in one way or another. The surface of the Blue is never mentioned and it's a shame. It provides certain challenges, especially if you are used to ascents being on fire roads, and lets face it, Blue routes rarely ascend on anything else apart from Glentrool's. Drumlanrig's is a fascinating mixture of broken rocks embedded in compacted mud but where the rocks protude just enough to throw you off if you're not careful, the odd root here or there, surfaces akin to cobbles and many others besides, and on the descents it veers from gentle swooping compacted mud and track sections to bits where a trailer-load of fist sized and bigger rocks have been dumped, providing a somewhat moving sliding surface to try and find traction on. It's an interesting lesson in weight distribution, not being lazy about picking lines when ascending, and letting go and having faith on the descents.

The other thing I learnt was that sometimes you need to get off and smell the coffee. Drumlanrig is a working estate, but there's a reason someone decided to build a massive castle here and I'm willing to bet the beautiful River Nith, plunging in places and meandering in others though the ravines it's etched out through the years, was one of them. It's stunning, and both the Blue and Red routes reward riders who resist the lure of plummeting down the gorgeous swooping tracks and instead pause momentarily to take a quick detour to see the rapids in all their glory - from 50 metres above.

It may be clear from the above that I was not in attack mode. I wish I had been, Rik recommended a perfect route mixing Blue and Red which on any other day we could have done but which today would have been asking for trouble. He's very friendly,  very approachable, very knowleagable and very good with kids. If you're looking for somewhere where, quite literally, the whole family can go riding, you can't go wrong. If you're looking for somewhere that feels like riding with nature instead of across it, this too is the place you're looking for. It's not manicured, it's not over hacked and slashed, it's not neat and tidy and ordered. It is fun. A really rather large amount of silly fun.

Day Four - 7 Stanes (Dalbeattie)

Day four – 7 Stanes (Dalbeattie)

The day isn’t a misprint. Discretion being the better part of valour, we opted to have an off-bike day on day three, and a very pleasant day wandering around a book town was had too.

Anyway. Dalbeattie. The day didn’t start off on the best of footings, with a complete misery permeating everything. The weather was the usual – cloudy with occasional breaks of sunshine – but sleeping was proving elusive and sleep is a little bit vital at the moment. As a result, we didn’t turn up in the car park with me in my usual state of raring to go. I dribbled out of the car, spent too long over shoe choice and was generally hesitant about the whole thing.

Dalbeattie doesn’t have a Trailhead in the traditional sense of the word. The bike wash is a standpipe with a hose attached and a log to rest your bike against. There are no toilets, no café, no showers, no one at all. There is a distinct absence of everything that there is to be found at all the other Stanes Trailheads that we’ve visited so far. There’s a car park, a shelter with some maps on it, an empty box where the mobile form of the map should be, and that’s your lot.

Hidden depths.

We set off, following the signs past the skills area to the ‘Main Trails’. The usual uphill slog began. So far, so normal. And then suddenly, the rules of the game changed and we weren’t in Kansas any more. Our experience to this point of Northshore has involved Gisburn’s attempt on the Blue route – a short and brief spurt which gives you a taste of the unnerving feel of rolling across narrow pieces of wood slatted together with a bog lurking below – Dalbeattie’s Northshore is not short. It’s long, forgivingly wide, winds you through some incredibly soggy looking ground and whilst treating you very gently, gives you a lovely introduction to the slightly weird sound the wood makes beneath your tyres. I pootled along it, I admit.

Eventually the usual fire road appeared, and things seemed to return to situation same as. Then the trail darted off the fire road and we were presented with some singletrack gorgeousness. Somewhat tellingly, the feel of it was a little similar to Kirroughtree, but with a day between me and the nightmare, things seemed to have clicked and we both flew along it. Emerging the other side, a little breathless and with very big grins, glad we’d bothered to get out of bed seemed somewhat of an understatement.

More fire road. And more. And yet more. The Blue at Dalbeattie is 14km long, a bit of an epic for a Blue route even by Scottish standards, and my trail centre guidebook tells me that not a lot of it is singletrack. Well, frankly, it’s not. But that’s not the point of Dalbeattie. The point of Dalbeattie is to learn how to deal with hills. Little ones and big ones alike, there are many of them there. Let me tell you about hills. If you’ve got no energy left in your muscles, hills are pootled up in bottom gear on the granny ring because that’s all the energy you can muster, and 70 year olds whizzing past you be damned. Once your muscles are in that bad place, even when the track evens out, you’ve not got the power to build up the speed to attack the next hill properly, and so every single damn hill turns into an epic, as you start from the bottom in the lowest gear with no momentum to take the sting out of the t(r)ail.

We got to 8km, the point where we’re usually looking for the end of the route, and I was struggling. Humidity levels were making the forest feel like a Brazilian one, the sun was by turns beating down mercilessly or hiding behind a cloud, my balance had decided to take a temporary holiday and a muscle in my left thigh was twanging quietly to itself. We were, absolutely literally, miles from anywhere. Felling machinery could be heard in the distance, but the last person we’d seen was a runner 6km back and there was no escape route, and no easy way home.

That’s where you learn. That’s when you stop messing about, grit your teeth, get your head down and decide that holding energy reserves back constantly is getting you nowhere anyway, so sitting down for 15 minutes, gathering yourself, getting some liquid and food down and thinking about something else and then manning (womanning?) up and going for it is the only thing left to do.

So I did. I attacked the trail instead of pootling over it. I forgot about the curious incident of the LouLou going over the handlebars in the daytime and just pushed and pushed and pushed. Suddenly, the hills which I’d been pootling up? Momentum was getting me halfway up and determination was doing the rest. My muscles felt nicely warm instead of filled with acid, my breathing went oddly quiet, my heart rate wasn’t spiking all over the place, the earth moved…..

Okay, so the earth didn’t move. But I did, and fast. Singletrack appeared and got the same treatment, and suddenly, without a second thought, everything just clicked. More Northshore appeared and was ridden properly, I ended up on top of blind horizons with just enough momentum that there was a pause to scope the trail in front before dropping down again, berms were ridden properly, the little ups were attacked and disappeared into nothing and I landed at the car park with the biggest grin on my face ever.

Yesterday (today is day five) I rode like I meant it. I rode as best I could, as fast as I could, with as much commitment, focus and determination as I could. I didn’t hold back. I didn’t meander mindlessly around the trails. I switched up, looked sharp and pushed. For about 45 minutes, all the fat on my body disappeared, my muscles and lungs were those of someone far fitter than me, and my mind? My mind, I think, was in ‘the zone’. The happy place. The place where it doesn’t actually matter what the trail throws at you, you’ll deal with it. If there had been drop offs I’d have done them, if there’d been jumps I would have had a go. From a morning of utter apathy and sadness came one of the best rides I’ve ever had, where I found something buried inside myself that I didn’t know I had.

I bought a Marin because I loved it. Now, finally, I am starting to believe I can be the rider that this daft as all hell bike deserves. I also understand that unless I am prepared to ride like I want to be there, push hard and learn from my own mistakes, that I have no right calling myself a mountain biker. Everyone is allowed off days. Absolutely everyone. But yesterday wasn’t one of them, and yesterday I became a mountain biker. Something changed. I don’t think it will ever change back.