Who turned the lights out?

Hello again guys and gurls for another, slightly more timely than usual post! Been a reasonable week this one, not too much to report on but a few key things that seem worthy of an entry.

First off, my brother has got us entered into this years Dusk Till Dawn 12 hour night enduro, as a team of three. Hoping to build on the success of the recent BigDog and have a good end to the season to motivate us for the winter. You may remember around this time last year I started this blog as a method of motivating myself and as a record of mileage done each month, come the autumn/winter i aim to be more dedicated, both in terms of riding the bike and keeping a track of it all on this website. Time will tell!

This week has seen a minor set back that has thankfully been resolved very quickly. My Hope Vision 2 LED light, that has seen me through the winter for the past 2 years decided to start playing silly buggers forcing me to bail early on the regular Thursday night ride. ( dark in the trees by half 7? I hate that! ) After a little fettling Friday morning I think I have the issue resolved but its not 100%. I also acquired an Exposure Maxx Enduro light from a friend who was selling his to effectively replace the Hope. The Maxx is a bar mounted light so would counter the major issue with having a powerful helmet light; it flattens the trail ahead, removing any depth perception in dips in the trail. Its also a complete single unit, so no cables or separate battery packs to clutter up frames and bars. I'll test it in combat next week and see how we get on.

Sunday morning saw a good ride around the local trails, roughly four and a half hours of riding on slightly greasy singletrack, much fun was had by all and a good cuppa at the Stanmer tea rooms at the end.

Aims for next week? Get out twice and have some good long rides. Hoping for tuesday morning and thursday night, but we'll see what cards the weather deals with us!

The bodged battery and light of my Vision2:

The new Exposure light:



Right then, that's it I'm afraid, short and sweet this week. I'll post up next week with a review of the coming week. Till then, Happy trails!

Jim.

Has it really been a month?

Hiya guy and girls, I seem to be constantly apologising for the tardy nature of my blog posts so this time around, I'm not going to bother!
Been a busy month since the twentyfour12, trying to get ready for the Brighton BigDog 6 hour race and on the whole, it went well. I entered the event in a team of three, myself, my brother and Mr. Guy Colbourne; a regular http://sussexmuddyarse.wordpress.com/ rider and a good mate. Despite ominous weather forecasts leading up to the race, the weather was pretty much perfect and the course bone dry from start to finish. Guy took the first lap, Simon second with me third. Hugely proud of Simon who has been training hard all year to get himself ready and I'm hoping its been a big boost to his confidence as we're racing the Dusk till Dawn 12 hour night enduro in early October so hopefully he'll be even quicker by then. All three of us had a good race, even though I managed to only fit in 1 lap due to the timings ( any lap finished after 1800hrs didn't count ) I did my lap on this:

A Yeti 575, a frankly amazing bike and the most fun I've had on an mtb in ages. I was able to concentrate on riding fast and not on mincing over the rough stuff to ease my back. I had a great lap, really giving it the beans and two days on my back feels fine. All i need to do now is sell one of the kids to buy one...

So, a good weekend, a good result in that we finished the race, only one minor mechanical and we all enjoyed it. Good job done! It puts us in a good place to prepare for October and I'm considering a duathalon in February as something to give me motivation to get out in the depths of winter! Right, I'm going to have some dinner then go for a ride. I'll post up after the next club ride!


A couple of pics from the race. ( some on Guy's nice camera, some on my rubbish phone camera. )

Simon at speed: 

 Squadron Leader Colbourne:

Me, Mr Smith and a Yeti: 

Take it easy guys and gurls!

Jim.