Winter MTB Miles

The recent rubbish weather has meant the road bike has been getting a lot of use because the local trails have turned into a sloppy, slippery paste. I've been desperate to get out on the MTB and finally after a few dry days I gambled on the mud having dried out enough and chose the MTB for my midweek ride after work.

I’m always looking to mix up the routes I take, so I rode around the back of Goodwood motor circuit and up Chalkpit Lane to the top of the Trundle, something I haven’t done since the summer. No mud here and I was even able to ride around the usual stagnant puddles that are a constant feature of the path behind the motor circuit.

For the last few weeks now I’ve struggled to push myself hard in training, it’s as if my body seems to have selected a "go slow" mode for winter. So with my heart rate hardly racing I spun up towards the blinking radio mast lights at the top of the hill. At night you get a different sense of speed and it was hard to gauge my pace, but when I glanced down I was in a much lower gear than I’d normal use for a hill I have ridden a thousand times. I was going slowly!

At the top I cranked up the lighting power to shed some extra lumens on the rooty singletrack path behind the horse racing grandstand. It was brilliant fun weaving through the trees in the dark, but there's always a slight sense of caution when riding at night on your own. Crossing the road at Benges I was climbing again, up towards another set of glimmering pylon lights at Bignor. Not only is your speed harder to assess in the dark, but I also found it hard to spot turns and paths which I know like the back of my hand during the day! Eventually, hiding under a layer of leaves, I found the correct singletrack trail that lead down to Whiteways.

The cycling mecca of Whiteways is sadly in a state of ruin. Due to Forestry work to fell trees in the area in an attempt to halt the advance of Ash Dieback, many of the classic local trails such as “Three Amigos” have been lost. I avoided the worst of the loggers tyre tracks and climbed (again slowly) up into the Rewell wood. Luckily the singletrack here is still intact, but sadly the soil seemed to have retained more of the recent rain than other areas and there were some muddy sections to negotiate.

It was brilliant to be out on the MTB for a couple of hours re-tuning my off-road skills, especially with the Brass Monkeys race now only a 10 days away. The bonus was that the trail conditions on the whole were surprisingly good. My lack of drive was however frustrating, but maybe this time of year is more about getting in some solid base training miles than tuning race speed.