Tuesday 5 January 2010

Sublime to ridiculous

Last night I was planning to ride in xc this morning but with all the ice I was hoping for a good bit of snow to improve grip, bloody hell did it deliver, a l;ittle too much I think. Got up looked out the window and thought "wahey today is gonna be either a great laugh or an ordeal" The amount of pain coming from my legs as I walked downstairs should have been an indicator of which. Between 4 and 6 inches of snow overnight! Never had that before even on ski holidays. Looked like they'd had a snowplough out on our local streets so going was okay at first then I got off road. Under the trees was OK just a couple inches of powder but in the open it was horrible, like pedalling through glue. Singlespeeding doesn't break your knees but SS through deep snow definitley does. Halfway to work I was regretting it, I'd expected it to peter out as I got near manchester but no, after clifton and the last of the tree cover I switched to roads which were fairly empty but still that treacherous loosely packed down snow. City centre still had loads of snow and the main roads were in right a state, whoever is in charge of keeping them clear must be shitting themselves right now, they'll be on fish4jobs by the end of the week.

No-one in at work, wish I hadn't bothered, should have stayed at home. My legs are already making subtle suggestions that riding home would be a bad move. Still it should be good for shifting the christmas weight and the amount of 2 wheel drifts I've managed to save my mud riding technique should be ace by the time the snow melts. Hardest commute ever!

4 comments:

Red Bike said...

It took me 90mins to ride the 8miles home last night. The 5mile uphill stretch over grass covered snow was slow going. My legs eventually gave up and I ended up pushing / carrying the bike.

trio said...

So it was rideable? I was thinking it was too deep as I was making fresh tracks on my snowboard!

Donk said...

RB - my routes mostly flat any hills needed to be walked
Trio - For a given value of rideable yes :-) had to take the road route home.
Snowboard? Where? you lucky beggar, tempted to go out with my board but legs are just too far gone for anything now. My mate tried up at hayward levels but the snow was too sticky or something.

trio said...

The golf course near my house! Bolton open or something?

This morning was perfect as noone else there!

Then when we went back it was good till it got a bit busy so we built a kicker. Break for lunch and back again but it wasn't as good, but we found some fresh stuff in the trees.


If it sticks around we may be heading somewhere with a lift on sunday, I'll let you know!