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I'm back baby!
A great first day back on the bike after around 8 weeks on the sidelines - and what a morning to wake up to.
I met up with Matt at the Austrian restaurant in Terrey Hills, he had ridden up from Narraweena (hes a machine).
With a quick check of the map we took off down McCarrs Creek rd for the Duck Hole trail head. Matt is a roadie and a MTBer so I was quite comfortable letting him setting the pace on the road sections (well I was struggling to keep up) but a rather ragged moment early on the fire trail (that he did very well to hang on to) gave me an opportunity to set the pace for a little while.
This was our first ride on Duck Hole and while it was a bit wet in parts it did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. There were some challenging but short climbs and plenty of fast and rough descents littered with large loose rocks that kept you alert at all times. The descent seemed to be all to short as we hit tarmac for a quick road stint down to the Chiltern Track gate.
8 weeks of sitting on my arse came back to haunt me climbing Chiltern. At one point I was desperately holding back the urge to throw up. I walked too much of Chiltern, I was simply not up to it today.
After a 10 minute break to catch up, we turned around and headed down Chiltern. Well this was my time to shine. Steep, rocky, sandy, waterbar-y .. these are the things that make me smile and today I was on song. While I was letting the bike run, I certainly wasn't pushing for records. Being my first ride back I was also conscious of not putting to much pressure through my left wrist, but I did manage to top the speedo at 34.6kph just before the end of the trail. (My top speed on road was only 4kph faster)
After a quick stop to clean the glasses and get some much needed water into the system we started on the climb up McCarrs Creek Rd and back onto Duck Hole. A few minutes into the climb I noticed the rear was crabbing. On initial inspection it seemed inflated but a few more metres of climbing and I knew something was wrong. A quick squeeze of the tyre indicated it was on the way down.
As the rim is setup for tubeless the air was largely trapped inside the tyre. Due to the wet I could see a very very slow leak bubbling which turned out to be no where near the tube leak.
Matt gave me some great tips on getting the tyres on and off with little to no tyre lever action and then it was time to christen the CO2 device. Wow - this system is every bit as good as people say .. the mini pump is now officially retired!
Sadly the hills had it in for me from there on. At times I had to do the walk of shame as I couldn't summons the core strength and leg power to deal with the loose surface. However even on the way back Duck Hole had some nice descents to put the smile back on my face.
All in all a really great return to trail, and on my 42nd birthday no less.
Points of Interest
- I forgot to pack my SD card for the GoPro so didn't get any footage, but when I got back to the car I remembered I have a spare SD card stashed in my pack .. Idiot! I'll be back there real soon to film the trail.
- Me banging on about how I ride high pressures because I'm happy to trade off a bit of performance in order not to get flats. I shit you not, 1 minute later .. pop!
- Matt telling me how he managed to bodgie up an inner tube with a cable tie, only to continue riding home, have flat, have a leaking spare .. but not have a cable tie.
Karma's a bitch!