SkipRatt mountain bike blog

The snow has cleared, (good riddance)! The roads are dry after a few months of constantly changing temperatures and enough cold and flu like viruses to send your body into complete meltdown! Things are looking brighter now, with clear skies and average temperatures of 10 degrees.
Although the anticipation and excitement of long off road epic bike rides in the evening sun enthralls me, I cannot help feeling the reluctance of going out riding my bike when the remains of nasty colds still haunt me with a stuffy nose and aching body parts!

At the whit week holidays I have a trip planned with my family to the peak district. We have booked ourselves into a holiday inn on the Lady bower reservoir for 4 days. I have a nice route planned out around the reservoir on my bike and as my wife and son are no mountain bikers I will be going it alone! The wife and son will be happy though as they enjoy walking, well my wife does anyway! But the photos will be coming thick and fast as a result.

I'll let you know how it goes as and when in a future post. My main focus right now is getting faster, fitter, over longer distances before whit week comes around!

I have some idea's for future posts that I intend working on soon, such as: Rock shox SL review, Sram's Truvativ Firex review, Racing Ralph tyre review, Marzocchi MX Pro Lo Review. Plus, a complete review on my trip to the peak district and lady bower reservoir with route and accommodation details. I am working on a list of .gpx files for download of places I have ridden, but as of yet failed to find any suitable free file hosting for .gpx files.

I have made a few minor changes to Fit directory for any sports related sites out there, by reducing the amount of personal info shown. Hopefully this will encourage more listings in the directory. Fit directory is very new and needs listings to increase content and then hopefully I'll be able to get listed in Entrecard to drive more traffic to it.......and to you!

Fit directory Submit sport, fitness, health related blogs or websites for FREE! Although fit directory is free it does need a link back for every site indexed to keep a good balance between inbound and outbound links. What is fit directory? Well it is a directory for sure, but included with your link you get a complete profiling of your site and you! You create and submit the profiling that you want shown on this blog so that I can post it. All that I ask is that the site you submit is a quality site and that my link you provide is no more than 1 click away from your homepage.

Click the title of this post, it will take you straight to the directory!

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Remember my dilemma in which I could not choose between a new mountain bike or a new frame? Well I made a choice and would like to introduce you to my new ride as waiting until march to buy it proved too much for me to handle, I never was much for patience!

One thing that I did was to decide on a shop to do my buying, but not my local bike store as I thought I needed more choice and sizing up by a specialist. So with that in mind I headed to the city of Nottingham and took my business to Evens bike store.

I saw a bike online from Cannondale, their new turine 4. So my intention was to buy it, that is until I saw it in the shop! Basically the size of the headset barrel and length of the top tube put me off. Due to the fact that I had nothing other than that in mind, I was at a loss.

The choice of bikes on offer in the shop was very limited so I decided to find a bike that I felt comfortable with, and would therefore be happy with. Staff in the Nottingham branch were very helpful and very patient with me, so thanks to them for that and helping me walk away with the best piece of kit ever.

The Scott scale 35 is a sweet ride and impressed me from the moment I took it out for a test ride, (which Even's let you do before buying!). At first the bike felt twitchy, but very agile. What got my pulse really racing was how effortlessly each pedal stroke transferred into foreword motion. Apart from the irritating sound of rubbing disk brakes and numb hands on rough rides, the Scott scale 35 is a joy to ride and I find myself wanting to ride it at every opportunity.

It's been quite a while since I went out riding with my riding/drinking buddy as he is more focused on his music. On Saturday I went for a training ride on my lonesome and got on o.k. On the Sunday I felt quite fresh and decided to call on my buddy for a leisurely ride. At first he was quite reluctant and was very close to saying no, but as luck would have it I mentioned the word "beer". This was more than enough to entice my buddy out.

It was not the best of days to be out riding as the weather was rather cold and windy, but it was a bright day. I said to my bud that I intended to take some photo's of the area in which we ride for my blog. I think this made him feel a little better in the knowing that we would be stopping for a breather, poor baby!

I have to admit he really did need those regular breathers because he is so out of shape. That made the ride very cushy indeed, for me anyway! The photo taking didn't go to plan because the local trails are so bogged down and water logged. Walking through it was bad enough, let alone riding through it!

After a couple of shots we decided to head back, I think we had only done around 4.5 miles :-/ but anyway I was paranoid about the thorns everywhere as I was riding my full suspension bike without puncture proof tires like on my other mountain bike.
As we were on our way towards the pub, en-route as I promised my bud. I heard this rubbing/muffled sound coming from my front end. "Would you sodding believe it" My front tyre has gone down! As I said earlier, it was cold and windy so I didn't fancy sitting on the corner of a main road fixing a puncture, and continued riding nice and steady to the pub, as enough air was left in the tyre to get me pretty much closer to the pub. Unsurprisingly my bud was about 100-200 yards ahead of me all the way, about the only time he ever is!

We get the beers in. No get it right, I get the beers in! and then set about fixing my puncture, complaining all the time about the bloody thorns doing it. By the time I got finished and we supped our beers, a blanket of darkness awaited us.
I had no lights but my bud had a rear one only. Due to my crap night vision I was forced to hang back and follow the red light!

As we head south, the wind really got in our faces and my lead could not keep a pace. So reluctantly I took the lead and told him to stay on my back wheel, exclaiming that I would tow him along. His reply was that we needed a rope, so I said that we needed a tank to tow that great big ass along! Thankfully he saw the funny side of my remark, and we both laughed out loud. Although I could hear the distress in his voice caused by the lack of fitness and head wind, I think!

Since that day I have failed to encourage my buddy out for a weekend thrash, I cannot say that I am surprised really. He was in a little pain after the previous weekends tug of war. It's all good, weekend warriors catching up and all that. But things like this need to be done on a regular basis to keep the riding legs strong and keep the old lungs in good stead!