A WC2C free weekend!

All I did this weekend was train, and rest. I also now realise how good Coach Chris is at reading people, their athletic abilities and mental profile.

It's spooky, if you ask me, but he has revolutionised my training and recovery. But, you'll have to find that out for yourself. :ob

Saturday, and we got up at late o'clock, which was nice. The dogs normally wake us up about 5am by stomping on my tender bits or "singing" at us. Alternatively, one dog manages to weavel itself onto the bed without being noticed, and you wake up looking at it's chocolate starfish. Either that, or you feel the draught of a little love puff, from the same place. It's never the best way to wake up, but it works!

Today, though, they slept all the way through.

After multiple breakfasts, and a chilled out morning, we got ready to ride our bikes. The afternoon was spent on local trails and we rode to, around and about, and home from Cwmcarn. It was kind of cold, but it was a good day.

5hrs later, I was washing our bikes in the dark.

Food, telly, fruit, more recovery drink and I was in bed before 10pm.

This morning was more normal. We were up really early; too early for the dogs, who stayed in bed whilst we got ready.

We arrived at Afan Argoed and had finished our rides by 2pm.

It was Baltic, and my Camelbak froze. In addition to this, I had ridden a bit too hard yesterday and subsequently, my legs were killing me. It took 3hrs for my legs to feel like they had any life in them.

The ride was excellent though. (Supertough, remember.)

Part of the day followed the whole of the recently marked "W2" trail, from "The Wall" end. I have to say that I really enjoyed this route, because it mixes up some of the best singletrack around and jiggles the way you would normally do it. It's like a figure of 8 route that splices the "The Wall" and "Whytes Level" together and it's a good day out on it's own, I think. The best bit is that you can start it from Glyncorrwg or Afan, and still cover the same ground.

I've never been down "The Wall" descents so quickly (on any of my bikes), so I must really have the MK111 well dialed in now. It's also quite surprising how hard you can push Crossmark tyres.

It snowed for a little while.

Blimey it was cold.

A new sign seems to have appeared at the top of the Whytes climb. It's new to me anyway, because I've never noticed it before. It's the answer to the question that goes through most peoples' minds on the way up the relentless (but fun) climb...

Hmm? I'm not sure about the spelling

Next week is easy. Saturday is a short day, but Sunday will be the first in a series of one day rides where I join up all of the stages of the WC2C, so that I know it inside out.

One "Rule of engagement" for the WC2C challenge that we've decided on is that it's going to be a litter free ride. I (and hopefully any subsequent riders) will have to carry everything they consume into the ride and out of the other end. So any used wrappers etc will have to be carried to the end and accounted for. It's a small statement, but it's quite important to myself and most of my friends.

This excludes water, of course! 20KG of water is, well, 20kg. I don't know about you, but that would kill me off!

I have had some great ideas for rules provided by my close friends, but I can't print any!!

Children. :)

See you next week.