Back on the mountain bike!

7:15 am on a Sunday morning: dark and raining...

Today I've had my first mountain bike spin since the beginning of September. It's been a long break indeed, but I've been busy with all the cyclocross & road lately. But enough is enough I say! It was really time to get back in the game and do what I always really preferred: ride mountain bike! :)

I pulled out my faithful MTB from storage and after a small TLC repair it was ready to rock again. Happy days! 

Normally I ride my bike on my own, but this time I had my ThinkBike.ie CC team mate Ben on the spin with me. This was our first mountain bike spin together since he joined our club. We have decided to leave nice & early and get a proper spin in before the place goes mad and gets flooded by people. So we met at the Dundrum Luas Bridge at 7:15 am and took off towards Threerock. It was a very wet and dark morning and it didn't improve too much later on either. Grey sky, coulds were sitting on the hills, water and mud everywhere - typical February morning in the mountains. But hey! This is what we can expect so get on with it and have fun! :)

Basicly we did most of the trails up there including some WW and also visited the Fairycastle. Got loads of natural trail riding also (they are the BEST) and a little bit of the Metros as well. The truth is that I had very questionable confidence on the way up to the hills. Well that was a bit more of a wandering how rusty my off-road skill are after all the "easy-mode" months on the cyclocross bike. But to be fair I had no trouble really on the rough trails. Need to speed up a little and also need to get my body to get used to ride on those bumpy trails again...after 3 hours spin today I felt like I got beaten up. But after a few more spins like this I'll get back into rhythm properly! 

I have to say that I really missed mountain biking and had so much fun on the bike that is hard to describe! Really missed everything about riding XC and it's just felt right to be up in the mountains again this morning! Happy time!! :)