Biking

my shoulder seems to be coping well with biking so I'm doing lots. A guy called Andreas came into the lodge a while back and we ended up doin a ride round Torridon together last week. It turned out to e a long day.. I drive to Garve from Aviemore then we drive to Torridon. The ride was 46km mainly off road in the mountains. Spectacular scenery, despite the cloud covering the mountain tops. we cycled past Liathach, Ben Eigh (I think), alomg Glen Torridon, then towards achnashellach then an absolute epic of a climb back over the mountains. I have to admit I did walk/push/carry quite a lot of this section as it was fairly technically sustained and VERY VERY WET. I can't describe to you how wet it was - given that the forecast said it was going to be the dryest place in the country - There were loads of drainage channels directing water down off the hill to the main river, some of which I would never have cleared (and some which I tried but didn't clear :/). The streams were very full. Initially I tried to stay dry then gave up and ended up wading calf deep though some big bits of water... it reminded me of ML training, I kind of felt like I should be turning round in circles or something , ha ha ha. What an adventure! The final down hill was awesome - about 7km of continuous red grade down hill, my wrists were aching for days afterwards. We both took some comedy falls along the way - Andreas managed to land with his head in a bog and came up looking like a monster with mud all over his face. Then a drive back to Garve, tea at Andreas's house then drive back to Aviemore.

Unfortunately we encountered midgies in egyptian plague quantities which meant we didn't stop for long, except half way round at a really cool bothy, which was amazing, and allowed Andreas to fix his bike without being eaten alive. It didn't spoil our ride though.

Over the last couple weeks I have also done the ride up Glen Einich which was suprisingly easy on the uphill and very quick on the down hill, a great ride in the mountains. Andreas and I also did a ride a bit closer to home - up the Burma road - up a MASSIVE hill then down the brilliant black descent back to aviemore. Managed to ride quite a lot of it and both of us took some more comedy falls off - big bruises on my legs.

I also went over to Badaguish, where there was a guy from Bothy bikes doing repairs on some of the track - in preparation for the competition (this weekend?), don't think I'm quite fast enough yet...it's good to have some quality stuff to play on locally, and going back to do the same technical climbs helps me see how much I've improved, or not!