Tonight we met at the green gate, ok it's not green, in Dalby. Matt led the social group, not bad for someone who had just done the whole red in under 3 hours! I led the fast group and tried to do something different. We did the very last section of red and then left the forrest and after a gentle climb did a very very long downhill and some new trails to the hole of horcum via another gentle climb and a quick blast back to the cars. 16 miles. Fastest rider by a mile was our visitor from Spain, he looks about 6 but i guess is about 13 and showed us how to ride! 

Smiler said:

… Matt was still pedalling well, too well I think. He must have been doing some secret training me thinks …

Training? Me? Nope, I took the 21st century approach…. upgraded the bike instead. Why fret and worry about losing weight, spending hours on the turbo-trainer or improving biking skills…. just buy new equipment instead.

Changed from the Giant VT (which I loved, very sure-footed going down rough stuff) to a Giant Anthem. Tried the Anthem in Dec 2008 as my first go on a full-suss and hated it. But I was trying to plug through deep mud and didn't really give it a chance to shine I realise now. Was considering upgrading to a Trance or maybe a Reign later this year, but on the demo day at Dalby recently I tried the Anthem again. I got the feeling that pilots must get when they leave the propeller driven trainers behind and move into the big noisy things with rockets and guns and stuff. Afterburners on… flew along the demo route at speeds I'd never experienced before. Broke down the door to the shop after the weekend and demanded one ASAP. Debs was naturally reluctant to sell me a new bike, but I insisted

As Debs mentioned; I had a crack at the Red run earlier this week. Had the place to myself on Tuesday morning. Perfect conditions. To be honest, I didn't quite crack 3hrs. Did 2:59 “moving” according to the GPS, but had 7 mins on top of that for chocolate, water and an AWOL contact lens (forgot to duck for a branch). So haven't quite cracked the 3 hours yet, but CLOSE! And an improvement of 34 minutes on my time on the VT last year. Still the slowest on the red run leader board here though . Maybe time to upgrade the bike again ?

Mark G said:

did you find the contact lens! 

Yup, another benefit of wearing cycling specs, they catch outbound stuff as well as inbound.

Then just had to fish out a couple of tyre levers to get it back in place