Sunday Woodhill ride...

A couple of Vorbii were up from Wellington this weekend so a ride had been scheduled for 10.00 AM at Woodhill, there seemed to be quite a bit of interest with some riders coming up from Hamilton as well.

My youngest son was at scout camp so I could go ride Sunday for a change. Wahoo ! As I had been preparing for the race yesterday and did not get to do the full 35km ride I had bit of excess energy today so decided to go to the forest early and meet some of my old Sunday riding crew and ride with them for an hour. Surprisingly everyone was there early so we hit the trail on time, some things have obviously changed since I have been away. The Sunday crew are definitely more into hucking and other freeriding type activities than I am so it was a slow grind up to the Spaghetti trail and then a chat and ride session for 50 minutes through the various jumps and stunts on Spag until I had to shoot back down to the car park to catch the Vorb crew. It was good to ride with the lads again but I could not sustain the slow pace for too many rides. My fitness and ability has improved immensely over the last 1 months and I just like to trail ride as fast as I can for as long as I can.

Met up with a big bunch of Vorbii and guys from the Freeriden shop, probably 20 riders altogether. We left 30 minutes late as expected and started up Powerball, waited and waited at the top and then a couple of us went back down the trail to find the other SSer had broken his chain – just like me yesterday – and did not have the bits to fix it – also like me yesterday ! Luckily some one else had all the required bits and after 15 minutes of shagging around we were back on trail chasing after the big group who had ridden on, we caught them fairly quickly on the big mama trail. We left Big Mama about half way along and shot down SPCA, had a good run down and the out of towners really had a blast. The bunch split at the end of SPCA with some riding the road up to Ironhorse and a bunch taking the longer single track options up Upland, down the Lightening and enchanted forest and through Haggis. At the end of the Haggis we lost a few more riders who took the short option and 2 of us went and rode Northern Exposure and then No Brakes. Finally meeting what was left of the group up at the top of Ironhorse. I dropped my seat for the first time in a while and hammered down Ironhorse clearing most of the jumps. It was great to get some air again and I really enjoyed the run down the track. I was really pushing my time limits to pick up my youngest so a few of us jumped onto the forest road and went back to the start of Link and then rode that and the side of Cookie, whipped down raceface down and I threw the stuff in the car and took off for home.

Had a great ride, was quite wiped out afterwards. Did a bit of chatting but most of the ride was done at a pretty good pace and we covered a bit of ground. Great to see the Wellington and Hamilton crew and to show them our bike park.