First Riverhead ride of the spring.

As we ha not had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, discounting the heavy fall with hail on Tuesday, Graham wanted to go and check out some of the trails are Riverhead to see how rideable they are. The Freeriden boys had a loop that was supposed to be fairly dry but we did not get organised enough to get a map of the loop so decided to go and check out some of the tracks we rode last year.

Miles, Brendon, Graham and I rode today - with The Boys on their fully’s and me on the single speed. The ride up Barlow Rd to the start of Pattersons has not got any less steep but it felt OK, I have definitely gotten stronger over the winter period which is good. Pattersons 1 and 2 were a mixed affair, muddy in parts and dry in others, but the horses have been through there over winter and track is in awful condition, very hard work for a fairly flat track, not a lot of flow and the exposed roots are a lot further out of the track giving the upper body a good workout as well. I managed to get to the top of Christ hill Ok but was pretty broken, and took the opportunity of being first there to have a bit of a break. Richies is not one of my favourite tracks at the best of times, the down hill section was surprisingly dry so there was plenty of traction but there was some huge bogs on the flat sections and some of them were pretty smelly… As we were pushing time and the trail was not getting easier to ride we went left at the bottom of Richies with the intention of getting to the Chatham road trails and then to bottom of Anzac Rd. It appears the Chatham Rd trails have all disappeared now with all the trees and we ended up on a long section of old fire road that was at least heading in the right general direction. At the end of the fire road I was not 100% sure where we were but headed off again to the left and after a hundred metres or so ended up at the end of Anzac Rd which was most cool. Anzac was a fair old slog to the top, I had forgotten the final few metres was quite steep and I was again happy to get there first so I could suck some air down before the others arrived. The final run down Nature trail was Ok, again not a favourite trail as there are a few sections I get off and walk as they are too steep, both up and down, for me. I must get control of my fear and ride the down sections, they are perfectly rideable as Graham shows us every time.

Not a bad ride, ended up muddier than expected, muddy enough to clean the bike when I got home which I have had to do for a while !