Glentress Introduction - 29/4/2007

Callum, Bram, Bram's niece Masha, Brian and I headed for a Sunday morning adventure to Glentress mountain bike park. Rob joined us at the car park, as Robin, Niall and George were planning to do something silly like see who could run the red route the fastest. It was Masha's second time on a proper mountain bike trail, Brian's first and to make it more entertaining, Brian was determined to run the red route on his shiny and not shiny no suspension bike. He said any soreness from the run would be my fault, but I told him several times that it would be his own stupid fault. We had a great day out, running the full red route, substituting the one technical cross country section with a gentler downhill section. My preference is for dry tree roots when cycling a technical trail, something perhaps difficult to find in Scotland. The run took us a couple of hours and we ended with a meal and a good sit outside the Hub cafe. Brian was pleased with himself for his suspensionless run of the red route and didn't seem enormously sore for it.

After lunch, we headed back to the top to play on the new blue freeride route, which I would call a jump park. In the US, freeriding is trailless riding. In the UK, it's exactly the opposite, very sculptured riding. Anyway, we played. I walked one bit of north shore that I ran on the second and third go rounds, very pleased with myself with putting mind over matter and trusting myself to run it. About 95% of the day was great fun. The other 5% began a whole other adventure.