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Jason and Terry found themselves as the only travellers on this grey drizzly morning, 25th Sept 2005. Originally intending to do Chopwell Wood, 10 miles up the Tyne, they had switched the plan to take in Newcastleton after John pulled out suffering from something like a bout of ME or a similar ailment. At 8.30 in the morning David also withdrew due to some liquid influence the day before. And Andy failed to turn up at the scheduled departure time. So, the duo decided to punish everyone by doing the God Glentress for spite. That plan lasted until they reached Gretna when Skeletor asked Jason if he fancied a practice for next Sunday's Hardrock Challenge at Dalbeattie (a 10 mile run followed by the 16 mile Red Trail) and that seemed even semi-intelligent, so off they went to the Rocky Place.

We started the ride about 12.15pm in beautiful sunshine and 14 degrees, a good bit cooler than anything since Easter but still enough to turn body armour into a stinking sponge, which it did. Pooeeh!

We tried to do the Red Trail at a reasonable pace as Jason would literally be racing it next weekend. This wasn't totally successful taking the pair 2 hours 40 minutes, but it was about an hour faster than the Gollum had ever done it before. Just a shame a couple of steep fire roads forced short walks. First time out for the pairs' heart rate monitors aswell, with Golly's max HR alarm ringing loud and clear on most inclines, until he got fed up with the noise and shut the alarm off.

We decided to take in the Slab (we're the only MidAirCrisis bods who've done it, and why miss out this time?) but using a new technique (Jason's idea, I must add) which was to just ride straight up to the lip of the Qualifier, tip it straight off the edge, then proceed to tip it straight over the Slab aswell, all in one super-smooth movement. So that's what we did, and it worked a treat! It did, however, increase our speed at the foot of the Slab to something much higher than normal. Luckily there was no-one approaching from the madly-aimed Red Trail at the same time, otherwise bye-bye MacMen!!! 12MB vid for BroadBandies or try this 4.5 MB cut-down version.

A bit further on we did the same with the next obstacle - the Terrible Twins. Here Jay checks for small round thingies after he clattered his Crown Jewels on the Coiler's frame half way down them! Here's the full show, click it for 1.7MB Vid:- The poor lad was having a whale of a time getting used to clipless pedals - here's another small excursion into the greenery caused by them and some very slippery rock steps - this time he tasted it! 5MB vid

Here we survey the trail markers for next Sunday's Hardrock Challenge event.

Only 5 miles left - yippee!

Back at the car park and still we were having fun, thanks to the inventor of clipless pedals. Click on Jason to see how much fun he is having here.

Golly used 2350 calories with an average HR of 132 and a maximum of 179. Jason ran at 125 and 172. For those of you with an interest.

next ride - 29th December 2005    and 16th April 2006 (Easter Sunday)

Here's Jason and Andy at the Hardrock Challenge 2nd October