The Obscure Tour

Adaptation and not giving in is central to the thriving Masters athlete. .Howard Luks

Our little south coast town has been surprisingly busy this winter. By busy I mean there are a handful of people on the beaches over the weekends and you might meet a few people on the mountain bike trails. Sometimes I avoid mountain biking on the weekend because the E-bike riders can be annoying! This is, of course, ablist, because only able people ride analog bikes, except, like most of the isms, that’s nonsense because the people riding E bikes are between 30 and 40 years younger than me and certainly will not be able at my age because they are taking the easy way out in their youth.

On Saturday I rode what I am now calling The Obscure Tour because I rode the trails that are rarely ridden. There’s no shuttles on these trails and shuttling yourself would be time consuming because they run all over the place unlike the trails that run off the Trig or Mitchells Road and are much more compact.

I always ride from the Curtis Road trailhead because it is 15 minutes cycle from my house. Mostly, I alternate: if I head up the northerly trail one ride I’ll head up the southerly trail the next time, but as I was off on The Obscure Tour I took the northerly trail and rode all the way up to Round Hill, which is modestly obscure. On the way, I stopped to let a group of four E bike riders pass, but caught up with two of them in under a minute and eventually rode past, giving out a good natured cheer for analog bikes – strangely they didn’t seem to appreciate the sentiment. That’s the problem with E bike riders, the lack of endorphins makes them cranky!

After Round Mountain I cycled along a variety of tracks to RU12, one of the old trails from before the new Mogo build out. I love this trail as it’s the closest trail we have to cross country as it goes up and down small hills before the final descent. The cycle out, on an old and increasingly eroded Fire Trail is, however, a bit of a grunt on an analog bike; certainly the steepest up track in the network.

Some trail angel(s) have been tidying up the old Dam Loop which had got severely overgrown, rutted, and covered with sticks and leaves when the new trails opened but is now really rideable and it provides an excellent way to ride between the south and north ends of Ridge Road without having to get on old fire trails or circuit around the full trail system.

It’s been almost three weeks since my last ride. I feel like that is a confession worth of several Hail Mary’s recited while fingering a bicycle chain instead of rosary beads, but I’ve been doing other stuff. I was very pleased to find that all the leg and glute training has paid off and I rode faster and harder than normal. It’s rare at my advanced age and hormonal state to actually get stronger (not for new trainees but I’ve been training for going on 45 years so the easy gains are long gone). The thrill of being stronger was way more rewarding than the days riding.