As
expected I felt too tired to ride this morning, so I decided to stay at
home and focus on getting my PC fixxed. I rode over to my friend Frank
who was going to take a look at it. Pending the arrival of a new laptop
I hope he can find what is wrong with it so I can get on with editing
the pictures I took in Houffalize last weekend. I did manage to get a
batch done - in between various XP Blue Screens - and have
already uploaded them to my Fotopic site. Take a look only if you are interested in watching women on bikes. Then
when evening came I felt like riding out, so I took the Merlin. It
seemed like a good opportunity to check out the latest configuration
changes - a Van Nicholas titanium handlebar and an SLR saddle I
replaced the Xesco one with. The saddle suits me better than the old
one. Obviously the handlebar - like the rest of the bike - performed
flawslessly. I took it for a little spin in Meerdael forest and even
though I felt tired I couldn't resist tackling a couple of tough hills
and tricky downhills. The bike allowed me to ride it all and even kept
my heartrate low and average speed high. I took it to the Wishing Well
to have a couple of pictures taken.
The
next couple of days I am going to do some road riding though, to build
off a bit and allow the body to catch up with less strenuous rides.
Ride Stats : 21.5K and 295 heightmeters in 1h14mins
Normally
I would have gone to the Ardennes today but due to the rain forecast
over those regions I decided to stay closer to home and have an
Ardennes-like experience by riding my secret Meerdael loop one more
time. This is a loop that takes in a LOT of singletracks and has some
mean and nasty climbing in it as well. Its a tough ride and deciding to
do this one today, meant the same as deciding to do my major ride of the
weekend today. I don't think I will want to do much tomorrow bike-wise.
Pity because I wouldn't have minded going to Esneux for the organised
ride. But
- carpe diem being my motto these days - today the sun shone and so I rode
out on my trails. Obviously I can't tell you where I went - its a
secret remember - but it comprises a lot of the Meerdael Forest,
concentrating on the part of the forest laying east of the Naamsesteenweg during the first
25K , then crossing that Naamsesteenweg and adding a very hilly 35K
whilst focussing on the area around Nethen and Sint Joris Weert, with a little
escapade into the Beaumont area.
The ride is a little more than 62K and
it took me 4 hours to complete it. I stopped along the way to take some
pictures, so you might at least recognize some of the spots where I
passed. The trails were moist in some areas but dry for the most part.
The forest floor is covered with all kinds of tree seeds - even
hiding a puddle here and there - and the first thorns and nettles are
pushing their way over some of the narrow and low-traffic singletrails.
During the ride I noticed that I had put my front tyre on in the wrong
direction after fixxing a puncture last evening. The mountain kings
give a lot of grip and made me feel secure. After I noticed the tyre
being put on wrong I felt it slipping more - thats psychology for you I
guess.
Ride Stats : 62K and 1000/1070 heightmeters in 3h58mins
Weather
is great these days, dry and pretty warm. So when I found some time
this evening I decide to take out the Moots to try out its new
Continental Mountain King tyres and join the KBC MTB club on their
weekly outing. I have been going through a rough patch with my desktop
PC these last few days. The thing doesn't want to work for more than 5
to 10 minutes before crashing with the Blue Screen of Death. I need to
process the pictures I made at Houffalize (410 pictures / 4.5Gb) and
this is taking me forever now. Furthermore I needed to use an old PC to
set up an internet connection to keep in contact with the world. Email
and blog, uploading GPS and Polar files , uploading pictures.. try it
on a Pentium II with a clock speed of 266Mhz and 64Mb of RAM memory.
Its a drag I can tell you. So I'm considering getting me a new PC - a
notebook for its portability - but I need to make sure it can handle
graphical work and heavy picture processing. So when I rode out it felt good to free my mind and leave all those modern-man troubles behind for a while.
The
KBC guys were plentiful and after an initial ride into Meerdael forest
I was asked to guide the ride into the finer parts of the big forest. I
asked them if they wanted to do some climbing and they didn't mind. So
climb we did. The Moots felt smooth and the tyres gave me enormous grip
and security both uphill, in turns and on the downhills. I chose some
of the finer sections in the Sint Joris Weert and Nethen side of the
forest and the heightmeters accumulated fast. I am sure all had a very
good workout. Near the end I guided them back on the road towards the
starting point in Heverlee and turned in. Looks like my front tyre is
losing air slowly - need to keep an eye on that before going to the
Ardennes this weekend. The Mountain Kings are of the Pro-tection kind
so I didn't think they would flatten on the first outing. But whatever
the cause, the loss of air is slow. Perhaps I will just put in a new
inner tyre to be sure. Need to see if the loss of air continues over
the next few days.
Today
was RACE DAY. Got up early, had a very elaborate breakfast and then
went to the Press Office to get the World Cup Elite Men and Women entry
lists and also the results from saturdays' races. Met a couple of
acquaintances from mountainbike.be and also saw Fons Moors and
Christophe Meurice from O2 Bikers in the well-filled Press Centre. I decided to concentrate my
efforts on the big downhill/uphill near the Gare des Pompiers in the
Rue de La Roche but first I went to the start area to take some stills
of the Women before they got underway fro their 3 lap race.
Actually this means 3 and a half laps because they do a short start
loop and then a full 3 laps. This amounts to around 25K of tough Houffa
racing . When the women were underway I followed Marga Fullana's
trainer to the area I had chosen for my pictures. Seemed like Marga was
on a roll because she rode in the lead from start to finish. Catherine
Pendrel of Canada took second place and China's Ren Chenqyuan took
third. Some good performances also of Italian girl Eva Lechner Lisi Osl
of Austria. For Full results please consult the UCI website or
www.canadiancycling.com which usually offers very good coverage and
picture stories. As for the Men, we had to wait
for a couple of hours between the two races but in the meantime I had a
look at the Trials area where Kenny Beleay was participating in a
demonstration contest. Amazing the feats these riders accomplish on
their bikes. I moved back up the hill for
the start of the Mens' race and saw a great race. The Men had to do 5
full laps and the start lap which should amount to 40K of racing. I saw
Julien Absalon take a well-earned victory . Belgians' Roel Paulissen
took 10th place but the winner of the day must surely be Filip
Meirhaeghe.
He rode his last World Cup race today, on the circuit that
brought him glory in 2000 and thanked his fans by pulling some nice
wheelies and greeting them as he passed us. Thanks Filip for the fine
years you gave us.
