Project Gnarr's first outing - Swaledale with gears and boinginess

I had my first ride on Project Gnarr (my SS Inbred, rebuilt with 1x9 gearing and suspension forks) on Friday. About 30km in Swaledale: along the valley bottom from Dales Bike Centre, up the valley side from somewhere between Gunnerside and Low Row onto Great Pinseat, then down Surrender Moor and over Low Moor. Swaledale is still awesome.



This was my first ever ride with both gears and suspension (only my second ever ride with suspension and first with gears in a couple of years). What I learned: gears make it easier to ride up hills; suspension makes it easier to ride down hills. So, they really are strength compensators and skill compensators

32:32 is plenty low enough as a bottom gear. It's the same ratio I rode round there as a beginning MTBer 18 years ago (28:28 in them days), and that was on on a heavier bike with weaker legs. 32:12 is plenty tall enough for a top gear. 1x9 is definitely the way forward.

The fork isn't set up properly yet, but I quite liked it not doing too much until I hit something bigger/harder and it doesn't bob about too much when climbing. It'd be interesting to have a go on a modern fork with clever lockout things as a comparison.

I think I like it. But, it's heavier and complicated, so I think I'll be sticking with rigid forks and non-variable gears for proper rides and save boing and variable gears for shorter/group rides.

I think I might even have done a little bit of a jump. Stoked, dude!

Distance: 31km?
Time: 4 hours?
Surface: off-road
Weather: Warm and dry for the time of year - so, a bit drizzly and very windy
Bike: Geared Inbred (1x9, with suspension fork and 2.4" tyres)

Kielder 100 2010

Results

Distance: 103 miles
Time: 13 hours
Surface: off-road
Weather: Warm and dry
Bike: Ragley TD-1 SS (32:18 and 2.1" 29er tyres)

Darlington - Hamsterley - Darlington

Spin up to Hamsterley, picnic and walk with family, spin back. Lost GPS thingummy, but remember it being my fastest ever trip each way.

Distance: 47.5 miles
Time: sub-4 hours ish
Surface: on-road
Weather: Warm and dry
Bike: Ragley TD-1 SS (32:18 and 2.1" 29er tyres)

Darlington - Swaledale - Darlington

Another ride in Swaledale - big hills and big views.



Road to Hurst. Fremington Edge, Low Moor, Surrender to Great Pinseat, Gunnerside. Dales Bike Centre. Road home.

It were reet hot.



My bike sounded like the bag of spanners that it is.



Distance: 105km (maps: to Dales Bike Centre and from Dales Bike Centre)
Time: 9 hours 45 minutes
Surface: road - off-road - road
Weather: Warm, dry
Bike: SS Inbred (32:17, with 2.4″ tyres)

Hit The North 2010

Hit The North 2, the fourth Hit The North, was an 8 hour laps race.

For this race I borrowed an awesome Ragley TD-1, the demo bike of Hotlines.

Lap1 (00:54:40) started with a run, in which I did my usual saunter from the back. I spent the first part of the lap overtaking people, then stopped to lend my pump to someone and watched them all overtake me again. So I overtook them again. At the end of the lap I wandered off to refill my bottle.

In laps 2, 3, 4 and 5 (00:45:25, 00:47:05, 00:54:04, 01:01:18) I kept riding at a steady pace and keeping out of the way of fast people, with a wander back to the tent at the end of each lap for more fluids.

Getting back at the end of lap 6 (00:50:21), Ragley rider and HTN co-organiser Jase was manning the timing station. He took a look at my water bottle and told me I had plenty of juice and to get our for another lap. So I did (00:43:54). And then another one (00:43:14). On these, I actually felt like I was racing as I caught a few people and people were actually moving aside for me!

I did then refill my bottles before going out for two more laps (00:52:31 and 00:53:28).

I finished my tenth lap in 8:26:00, which was good enough for 25th solo in a field of 59 (results).

Mid-table mediocrity.

Distance: 105km
Time: 8 hours 29 minutes
Surface: off-road
Weather: Reasonable (for HTN)
Bike: SS Ragley TD-1 (32:18, with 2.2" tyres)

Pic: riding the rocks down to the stream crossing
Pic: Wondering whether to pass out or puke while waiting for food afterward

Joining the end of the last century

Got me some of them there new fangled sunspendered bicycle forks.



Just to see if there's owt in this new fad.

Darlington - Hamsterley Group Ride - Darlington

Another group ride at Hamsterley. The rain stopped for the group ride, and it was even a little bit warm.

It tipped it down for the ride there and back though.

The group ride was very stop-start, as they always are, but was on some great trails. Kiwi Matt was leading, so there was quite a lot of off-piste stuff - I really like the vague slightly-different-colour-of-leaf-mulch tracks.

Felt okay, despite the cold. My left knee felt a bit sore on the ride back, but that was probably due to the insect bite next to it that was me go to A&E the following night.

Distance: 106km (maps: 38km home to Hamsterley, 25km group ride (start of ride only - phone crashed - distance based on average speed on first part), 38km Hamsterley to home)
Time: 8 hours (2:15 out, 3:30 (very stop-start) for club ride, 2:15 home)
Surface: road - off-road - road
Weather: Cold, wet
Bike: SS Inbred (32:17, with 2.4″ tyres)