Mountain biking

When the English say that it is raining cats and dogs, the Dutch say it is dog weather (hondenweer). I don't know why, I don't think either cats or dogs like to be out in miserable weather. Unlike mountain bikers (or at last some). But today the sun was shining, it was warmer and there was much less iced water on the ground than a week ago. Nevertheless, that meant it was dog weather. There were more dogs out in the woods today than I've seen for ages. Sometimes dogs in the woods are a bit aggressive, I've been bitten twice in recent years. But today, I think they were so happy to be out after being cooped up inside after the bad weather recently, that there was not even a growl or raised hackle as I cycled past them. Everyone was happy in the woods today. 

It snowed last night, and this morning it was round about freezing. Most of the club were sensible enough not to go out in the cold, so it was just me and one other mountain biker this morning. I put a couple of extra layers on and thought that would be enough, but that turned out not be quite right. Not only was it snowy, the ground was also very swampy, I guess because it was either frozen or saturated lower down. To make matters worse, the snow acted as camouflage for a number of quite deep puddles. So that meant that, on several occasions, my foot went down into a lovely mixture of water/snow/ice, deeper than the top of my boot, allowing icy water to seep in around my feet. Add to that a spray of damp snow from my back wheel onto my backside and I was very forcibly reminded of just how much colder damp snow at zero feels than much lower temperatures. My wife made it clear to me before I set off that she thought I was insane going out in such weather, so was she right? Well, maybe a little, but it was incredibly beautiful despite the cold, with the fresh snow lying everywhere, the snow gave some extra technical challenges and yes, despite the cold it was well worth it.

I had been looking forward to the Veluwe Challenge for the past few weeks, with the steep and slippery slopes of the Goudsberg as its high point. However, that was not to be as, on Tuesday, I pulled a muscle in my back by simply getting out of a chair after a meeting. It is also possible that then running for the train was not the smartest thing to do, but it was clear that cycling a Challenge would be considerably less smart. Nevertheless, sitting around all day was probably also not what the back would want, so in the afternoon I went for a short ride in the woods. The leaves are beginning to change colour, especially of the Birches and American Oak and there was plenty of blue sky and sunshine, so it was all quite spectacular. And amazingly, my back did indeed feel much better by the time I got back.