Wobble 2011

A vintage Wobble year; same course as last year, which meant a shortish (22 miles or so) ride but with some cracking descents. Usual carnage in the beer tent at the back of the Stonecroft, with the same awful band; top marks to Mike though for getting the singer to give everyone a good telling off after he lobbed some soggy cider-soaked piece of tissue paper at him. A fairly sedate ride on the Sunday due to varying degrees of hungover-ness, with the bonus of a cheeseburger with a fried egg in it for lunch at the burger van. The next few days will now be occupied with washing a mountain of filthy clothes and swapping knackered bearings out on the El mar...

Puffer

We're in again; me, Captain Timmy, Matt and Gaz. Also travelling up in the fun bus will be the horrible Ice Weasels lot (our arch rivals) and wee man Luke, who will be soloing again. Looking forward to more of this sort of thing:


(pic by Si Smith)

In a slightly more local style, I've also signed up for the Wentwood50 Challenge which is just down the road in Newport (and 50km not miles, thankfully) which is on the 11th March. Si was joint 1st last year, so no pressure then...

Autumn

Just realised that I haven't posted since July, which is a bit rubbish really. Instead of a long list of everything that happened, here are the edited highlights:

Dusky Valleys' was cancelled, so I never got to pop my endurance racing solo cherry. I did manage to complete the Cardiff 10k run in a pleasingly-not-rubbish time of 53 minutes though, which was nice. Heading off to the Real Ale Wobble in a couple of weeks, which is going to be awesome, and then the Strathpuffer again in January, hopefully this time with working lungs.

More importantly than all of that though, I treated myself to a new 29er frame. The Felt Nine Solo frame (which has done many thousands of miles) was making various alarming creaking noises and the rear wheel wasn't sitting straight in the rear triangle any more, so it was retired from active service and replaced with a lovely new Salsa El Mariachi frame - steel tubing and swinging dropouts to tension the chain. Only had a few rides on it so far, and I'm still dialling the fit in, but it's riding very nicely so far.

Some random pictures...