Big Day Out...

I found myself down in South Wales over the weekend, so after walking up Pen-y-Fan on the Saturday Pat and I headed over to Afan to have a crack at the 46km Skyline Trail.
After a brief faff and a quick trip to the bikeshop to grab some essentials we were off.
I took my only Mountain bike, the rigid singlespeed (silly idea?) and Pat was on his Kona Coiler.
The first climb out of the valley at Afan is always a shock to the system but on the singlespeed it was unusually bad, going from cold legs to sharp uphill in about 30 secs. Once I had wrestled my breakfast back down into my stomach and got into a rhythm it was fine.

The skyline takes in some really nice singletrack and some long-ish fireroad sections, normally fireroad = dullsville, but the views are stunning so its all fine.

The route basically follows an alternating fireroad singletrack rhythm and we continued around the loop ignoring the bail out routes.

After 25km pats legs were getting knackered and crampy but frequent refuelling kept his cranks turning.

After 30km my hands were very sore from the pounding they were getting on rocky singletrack and the ergon grips not getting on with my weird hands) I decided to try out. You can have them back Mike. The grips that is not my hands.

The last 20km were really hard on my arms and hands, I was barely able to hold on, on the downhills, JuJitsu stretches helped a bit.

Pat punctured on the last descent and my pump malfunctioned so he had to walk the last downhill, lesson learn't take two pumps.

A late lunch at the DropOff cafe helped ease the pain in Pat's legs and my arms.

It was a great epic ride.