Outside on the mtb with Riccardo & Spinners - Sat 19th May

57km, 1300HM

Went out for some Saturday pm mtb training with Riccardo, Lars, Karl and Ami. A bit different from my normal mtb training! Rode on the road from Da to Auersbach, gradually winding up the pace. Then rode up the Melibokus road at a pretty high pace, until the Auerbacher Schloss/Melibokus split. Rested a bit then rode down (on the road :-( ) and then back up and then down, then up. Not really my idea of fun, especially on a mtb. So, problems with motivation, and the others were faster than me - Riccardo just leaves the rest of standing if he puts his mind to it. So after the third ascent decided to head on up Melibokus on a single-track and then home, but then remembered I had Riccardo's keys so went back down. I complained about preferring to use road-bike on road, mtb off-road, can't self-motivate to go at 100% on road on mtb cos too many gears, whereas have to go hard on road-bike just to turn the gear. Punishment for my insolence was to do the fourth ascent on the big ring. I didn't drop it below 4th because the chain was rubbing so had to do most of it standing. It worked though 'cos I was forced to work at a higher pulse rate. This worked and I knocked 15s of my time.
Then had cafe & kuchen at Auerbacherschloss, said farewells and left them going off-road (at last!!) but south, while I headed towards Melibokus on road (but couldn't be arsed to go to the top) and then down the usual north ridge blast towards Jugenheim , then high speed home on the road via Seeheim, Eberstadt. Polar switched off during feed break so no record of ride home :-(

Not really the sort of mtb training that works for me (might be pretty good on the road bike) but was nice to see how these guys are on the road (very good) and also good company, so will probably try to get them out on my style of marathon training - DA-Frankenstein-Felsburg-Melibokus-Frankenstein-DA. Or even a Pfalz circuit :-)

On uphills was annoyingly aware that the lock-out on my forks is not locking out much nowadays. Must check the air-pressue and get them serviced. They're also leaking a bit of oil.