Cross Training?

Yesterday I was speaking to a fellow rider who was scoffing at my 'training' lately, and didn't think spending a day playing with trail building would help.

Well, I'm here to tell you that if you get stuck into it, trail building is as good a workout as you'll get. Admittedly it was a bit warm at Del Rio today (low 30s with a nice breeze), but after a couple of hours of shovelling I was drenched as I sat for a welcome break. Was wearing a tee and long pants (lightweight, treking gear - I've walked in the Sinai desert in these!) and not a dry spot on the whole outfit.

Between the five of us there we cut about 100m of fresh single track in around three hours total. This was an nice flat-ish extension from the first switchback to a flatter, more do-able turn and back. Luckily there was a clean path back, but in that first two hours were spent pulling up rocks to hold dirt in place on the traverse over, and shovelling said dirt.

Pretty satisfying to be honest, and different work to that which I did here before.

That said, don't think the trail is any easier. This section is nicer for sure, and the turn at the end do-able (after a couple of attempts), but I made the second turn only once in ten(?) attempts - and even then this was a very sketchy definition of cleaning it!

The third turn is very nasty so many will just hike the 10m or so from second to third turns where you can remount and ride on.

Also happy to report a new section of sniggle to replace more of the firetrail slog is fun and only has one section I didn't clear first time (and is pretty impossible IMHO). Pretty technical though - think similar to climbing the Manly Dam steps.

Later on we tried the lap and a few minor changes improve the decent a little - now all easily taken (erm... although Buck managed a small mishap - be careful in the rocks!).

So - this won't be easy and many of us will walk a bit, but who wants easy, eh?