Thursday Pre-work Mental Health Check Up

Left home at 7.30am, drove and parked on the Heathcote next to the bridge opposite Bowenvale Ave.  Got riding up the Major and was hitting Kenmure at 8.05am, onto the dirt just after 8.10.  Beautiful morning, a little muggy but still and mild and calm.  Plenty of shade climbing that side of the hill at that time of day, and higher up, once on the dirt, the trees provided nice long shade all the way up to the pylons, whereupon it got a bit warmer.  Another thing I did, was a lot more standing and cranking a taller gear than I usually do, which seemed to keep the pace up.  Sure is nice to be fresh (compared to evening rides).  Seemed to break the whole climb up a bit.

Above the pylons, I did the usual swivel up onto the grass, then up the singletrack from the Rocky Ridge.  First stop and drink was when I climbed the fence.  Up the landing strip onto the gravel, grinding away, around to the start of Traverse.  No rest for the wicked, so straight into this and across to the top of Fourpause.  Another rest and drink here, then dropped on in. 

Nice blast down, excellent floats over all four jumps, (perhaps they're the four 'pauses' - from the rubber on the dirt), then blatted across the extension down the landing strip zone, and over the edge into the old skool dh.  Followed all the lines, but that one wee rock droppy angled thing is still baulking me...  Good flow down the rest of it, down through the hefty rocks before the water troughs without even noticing them.  I think i picked a different line to usual and it blitzed me through super quick...  Off Cambers, back and forth, then Old Skool Proper.  Blitzing, blazing, blasting, blatting, blistering down the trail, brief rest on the flat after the valley (where O had his gorse bush encounter), then all the way down and out.  Finally, down the road at a nice cruisey pace to the car...

The usual, just under one hour, just under 10 km, and just over 420 m altitudes.