Night riding

Am I in some pain this morning or what?

In preparation for the 24 hour Moonride race in Rotorua this weekend, my teammates decided that it would possibly be a good idea for me to actually do one night ride before the race... So we decided to hit Makara Peak after work last night.

Well its an incredible experience, apart from the complete disorientation you feel trying to negotiate goat tracks above fairly steep cliffs with only one spotlight on your handlebar that never seems to light up the piece of track that you want to see. Suffice to say I did have a few little hiccups. The first one was coming down Missing Link, I just completely spazzed out and ended up going straight off the track on down the bank a few meters, yelping as I landed on the underbrush. Luckily Jono was there to help fish me and my bike out of the bush.

Then coming down Ridgeline, I managed to almost completely bail not once but twice. Both were incredibly gracefully handled (yeah right), by recovering from extreme endo's back into the classic holy-crap-how-did-I-survive-that position.

Good fun, but it has certainly humbled any preconceptions of any skill I thought I previously had.