So, I bust my knee at Strathpuffer. A tiny, innocuous bump at 2AM in the snow… and I’ve been an invalid for 2 months! Knee pads are in the post… I’ve been commuting this past week and I got out today off-road.

I put the 456 together as a geared 26″ mountain bike (it’ll never catch on….) and cashed in my solo-parenting brownie points for an hour or so round the woods & along the estuary path. I’ve been comfortable and fairly fast on the road, so I was keen to get off-road but nervous about impacts.

Turns out my front thigh muscles are a bit shot! My pedalling’s uneven too, I keep missing the rhythm on my right stroke (ooh err missus). So, some technique to re-learn.

On the upside, I seem to be nice and loose in my upper body which is a surprise. That section in Home where the guy’s talking about getting back after injury (I’m sure his was much much worse than mine) rings true.

So, a beautiful evening and a great fun ride. Curlews, more than a dozen shelducks (these: shelduck images[/url]) and ****-all people. Excellent.

I even managed to fall off! Dropped right a foot or so onto soft sand, pulling left and lost the front wheel. Instant panic and I expected the knee to explode in a hail of blood and sinew, but actually the worst thing that happened was my glove landed on a dried up dog shit.

Roll on Thursday! Round GT red/blue with rosqo – I doubt we’ll see any shelducks and I hope there’s no dogshit! But sore thighs and dodgy rhythm are guaranteed.

Cheers, al.

Good to hear that you are back riding.

well done fella, what pads did you get? Straits or those fancy D3O ones?

Thanks guys =)

I got the 661 Kyle Strait jobs, £40 from CRC.

I’ll wear them Thu, post a review after that.

al.

“I put the 456 together as a geared 26″ mountain bike (it’ll never catch on….”

I got one of those but its also got a suspension thing on the back of it, i might take that one on Thursday instead of the SS so Steve is the odd one out with none of those gear things.