Went for my first night ride last night – previously I had a couple of ‘get me home’ rides with a torch on the bars because I had overestimated my ride time.
It was round the new blue/red trails at Swinley, and I was sporting the Gloworm X1/X2 combination I had just bought from crgmoto, using the STW member discount so they were something like £230:
http://www.crgmoto.co.uk/gloworm-x1-and-x2-led-light-system-combo—over-2000-genuine-lumens-1937-p.asp
I was impressed with the lights, with the X2 on the bars and the X1 on the head everything was quite visible with them at the medium setting.
One really good thing I noticed about the night riding around the defined and bermy singletrack was that it really emphasised that you need to ‘look ahead’ round the trail with the spot on your head, otherwise you get caught out.
Maybe during the day it was possible to subconsciously ‘clock’ where the berms went and so be able to ride these ‘lazy’ but at night you need to ‘look ahead’ and I got into the habit of almost using the spot to ‘trace’ the route I was going to take.
So I felt it was a pretty good training exercise to force some decent technique, at least for someone like me with dodgy technique (a lot of which came from watching my GPS on the bars…).
Obviously requires a light on your bonce to do this though.
One of the riders also bought along his dalmatian dog so it was quite fun riding behind and sometimes alongside her. Also saw a fawn 🙂