still waiting for the fun in here…

bet you’ll still easily drop me on the climbs russ!

it’s only been one lad, who only came on two rides, and was told to not come any more.
the rest of the time, the MNPR rides and all who come on them are fantastic.

Maybe this is something that is having a negative effect on me. I tried racing about 6 years ago and really enjoyed that access to trails I got, and I mainly enjoyed the atmosphere. The racing part was okay at the time, I feel that going against the clock makes me push myself, but afterwards I was very very hard on myself. This outwayed the positives.

i did a PMBA enduro round at grizedale a few yeara ago and this was exactly how i felt. i mean, it was great- i finished all 5 stages, wasn’t last, sprained my thumb and hit a tree pretty hard but overall i had a great time. after a day or so, with hindsight, i felt i made a complete fool of myself by going. it’s daft.

1) No-one goes on a social ride to train. I do that on my own, if I’ve asked you on a ride or agreed to go on with you it’s cos I want your company, not because I want to go fast.

2) You’d have to be a right bastard to make someone feel bad about being slow. And no-one needs bastards as friends, so don’t ride with these people.

there was one guy, a couple of times, who turned up to MNPR rides, proceeded to drop us all in overgrown twisty singletrack and then slagged us off on here the following day.

he was “asked” to not bother coming out with us any more.

tbh this is one of the things that gets my anxiety up to bottling out of ride levels; the possibility that another him is going to turn out and slag me off for being unfit/slow/fat/whatever. and i accept that it’s probably irrational, probably unlikely to happen, but that’s not how my brain sees it sadly. someone, who’s a friend of the mag, wrote a blog about riding HtN a few years ago and said some pretty hurtful stuff in it about some of us non-racer types who were there. i don’t even think he realises how it affected me to read it, especially seeing as how he seemed so supportive on rides, and i genuinely hope he doesn’t really feel that way but again my mind won’t let me fully believe that and it’s that kind of thing that keeps me away from riding, the potential that someone will see me struggling to get up a climb and think it’s something i should be ashamed of.

i’ll be on-call until 8pm, but yes.

doing Hit the North kicked me up the arse a little, in that I started to realise riding bikes with other folk isn’t as hard as i’ve let myself believe lately. so yeah.

What happens when I try to plan something I want to do. I start to over analyse it, think about how it can go wrong, how I might find it really hard physically and that I’m unfit and letting myself down (if planning exercise). I then worry that if I’m with other people will they not enjoy my company, or not like something about me. Sad, but that’s what happens in my head. I always seem to find a reason to try and stop myself from going.

I struggle to get outside when I’m like this. Even into the garden where nobody can see me.

this is me, for the last year.
let’s all get together somewhere (rammy, rivi, philips park, wherever) and try to do something about it?

I rarely post here any more, for various reasons, but mostly because it shifted from feeling like a community to just being a playground for bullies.

I have a long history of depression, that I’ve mostly kept quiet about (apart from the 6 months in 1999 that i was incapable of doing just about anything), but recently have recognised that anxiety has a firm grip on me. all sorts of contributing factors, some here, some work related, some personal life and some just brain chemistry i think. it’s a very self-perpetuating state that i’m in at the moment, i know what’s likely to help but actually getting there and doing it seems physically impossible right now.

i do know that i need to ride my bike(s) more.

we’re definitely not alone, even though most if the time it feels like i am. i don’t really know where i’m going with this, other than just to put it out there. life is hard, some of us feel it harder than others and a few of us find it entirely too hard to deal with, and we need to all try to change that. we can start by just being nice, for sure.

mark, i’m sorry you’re fighting that battle. i can imagine it must be very tough- do what you need to do to look after you first and foremost.

i’m off to pizza hut with the family now. might fall asleep in my tea.

ha, you definitely didn’t finish last with 5 laps (i only did 2!)
i mean, i’m happy with that though, not even thrown a leg over a bike since last august so there’s that!
great fun today.

i’m just aiming to not die! i genuinely do not care how many times the fast lot lap me. it’s going to be enough for me to actually have gone out on my bike, i’m hoping it rekindles my love for the grimness of MTB in the north of england…

pub will depend on how cold etc i am, and whether the rest of my clan come over or not! I’ll look out for you Pete.

echoing what everyone else has said. awful day for bad news. RIP Chris.

the worst news. RIP Mark.

yeah, very sad. not a total surprise, guy lived hard, but i’d rather we had more of him in the world than many other folk…

they’re probably drug dealers.

for the most part, ignore first two replies as they’re just talking about the “trail centre” aspect of Philips; tomorrow will be a somewhat different beast with it being a race and Jase tends to not use too much of the trail centre-y stuff in favour of off piste and little used/known but horrible routes for the race course!
Parking- I’m going to park in/near the rugby club outside the park then ride over as it’s going to be packed and probably super muddy down in the park itself.
I’ll be riding my only working MTB, which is highly inappropriate for a race like this but then again i’m not exactly in anywhere near race condition myself so who cares, i’m just treating it as a laugh!

See you tomorrow RustyPete, it’s been a while…

stoner, good to have another eye run over things, i thought they looked decent and probably worth a go given they’re half the cost of gransfors. i was looking at the black forest axe as being nearest to my exact desires, which i’m aware are probably unachievable!

TR, yeah i’ve sharpened it a few times but not looked after it much other than that, and tbh the main issue is that it’s just too small to be useful for more than splitting kindling (handle’s maybe 30cm max).

pretty much exactly like that, yes. just without a dog stuck to it.

i just bought a heavy duty boot liner off ebay to go in my peugeot partner (so the same car) for about 12 quid. uses velcro to fix to the sides etc, and has a flap that rolls down over the bumper when i have the tailgate up. seems decent enough.

for the last 10-15 years, almost all the gigs i’ve been to i have gone on my tod, but there’s almost always been at least one other person there that i know so it’s not really felt like i’ve been there alone.

same as daz, if i’m not there don’t wait. just leaving work now, might have to stick to rivi for an hour later instead.

exposure joystick, that should be fine. mtb batteries/smudge v2 is the other one.
i’m sure it’ll be good.

forgot to put my lights on charge this morning, hopefully i’ll get enough in them to last once i get home from work.
is it going to be ok for overweight, unfit, super slow old men?! i mean, i’ve set myself back a few years fitness-wise and don’t want to hold folk up…

i’ve been watching loads of DUST’s content too- bit hit and miss, story-wise, but when they’re good they’re very good. almost all of them look really nice though.

planning on making my return!

yup, i live in horwich (rivington pike/winter hill) and work in manchester city centre. train is supposed to take about 30 mins, but i’ve been driving in for the past year or so as it got to the point with northern rail where if trains actually showed up, they were almost always late and short-formed. it’s not got much better yet from what i can see either! the riding’s ace from the door here though, until some tosser sets the moors alight all summer!

gonna do my best to be there.

if you don’t need to grind fine enough for espresso, then in the fine tradition of this forum i can recommend what i have, a wilfa svart. £105 rrp but you can usually pick them up for 90-100 somewhere. perfect for any pourover/filter duties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ijc7A5oAc

“in times of turmoil… in times like these…”

i’m away the next two mondays.

i assume you’re already out, having seen this a bit late, but the route you’re talking about was pretty much were we went on this week’s MNPR and it’s all totally fine.

That was ace! And that extra climb due to the gassing was just what my lungs needed! No really, nice one duncan.

as far as i remember (i did the recce ride with Dunc the other night), we’re going up past liverpool castle, along rivi res past go ape then over the bridge between rivi and anglezarke, up from there to healey nab for a lap of the red and then i’m not sure where he’s planning from then, but might involve brinscall woods as long as it’s not cordoned off. quite a bit of up behind the barn seemed open last night when i was out, but we can’t go up from there in/past the gardens so i’m not certain right now. i’d agree with craig that we should stay out of the taped off zone.

most, if not all is going to be CX friendly, yeah. except for maybe the nab, in places… we recce’d it on pinnacle arkoses, if that’s any guide.

hoping to be there. since the pub is less than 100 metres from my house, i should make the effort!

still burning today. can see the pike now, just, but once it heats up and the wind picks up like it’s apparently going to then it’s anyone’s guess as to how bad it gets. most of the fire seems to be on belmont side of winter hill now, but yeah it stinks of smoke everywhere in horwich.

it’s pretty heartbreaking tbh, even though we know it’ll recover in time it’s currently a total devastation.

having a choice is definitely true. for example, i get irritated (which is sometimes an understatement!) by a lot of ads on TV (those postcode lottery ones, for example… argh!) and i know it’s completely irrational, and that i could choose to ignore them or even just switch them off. but i don’t, and yeah i know that’s entirely down to me.

i think what i’m saying is that maybe we like being irritated, and choose to get in that state deliberately, albeit perhaps subconsciously?

yeah, in fact a fellow STWer even called me Victor on Twitter this morning. pissed me off a bit. oh, the ironing.

it’s still going, pretty strongly from what i can tell slightly further down the hill into horwich from Duncan. smoke is coating the woods on the chorley side of rivington pike currently. it’s not good up there.

ken fosters is also great, yeah. was my LBS when i lived down there.