Ride report: Awesome Singletrack (Silverlakes / Boschkop area) - Sat 3 July 2010
I had an awesome ride with Bennie's group from Single Track cycle shop on Saturday morning, starting at Hazeldean shopping centre next to Silverlakes. This Saturday there were only two groups starting out, a 60km group (who wouldn't wait much) and a 30km group that would accommodate the others. So being intimidated by the tough riders of the long ride (the guys aren't particularly chatty to strangers), I opted for the shorter one, hoping to play with the front guys as much as possible to make of for the lack of distance on the day. I was not disappointed. This was to be my third ride with this crowd, and even though not quite Dark and Dirty, they at least seem to care about who gets stuck behind. They never have a sweeper, but every now and again they seem to try and see that everybody regroups before they ride on again. We haven't lost anybody yet in the three rides that I have done with them, but towards the end of the rides I always seem to be at the back helping out. Just my nature, I guess. In any event, the riding started out with a rather mixed ability group, but everybody seemed fit enough to cope with the eager "slow" pace. We stopped often to let the slower guys catch up, or the faster guys would ride another short extra / fun loop / climb instead of just waiting for everyone else but them meeting up ahead somewhere. I could see from the start that there were some really strong young guys that were in a playful mood, way too strong for the group, but probably they opted for the short ride due to fitness / recovery / illness issues. Halfway through (around the 15km mark), the "slow" group split up and the faster guys went ahead mentioning something about riding the bike park route. Now I couldn't miss out, so I chased after them. I probably looked out of place, always 10m behind them, but they never tried to drop me too hard, they just kept looking back every now and again. As expected on each climb I had to dig really deep to keep up, but on the flats, twisties and downhills I had zero problems. Finally we hit the "bike park" section, which is 100% single track, all the way. I've been on portions of this single track "course" but I think we did the whole thing this time. A couple of small bridges. There's even supposed to be a see-saw which I neither saw nor have seen.... One little bridge in particular was quite interesting. Around 6m long, and 50cm wide, and just above the water surface, this water crossing in itself wasn't that daunting. The entry was the interesting part, with a mild drop-off not quite straight, you had to land the front wheel securely before turning onto the bridge. As I'm usually the first guy to bliksem off these things, I just kept my speed up and front wheel in the middle, and it worked. The squirt of adrenaline that this provided took me to the top of the little climb that followed. Route markings were awesome, usually with little blue or black arrows showing the direction of flow. There were some other very short "rocky" sections that were marked as "Sharp Jagged Rocks" and the like, but none of the route was dangerous, even for a night ride. I think it'll be awesome if we can do a night-ride in that area some day. Anyway the guy leading the group wasn't REALLY pushing hard on the twisties. I think he had confidence issues... but the pace always picked up nicely when the path straightened out. Just after the end of the bike park section (around 11km of pure single track!) we headed out on the tar, up the false flat back to Hazeldean. The group of people weren't very chatty to new people; I guess we do the same at DnD rides. You have to earn your welcome by becoming a more regular show. I wouldn't mind, because it's just a 12km warm-up ride from my house to the start, easily turning into a 60+ km ride, when doing the SHORT shop-ride. (This time I took the car ...) The "workout" has been shared for your viewing pleasure on Endomondo. http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/jXt36pU6T2w DeeKay PS: I wouldn't ride that section with a group with fewer than 5 riders. It's right next to Mamelodi, so there are a number of people that live in the veld around there, and we passed at least one large dumping site. As usual, everybody that we passed were very friendly, and we did pass a couple of lone riders on their MTB's as well. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DarkAndDirty" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/darkanddirty?hl=en.
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