That was another good week in Canberra. Myself and Tom went back up to Majura for another two hour ride on Wednesday night with Paul. I took Thursday off exercise to give my legs a break, and went out to watch V for Vendetta instead. Good movie, very political, really drilled home the “fight for your rights before they’re gone” theme. Followed that up with some Belgian beers in Debacle.

Friday morning saw me out for a 7.5km (45mins) run before checking out of the hotel. John offered to put us up on Friday night, so we headed over to his place after work to drag him out for his first proper MTB ride. Tom had him worried with tales of going over the handlebars, but I explained that that was a skill Tom and Kev were nurturing, whereas myself and Niall preferred not to fall off.

Majura was the logical place to take John for his first outing, both because it was close to home and because it’s bloody good, so off we went around 5pm. John was a bit worried that his bike wouldn’t be up to scratch but we assured him it would be fine, and sure enough, once we got to the trails he had a great time. It was pretty easy to tell, since about half way through the evening’s riding he was talking about getting “a good bike” and giving his current one to Sarah! Time will tell. Made it home around 7.30, then did the take-out and DVD thing.

Our plan for Saturday morning was to get up early and head out to ride the MONT 24hr course at Kowen Forest. We finally got going at 10.30, not really as early as planned, but the weather was a bit iffy anyway. It had all cleared up by the time we got there, to be greeted by a bloody big climb to start the 6km ride to even get to the trail. It was soon apparent that we were almost the only people out there, and also that the course doesn’t get a whole lot of use, since there was very little signposting. We soon regretted our laziness in not printing off a trail map as we couldn’t find it anywhere, and after an hour of riding around (still having fun though) we decided to call it a day.

So, we managed to get around 8hrs of MTBing in over the week which was pretty good. The clocks went forward as we went out of daylight savings this morning, so the next time we’re in Canberra the early sunsets will rob us of decent riding time… unless I shell out $500 for a set of HID lights to turn night into day!

B: 95.2km – R: 18km