More night riding

I’m getting back into this nightriding thing. In fact, it’s the only mountain biking I’m doing the last few weeks.

The way it works with me is like this. Summer draws to a close, and we finish some of our midweek evening rides in the dusk. A few weeks on, we are enjoying sunsets during the rides and switching on the lights for the last hour or so. By the end of October, it’s lights on from the start, but we still get some mild evenings and the trails are still nice and dry and fast. The mood is good; we can still stop and chat on top of the moors without hunkering down to get out of the weather. The dark trails have novelty value, and we are enjoying the different feel of familiar terrain under darkness. This is where I am at the moment.

As the winter wears on, the weather gets a bit nastier, the trails get gloopier and the novelty wears off a little. The urge to drag myself out on a wintry night is sometimes weak, the deciding factor is often the group of mates who will be expecting me to turn up, and the ribbing I’ll get if I wimp out. I’ll turn out for a ride most weeks and quite a few of them will be rather grim muddy trudges around the hills in unfriendly weather, head down into the wind.

Still, there are a lot of reasons to keep nightriding right through the winter. Most of the time it is just plain old muddy, silly, childish fun. Puddle splashing, mud sliding, hot aches, cloudy breath in your lights, teetering around on ice, moonlit hills, fitness, snow, good banter. The foul weather rides are like money in the bank, store up enough and you’ll get payback on a crisp and sharp frozen midwinter night.