Date: 8th March 2009
Riders: Richard, Rob and Grant (no, not that one, this one)
Lomac, Stane Street, Bockett's Farm, Ranmore Common Norbury Park and surrounding area
Weather: 9 °C

If you told me a month ago that I was going to ride 40 miles today on my mountain bike then I would have thought it about as likely as sticky the stick insect not getting stuck on a sticky bun.

But as mentioned last week I have upped the ante recently and finally showed my hand when I set off for Canary Wharf on a cold Monday morning at 6-55 a.m. for a 20 mile (each way) commute/training ride on the Bianchi Via Nirone, bought over 12 months ago via the ride to work scheme but until recently not seen even a single miles commuting action.

By Wednesday evening I had covered 120 miles and called it quits for the week (I don't want to overdo it). The commute is okay, flat roads but busy although the traffic is all going in the same direction as me so not too much changing lanes or turning left in front of me. I'm not really a fan of the ride home in the dark; I have my Cateye lights but it feels considerably more dangerous but at least the evenings are rapidly getting lighter.

Tuesday evening was a cracker, 60 miles in the legs already and it was raining with a gale force headwind of 23 mph all the way home. I was shattered.

So back to today and we are joined by Grant, a new rider to the forum looking for someone to ride with regularly after all his other riding mates got bored or got responsibilities. He had written a particularly amusing 'Dear Jim, Can you fix it for me' request via the contact page asking me to arrange for him to go out mountain biking and we duly obliged with a 30 mile romp over the hills starting from LOMAC and covering many XC miles as well as the more entertaining trails such as Abba Zabba and Blind Terror, Alsatian, Druid's Grove and a favourite gnarly descent from Norbury Park down to Bockett's Farm.

I was starting to flag at the end and weak legs led to a particularly feeble attempt at bunnyhopping a kerb resulting in an instant 'snakebite' but this was soon fixed with a couple of Park instant patches and we were on our way again back to the LOMAC.

The rain held off the whole time we were out and it was amusing to ride up Pilgrim's Way with the wind behind our backs making it the easiest climb I have ever done.

A further 10 miles for me to get to and from the starting point meant another great day's riding.

Date: 22nd March 2009
Riders: Richard, Rob, Dave, Richard II, Jason, Tony, Ant, Huey and Sue
Lomac, Stane Street, Bockett's Farm, Ranmore Common, Norbury Park and surrounding area
Weather: 15.5 °C

Despite what a number of you may think, I don't actually run this site to massage my own ego but when it does happen its always nice.

It started on Thursday when I met up with some old school mates including the legendary DJ Tim Smith (that's him on the left with me in the pink).

The following day I sent these pictures to the various e-mail addresses that had been invited and got an interesting response from one old mate who had not managed to get along to the evening.

"Hi Dickie" (a school nickname obviously) "I have recently got into mountain biking and go riding with my brother who has been riding a lot longer than me.

I sent the pics to him and he said someone with your name writes the mtb site diaryofamountainbiker.com. Is this anything to do with you?"

Oh yes, the fame, the adulation, it's incredible. Hopefully Iain and his brother will make it out for a ride with us later this year.

So back to today and we are joined by Jason and Ant, two other riders who I have ridden with many times in the past.

We took them on a monster ride reaching as far as Ranmore Common before heading for home via Druids Grove and Leatherhead. Neither of them have had much riding recently but they stuck to the task well and made it the whole way around which was just under 30 miles depending on who's bike computer/GPS you believed plus an extra 10 miles for me cycling to and from the meeting point.

We caught up with the Nirvana group at Abba Zabba just in time to see the last rider crash gloriously at the apex of the turn, thankfully only breaking a few branches rather than any bones. Despite that, most of us still managed to ride it (seeing a rider in front of you crash always puts an element of doubt into your mind as you attempt something like that).

Other than that, the weather was warm, the trails were dry and as the native americans say 'today was a good day to die' or preferably just to be out on the bike.

Date: 29th March 2009
Riders: Richard, Gazza, Tim and Andrea
Moose Cycles Demo Day: Holmbury Hill and Pitch Hill
Weather: 7.0 °C

Having never ridden a demo day before this year, this was my second in quick succession and hosted by Moose Cycles; based in Colliers Wood but seemingly known to relatively few riders it is definitely a shop for 'serious' MTB'ers.

I ride past the shop twice a day on my commute but have only been in there once or twice at weekends as it's just outside my radius (which is stupid given my previous statement of it being on my commute) but that's just the way it is.

I had pre-booked a Bionicon Golden Willow as I have heard a lot about the suspension system on this bike. The unique pneumatic geometry adjustment system allows you to adjust the head and seat angle by up to 5 degrees simply with the press of a button.

How so? Press the large button on the handlebars and weight the fork and it compresses, simple enough. The clever bit is that the rear shock seems to 'grow' adding height to bottom of the barrel and changing the whole set up. Press the button again and lean back and you get the whole 140mm fork travel back again.

So off we went, starting from Peaslake and heading straight up Holmbury Hill via the path that crosses Barry Knows Best because rather bizarrely, Tim was demo'ing an Intense Tracer and wanted to test it's climbing abilities! (In his defence he stated that he knew it would go downhill well, he wanted to understand how pedalable it was).

I played around with the geometry adjustment system on the climb but struggled to find a setting I was comfortable with. The climb is steep in places but dropping the forks right down seemed to introduce some kind of resistance from somewhere and I found it harder to pedal in that