Date: 20th February 2010
Riders: Richard
Road ride: local roads
Weather: 6.5°C

A mild day today although sleet is forecast for later this afternoon. I take the opportunity to get out on the road bike to put in some quick miles.

There's been a bit of talk on the forum about the special trial offer of Zipvit products that a number of us purchased a few weeks ago for the princely sum of £4-99. I have been using the energy and recovery bars over the last few weeks as well as taking the multi-vitamins and fish oil tablets that were supplied.

The bars were quite tasty but the ZV1 Energy Drink Elite - Fruit Punch Flavour caused a bit of negative comment.

So that's about all that is left in the box so as I was on the road bike I mixed this up beforehand. For some reason I rarely carry an energy drink on the mountainbike but it's easier to carry a waterbottle on a road bike and the fruit punch was drunk whilst out on the route (did you see what I did there?).

It was alright I suppose: that is if you like your fruit punch to taste vaguely fruity with a bitter chemical aftertaste. But hey, it's an energy drink and I wasn’t expecting it to taste nice just to do the job which is certainly did.

40 miles covered including two ascents of the Zig Zag Road to Boxhill and 1000 metres of climbing. Check out the route map or the route profile here.

Date: 27th February 2010
Riders: Richard, Nick and Will plus Lee, Louis, Craig, Charlie, Liam and James
Winterfold Woods
Weather: 8.5°C

Nemesis (Lee) has been banging on for months now on the forum about us filming a 'diary of a mountain biker' movie, mainly driven by his purchase of an expensive looking HD video camera and we finally agreed a date to start filming this weekend.

A motley collection of individuals including rarely seen riders, sons, friends of friends and other hangers on turned up at Peaslake car park on Saturday morning and after everyone introduced themselves I persuaded them to move a mile up the road to a better located car-park in Winterfold woods.

This car-park has better access to some slightly drier trails which are more off the beaten track than the MTB motorway that is Barry Knows Best (great trail but not ideal for a bit of peace and quiet).

Winterfold was also more suitable for the kind of shots I had in mind and had sketched out on a notepad but forgotten to take with me. Nevertheless it was all in my mind and so it was up to me to get over to the others what I was after (without any other offers I had taken on the mantle of scene director).

However, a natural order of riders, video shooters, stills photographers and artistic directors developed during the day and we all worked well together with lots of suggestions for shots from all of the team.

I was wearing my new GoPro HD Helmet Hero camera and testing this out: more to follow on this.

The nature of filming required a lot of standing around and chatting but all the group are pretty good at that and I found that I didn't mind riding, then re-riding a particular section of trail again and again to get the right shot (or 'sessioning' a trail as those in the know might call it).

After a late lunch we headed up to Judges Seat for a bit of airtime. All seemed to be going well until I stacked it on what turned out to be the final run of the day. It wasn't too bad altohugh I ended up with a slightly swollen right eye and a bit of abrasion on the eyelid from my gloves as I somehow managed to punch myself in the face as I landed. Luckily I was wearing the GoPro on the 'chesty' harness at the time and it was recording: check out the HD crash footage here.

I had a look at some of the sneak previews and they looked good especially the super slow-mo's that Lee's cam shoots although we haven't got all the footage yet and are planning another day out.

The session was really enjoyable. There is more talk on the forum about how to motivate yourself to get out riding in what has been a thoroughly miserable long British Winter and for me, doing something different like this is the perfect antidote.

It was also great to have a number of people there who were riders but more interested in the photography and/or filming side of it than wanting to go off and ride.

It was definitely a great day, well worth the effort and I am looking forward to the next session especially now that some drier weather appears to be on the way.

Here's some more photos on Flickr taken by someone with a much better camera than me.