Bike

As a kid, I spent a lot of time on my bike; I loved the freedom of being able to bike around the local housing estate and jumping off curbs. If I ever wanted to get away from home I'd head for my bike and bike up and down the ally at the back of my house. As I got older I used my bike to get to my friends houses dotted around the town and some of them 5 or 6 miles out of town in the local villages which seemed a long way at the time.

I got my first road bike (A Carrera Vertuoso) When I was about 13 or 14 years old, around the time I'd grown out of the local swimming club and joined the local Time Trial club (Louth Spire Road Race Club). It wasn't long before my Dad was getting his own road bike and every Thursday we'd head out to Legbourne for the local 10 miles or hilly 18 miles. Being fairly competitive with each other, this lasted until I was 17 years old. When I passed my driving test I had a few years away from cycling before returning 2 or 3 years later; unfortunately the local club was on its last legs with some internal politics and very few people in the club at the time, the club soon died out within the year, however, I had the bug again for biking but without anywhere to test myself I began thinking of other ways to satisfy my biking needs so I sold my road bike and bought a cheap mountain bike and began exploring the local green lanes.

I enjoyed the cross country mountain biking and still do; I bought a racey full suspension mountain bike and met up with a local group (Louth Area Mountain Bikers) who showed me how vast Lincolnshire's bridal way networks are. With mountain bikers from all over Lincolnshire I began to learn different routes and became able to link them together myself. What started as 10 or 15 mile rides slowly became 20-30 and 30-40 mile loops. We shared lifts to other counties exploring Wales, Scotland, The Peak District, North Yorkshire Moors and Trails Close to Birmingham and Nottingham.

When winter came the Local trails would become bogged down and I'd learnt that by stopping biking over winter my fitness dropped off. Once again, I was on the hunt for another road bike to help me get out on a bike in bad weather to keep my fitness up. It was around this time that the local Triathlon Club had started up and I began wondering if my swimming and running was still up to scratch.

Fast forward to today and I still own a mountain bike and road bike; I also have a commuter bike for popping to the shops and getting to work, however I have also added a Time Trial bike to the arsenal and once again joined a Time trial club, this time round in Alford (Alford Wheeler's), making up part of my training.