What a way to treat my new Rocky on it’s first ride. Got an invite to tag along with Maurice’s riding group to do the Ben Lomond ascent followed by the decent (1,100M climb ahhhh)! Dan pulled out Friday night and I think he regretted it after the fabulous time we had. I rode it home from the shop and then up at 5am and picked up Maurice on the way through to Blessington. Sharon took her new Rocky on a more pleasant ride up to Trevallyn Reserve and had a burn around the open tracks with Dan and Emily.

The Ben Lomond ascent took us through some fire trails before we hit an old quarry and then the single trail. All was going well until I broke my chain. It was my fault dumping too many gears and pushing through when it obviously was jammed up. M came to the rescue with a quick link. We actually broke 3 chains between the riders on this trip plus a set of brakes and a front derailer, quite a bit of damage for one trip. We started with 10 at Blessington that soon became 8 and a while after became 6.

I made several adjustments to the Rocky as we went along to tune the positions of everything. My goal was to see how my training was relative to the Blue Dragon race and I had the goal of reaching the top of Jacobs ladder. The last 150M was muscle busting but I pulled through. Some of the others rode over to the village on the summit but I was done as were a couple of others and stopped at the lookout.

Layered up we went down the mountain at great speed, some much greater than me but I hit 60kmh on the way down. I was still feeling my way on the new bike and a bit tentative on the corners. I was a bit buggered but they convinced me to do the single track trails on the way back and so glad I did as it was great fun. Bike was covered in mud several times but each time we would cross a creek and wash the bikes as we went through as well as ourselves as some of them were quite deep.

Fancy doing that to it first up!

I would love to do it again knowing I can get to the top and back down. We did around 50km of riding and about 1,500M of elevation. The new Rocky was a sight back a the truck.

My strava plot of the ride.

Sharon’s Strava of their ride

Sharon loves her new Rocky 29er, just right for Blue Dragon. Love mine too, way better than my 8yr old Trek that has seen better days.

Sharon’s new baby.

Below some captures off the video I took on the bike: