A cold night here in Canberra with an even colder night forecast for tonight. Today was warm and sunny with light breeze and single layers of bike gear all around today. I actually got a bit sunburn on the quads yesterday riding. After getting going we needed to desperately go shopping so we headed to our old stomping ground of Belconnen shopping centre. Those of you reading this that have not been to or lived in Canberra everything is layed out with big central shopping precincts and no corner stores to get your bread and milk at. There were some interesting shops at Belconnen. Belconnen was unrecognisable from what we remembered of it 20 years ago.

Vietnamese bread shop

Vietnamese bread shop

After stocking up at Woollies, coffee and a muffin we just had to pop around the block and look at our old rental for old times sake. I had a much better memory of what was around our old rental and could even remember the street name and number for the Navman. The old Soccer Club was still across the road but a few new shops now and a medical centre. The old rental was just as we left it except a new brick fence had been build on the street side. All that over with it was time for mountain biking again.

unit 2 – 42 Jinka Street

our old rental in Hawker with a new brick fence out the front

After the 12km drive back to Stromlo we were straight into it. We road some of yesterdays tracks to get up to the top of Stromlo and took a different decent path down through ‘Skyline’ and the ‘Luge’. Both of these were great fun flowing descents that went on for ages. The NT couple were back again today and they told us about these two segments yesterday. A late lunch and we headed directly up the middle to the top of the mountain again as it was the quickest way back to do the ‘Luge’ and ‘Skyline’ again. The tracks up were all blue standard but I think there was a bit of black there in places. The last part of the climb was called ‘Heart Breaker’ and it broke Sharon. She did an awesome job to get up this section to the top, it was a tough climb in places.

Downhill track – I don’t think so!

Down ‘Skyline’ and the ‘Luge’ again and Sharon was done – ‘Heart Breaker’ had broken Sharon. I was keen for more so headed off and did all that again but at the top I went off on ‘Pork Barrel’ and ‘Party Line’. ‘Party Line’ was great fun and Sharon would have loved this section. It was so much fun I took the link track climb back to the top and did it again. Back at the car briefly and I headed off to do the southern section, all green trail but a nice run although both of us got lost trying to link up with the ‘Fence-line’ segment..

City Views again

Something had been niggling me the whole time at Stromlo to see what a double black standard trail was really like and how I would stack up. Knowing the blue trails in places were pretty gnarly at times I was not confident. ‘Cardiact Arrest’ was built for the 2006 world cup event at Stromlo and it was my next destination. Even the start rock section was a challenge and it only got worse from there. I managed the steep climb ok but then there were these huge rocks that were about 70cm high that you ride over some how plus a couple of very steep decents down over rocks. These world cup guys must be super human as I don’t mind telling you I walked a lot of this track. Once you get the yips a few times even the technical bits you might be able to ride are a non event. So I couldn’t ride quite a bit of the double black ‘Cardiact Arrest’ is the bottom line, still I was only 222nd out of 500 odd on Strava even stopping to take some Instagram photo’s.

Double black decent on Cardiac Arrest

Steep uphill approach to this rock – one of many on Cardiac arrest! How the hell do you ride over these?

We may be off to the Snowy Mountains we may be back at Stromlo you will all have to wait and see what the next update brings.