Mountain biking - 21 km of climb, descend, speed, control

Since after Ramadhan I had not been doing mountain biking with the regular guys - finally I had the chance today! Not wanting to miss, at 5PM sharp I hurriedly left the office, quickly picked up Lyris (that's my 2.5 year old daughter) from the nursery and shooting off fast on my heavy local brand "California" city bike to get home ASAP to change.

Precisely at 6 PM all the three of us started heading up-hill, initially on normal road then slowly turning into gravel tracks and some single trails. I should have taken some photos of the trails. A couple of them were pretty good. One in particular was covered in layers of chopped woods and branches - we were not sure of the reason, but I guessed it was a special path to train horses. It wasn't easy not to fall and it all depended heavily on how one controls the bike, not much on speed. Going down some of the semi single trails were also fascinating - and again control, balancing and braking played an important  role. With the speed going downhill, one small mistake could mean a crash and you don't want that to happen. I usually had the tendency to press the front brake too heavily when panic (and already had one crash precisely because of this); luckily all was good today.

Start to end was about 21 km - a short but certainly for enough given the limited day light.

I feel like taking a break tomorrow; or .. perhaps a quick spin alone. We'll see ...

And though that looks like me, it isn't ..