When I got my Giant Trance back in September 2025, I wasn’t expecting the mountain biking bug to bite quite as hard as it did. With each ride, my fitness gradually crept up and with it the fun factor that comes with being up in the hills on a mountain bike. I quickly became obsessed with the sport again, watching countless videos on YouTube and buying Mountain Biking UK for the first time in over a decade.
Reading the magazine again was like catching up with an old friend and it brought back so many memories of my escapades on the bike back in the 90s.
As the weather turned wetter, I was keen to get out as much as I could and pounced on the chance when it was dry. With no real winter training plan in mind, I thought if I tried to get out as many weeks as I could during the winter and managed at least one or two rides a week, I’d be in good shape for summer. Given the short daylight hours, I was forcing myself out at weekends and fitting in 40-50 minute rides during my lunch break from work to get those in though.
The unexpected downside of doing the same lunchtime rides of under an hour meant my fitness totally plateaued. That’s the problem with cycling and endurance training in general – there are no shortcuts, you need to put in the miles and it’s hard when the weather or daylight is against you!
Fortunately, it was a much drier winter than usual and that leant itself well to getting out without getting drenched, which has always dampened my enthusiasm for winter riding. Even if it wasn’t raining, the mud meant I was still having to clean the bike after every ride so I was almost glad when the proper cold weather frosted up the trails.
The cold was biting at times and I had to wear two pairs of gloves but on the upside it was unbelievably dry toward the end of 2025. It was so dry I managed to get out on a bone dry afternoon on December 30th for the final ride of the year, without mudguards on. The low temperatures stiffened my shocks so much that it felt like riding a rigid bike but I didn’t care, I was loving it!
After far too many local rides over the winter, at the end of February I made the trip over the Carron Valley to visit the trails I’d ridden many times before, only to find that they’d been altered dramatically.
The sport seems to have gotten a lot more extreme in my absence, and the fast, flowing trails I remembered there are now littered with intimidating double jumps. It was hard to gain my confidence, so after riding all of them once I decided to call it a day and revisit some other time.
I became impatient for the clocks to go forward so I could get out after work for longer rides. However, we’ve endured one of the wettest starts to spring in memory and, coupled with a couple of stormy periods, my streak finally came to an end when I missed an entire week in March.
Still, now the days are getting longer I’ve arrived at this time of year in a far fitter state for cycling than I have been in a very long time. My comfort with the bike has only increased with all those winter miles and I’m looking forward to some adventures further afield in the summer.
It’s so good to be back on the bike again and enjoying the sheer escapism of a simple trail in the hills.
