Wednesday arrives, yet more school... and a ride!

Another day another dollar/pound/yen (delete as appropriate) in school. Actually went pretty well. Tried a new (for me) way of working with classroom support and it went really well. My right hand woman for two mornings a week took the class and I just worked with two kids who clearly needed some specific help. It was great, almost uninterrupted teaching time and the rest of the class got on really well. That will happen much more often I think...

After school though I barely saw my little girls as it was ride night. Dash home, pack up kit, shoot off to mates house, have tea and get on the bike... and when I say bike I mean the 456 Evo I built up a the weekend.
Now, normally we would ride for an hour and a half to two hours on a Wednesday night, It used to be longer but fatherhood, work and all the other niggles that suck up your time creep in and it slowly shrinks. Not a bad thing, just other priorities have to take over sometimes. Well, thanks to a "misjudgement" by my ride guide (otherwise known as my father in law) we were out for 22 miles, and about 2 and a half hours. On my new, heavier, singlesped bike.

Bloody hell some of those hills went on for a while! According the the (Strava assisted) GPS only about 1,800 feet of climbing, so the GPS in my phone is clearly bust as it must have been much nearer a mile... Shattered by the end of it but, despite the extra weight, and only one gear, and being a hardtail I still managed to pretty much match the only Strava segment I recognised (when you take out the 30s I spent sat at the start as I waited for my ride buddy to start). It rides really well.

It is clearly a bit more slack up front than the Carrera Fury it replaced and than my EX9 but more importantly, it is smaller than the Fury. Although the Fury was a 20" frame, and the 456 is an 18" it is much smaller feeling. Same length chainstays (well, I didn't have to alter the chain as I moved it across) and steel of course, but everything on it apart from the seatpost collar is the same so it is a good comparison. And it really does seem to cope with rocky downhill stuff much more capably than the Fury did. Somehow seems to be able to make more use of the travel available form the (ultra basic) coil Tora 318 that is is sporting.

I got home annoyed that I had been out so much later than I expected, had only taken one light but was out until it got properly dark, but also pretty pleased that despite my lethargy towards the end the bike was still performing pretty well under me. At this point I should probably give some credit to Ed Oxley for the training at the weekend which also certainly helped in the early stages when I was still thinking about what I was doing :-)

All in all a good day, almost worth keeping a diary for ;-)

Oh, and a picture of the bike before the ride.