First 100km up on the 29er

I did a few rides this last week on my new Giant Anthem X1 29er, wow what an awesome ride. I had a few early morning rides before work with Greg (just under 30km each) and a longer ride on Saturday with the Procycles team.

The Saturday ride was very memorable, we met at 05:30 at Procycles at Northmead, Benoni totalling 9 riders (including Paul, Ian and Glen from Procycles) and ventured out towards the mine dumps. Paul was the leader and really took us on an incredible route that I had never been on before. Some parts were technical and I struggled initially but the open single track and drop offs were incredible.  My sense of direction was really confused and I am not sure I would be able to assimilate the route that Paul took us on, when I thought we were almost back at Benoni we somehow ended up in Brakpan.

I had one classic fall - head over heals over my handlebars. I only realised at the end of the ride after Greg alerted me that my brakes were on different sides to what I was used to on my Trek MTB i.e. I thought I was putting on the back brake and instead pulled hard on the front causing the fall. These have now been swapped around and I won't be able to use this as a excuse anymore. It was really cool to ride with a big group of riders I think I will be doing this often in the future.