Mountain biking at the Lodge remains a very popular activity. With some of the most beautiful trails in the country, if not the world, on our doorstep, all we need to do is to hop onto our bikes at the front door and ride. The staff have been very active as usual. Carl, Jon, George and Al have all been running Trail and Mountain Bike Leader Courses since the middle of March. This proved a little challenging when the snow returned for a brief period! Carl has been training hard on the road bike all winter for a series of races and sportives he plans to do this year including the Etape du Tour in France. The training benefits of this has directly transferred to his cross country Mountain Biking which he uses to great affect when peddling uphill with his colleagues! Al is never off his Mountain Bike. He is busy planning all the MTB workshops and Skills Courses for this year. With his partner Kirstin he is off on a mammoth tour of the western Isles at the beginning of May. Al is also currently re-designing the skills course which is getting better and better. Jon and George have just come out of a hard winters climbing and have taken to their bikes with gusto. John has even bought a new carbon road bike to make him even faster! The four of us are soon to receive our new sponsored Mountain Bikes from Alpine Bikes so you probably wont catch us in the office very much! Eric is now becoming our chief mechanic whilst Phil and Pauline are in the Alps getting some secret hill training in. Fi and Liz are training for their first Sportive races and seem to be spending a lot of money on bike kit! Finally, Doug (head of paddling, who, not so long ago, wouldnt have been seen dead on a bike) has bought a new Prophet 2 mountain bike! The bug is catching!



All the Instructors and Office team are pretty passionate about biking now and to celebrate this our sponsors, Alpine Bikes, have made everyone up some Logod Gilletts to wear for the summer. Hopefully you will be seeing these all over the country as the team spread themselves far and wide. Endura continue to be our main clothing sponsors.



Whats happening at the Cycle Sport Department? Lots of things going on this year. The TCL and MBL qualifications are going well. There are some spaces still available on these. The Expedition Award is very popular this year and we are running the first one this year next month. Mechanic courses are almost always full and we are thinking about putting more dates on for these. The Round Cairngorm trip later in the year needs a few more bookings.

We are looking to host one of the Scottish Cyclo-Cross events again in November and we are planning a big Bike Festival on the 1st May next year.



A great years biking coming up



Happy Biking

posted by glenmore @ 2:03 pm