Motivation

Motivation is something that we all want, yet for the most part (for me at least) is something I find fairly hard to obtain. Certainly in the depths of winter, with pouring rain clattering against the window, the urge to get my bike out from the garage and go for a ride is almost non-existent! Even if the ride itself is enjoyable, the hideous routine of cleaning my bike back to mint condition, only for it to get coated the next weekend is something I battle with on a regular basis. Cleaning my bike is a joy and I love being able to spend a couple of hours making sure every little nook and cranny is mud free and sparkling, yet it is massively demoralizing that within 100m of trail the bike will look exactly as it did before with perhaps slightly more mud.

Perhaps then, it's the current state of the trail network that's putting me off riding. With the torrential rain that's fallen over the recent days and weeks, each slither of dirt winding it's way through the forest has degraded to little more than one big puddle. During summer I live on the trails, drifting turns, boosting jumps and having a blast, but in the winter the speed drops so dramatically that the sections which were once flat out and insanely fun to ride have become slow and uninspiring. So have I stopped riding? Short answer no. Although I spend less time out on the trails over winter on my mountain bike, I still put the miles in, and spend more time on my road bike. This coupled with regular gym sessions to boost cardio and strength mean that once the good weather does eventually turn up I'll be fighting fit to enjoy it!

Overall I think that leaving the bike to a degree over winter is a good thing. It allows me to relax and turn my attention to something else instead of just doing something again and again for the sake of doing it. In my mind, it's better to ride less often, but when you do ride have an absolutely incredible time, than to ride on a regular basis and not particularly enjoy it!

A semi-eventful day.

Had a few downs, but lots of ups, surprisingly including a Chemistry exam! I was dreading the paper in the run up, but in actual fact the exam was far less trouble than expected! There were 5 questions, spread across the course including calculations, bonding and electronic structure however despite the wide range, all of the questions were doable and I felt fairly comfortable on most, hopefully when I get the results my confidence will be proved correct!

The key low point of the day was a lesson of a subject (used in it's loosest form) of TRAK, or Thinking, reasoning and knowledge. This subject is a joke, with lessons ranging from how to play sudoku (thought this was a hobby not a life skill) all the way through to the challenging topic of counter arguments; yes it did take our teacher an entire lesson to explain this simple phenomenon to us! Today's lesson tackled the mock exam paper, and general revision for the exam tomorrow. The first task passed with ease and I picked up a Distinction, hardly surprising when the pass mark is 23, considerably lower than 50% of the possible 60 marks available! It genuinely astounds me that it's possible to fail an exam where we are provided with such gems of questions such as being able to rearrange numbers to figure out a pin number; part of a simple arithmetic puzzle. The challenge of revision however was far more tiresome, as we were taken through such fascinating subjects of fallacies, how to draw a Venn diagram along with going over what a counter argument was, for those in the room with 3 or less brain cells! Just at the point I was beginning to doze off in the corner, the teacher ended the lesson, and we all stampeded out, the cry "revise for tomorrow" falling upon deaf ears!

Overall however it was a good day, and the promise of study leave tomorrow, before a 2 o'clock exam should leave me more than enough time to have a healthy lie-in, go for a short ride before cleaning the road bike! Barring the exam, not at all a bad day!