Nasty.

I stuck 1.75 Smart Sams on the Road Rat last week, took off the front mech cos it fouled the tyre and stood back for a look. The idea was that it might give it more ability on the rocky stuff without hitting road and hardpack speed too badly.

Hmmm.... in reality it seems to be bloody horrible. First, compared to Maxxis Raze cross tyres, the Smart Sams drag on tarmac. Next, while they're more comfortable on rocky terrain, you're still on a rigid drop-bar bike and you still know it. And it looks sort of horrible cruising the borderline between monster cross and drop-barred 29er in an ugly, drunken, badly-proportioned sort of way.

The one place where it did seem to make sense was barreling down a hard, gravelly, easy bit of trail where it rolled fast enough and took some of the ping out of the terrain. I guess if I lived somewhere composed of miles and miles of gravel track, it might make sense, but for me, living here, proper cross tyres seem like a better, faster, more versatile compromise and have the bonus that you don't look quite such a niche twat.

Anyone want to buy a pair of barely ridden Smart Sam 29er tyres in 1.75" size?

Missed a trick though, it could have been so many twattish niches in one bike - imagine, a fixed, singlespeed, monster-crossed, drop-barred, steel-framed 29er, with 'alternative' Midge drops and cable disc brakes. Dodged a bullet there... or maybe an RPG round.

Folding tyres.

Somehow the two tyres that came on my first ever mountain bike some decades ago have been breeding. Like rabbits. Or Triffids. Or some sort of insane single-celled rubber organism. So now there are piles of them intertwined in the kitchen cupboard.

Old ones crusted in mud from long-forgotten trails. Newer ones with faint traces of southern Spanish dust. And, thanks to the wonders of tubeless conversions, tyres lined with a second skin of dried-on, bubbling, stringy latex.

As the funny thing about tyres is that they expand exponentially when not folded. And they never seem to wear out.

So I'm folding them. Rolling them up into neat, compact rounds with the tread on the outside so I might at least recognise them from their knobbly signature. Then stacking them neatly. It's therapeutic and strangely narrative at the same time.

Tyres catalogue days and places and conditions. Narrow Schwalbes and Michelins left over from 24-hour races, odd Fat Alberts from the days when I thought they were great and screw the mass, fast but treacherous Geax Saguaros from the post-Schwalbe era and odd things - failed experiments like Panaracer Rampages - good on paper, roll like a hedge-hog on day-old custard - a solitary Maxxis Aspen, not much quicker than an Ardent but with about a hundredth of the grip and a pair of - stil-packaged and free - WTB Prowlers, that I can't imagine ever using.

And then there's the Ice Spikers, sat quietly in the corner with their sharp teeth, hissing quietly at the other tyres and waiting for their brief week of life to come around again.

But they take up too much room. And there are far too many of them. So here I sit, drinking hot chocolate and folding tyres.

[How come I already have a tag for tyres eh?]

Folding Tyres...

I've been folding tyres, well, that's what they're for. It even says it on the packaging 'folding tyre'. So I've been folding them, about 27 or 28 of them in a therapeutic sort of way - well, more rolling them up, then sticking a ring of chopped-off downhill tube around them. It was the only way to stop them getting out and taking over the kitchen in a sort of anarchic rubbery invasion.

Worryingly I seem to have more tyres than, say, for the sake of argument, socks, which can't be right, can it? Still, it stops you thinking.

Summer's last knockings...

Maybe it's not fashionable, but I like autumn. It's honest, you know which way things are going - winter - and you don't kid yourself that you're about to cop a bucket-full of Sierra Nevada sunshine and if you do, well, that's just a bonus.

Which was yesterday all over. Dry, bright and breezy, so popped over to Ladybower and rode Cut Gate out and back in a riot of smooth, fast, grippy singletrack with added bonus rock and rubbleries and that proper big moorland feel that takes your breath and reality away.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I got my technical riding mojo back. The Pace's new shock has, erm, pertened up the rear end nicely, the Pushed Pikes just do, and the new single-ply Minion DHF up front did sterling duty of gripping and pointing as directed. But the bottom line was nothing to do with kit and everything to do with soaring spirits, a grin as wide as the Derwent Valley and the thumping, pattering, rush of gunning a bike hard down an epic, rock-strewn trail.

The conditions are lovely right now. Just enough recent dampness to stick the dusty bits back together and make for proper hero-grip under-wheel traction, but not enough to slow things to a sludgy crawl. There's plenty of rubble on the Mickleden Edge singletrack singing broken crockery style under the wheels. Stay loose and let the bike dance across the looseness, surf the corners and STAY OFF THE BRAKES!

Just catching the looks of walkers as you whisk past, curious spectators to a world they don't quite get and proper satisfying, 'you're mad, you are' expressions.

All the sweeter for being transient and doomed. In a few weeks it'll have reverted to sludge, brooding, belligerent clouds and wind that tries to bend you double and spit you off the trail. Just a distant memory.

And of course, that has a discrete charm all of its own. But that's another story altogether. Watch this space.

In the beginning... and yes, it's a joke.

I guess that since this is my first ever blog post, I should start by telling you a little about myself. First off, I'm not actually a dog. I gave some consideration to a species swap operation, but in the end, the difficulty of sourcing canine-compatible cycling kit called a halt to the operation at the eleventh hour.

So I remain a human being with the mind of a dog and a badly wired one at that. Generally that's not helpful in life, but for my purposes, it's not such a bad thing. And here's why. I am, by my own admission, just an average, normal mountain biker, but my aim, is by this time next year, to be fit and fast enough to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.

That may sound ambitious, but I am faster than most of my mates already and I have some really quick tyres in the cupboard that my mate gave me, which I can get out for races and an old training plan by a professional coach who used to train some of Britain's top mountain bike racers.

And, to give myself a head start, I've had not one, but two rest days, which means I'm starting super fresh and super committed. I'm going to start off with some phosphate sprints and report back later, by the end of the week, I should be substantially faster. Just watch this space.