Rule 9: If you are out riding in bad weather, it means that you are a badass. Period.

Or so the The Rules tell us.

I didn't feel too badass yesterday to be honest. I didn't want to go out and had to be virtually dragged by Mark to leave the house. The weather worsened as we drove up to Steves' house which obviously cheered me up.

After unloading and a brief fettle we set off... only to limp back up the hill minutes later to change Steves rear brake pads.

10 or 15 minutes later and with the rain beating at the windows and seemingly a little wetter, we left again.

We were heading from Glossop up to Dovestones and even with heavy legs it didn't feel that much of a drag. We seemed to quickly be up on the moors and that lovely feeling of being out in the countryside was upon me. Until the cracking of two things. First was two gunshots over the bridleway we were riding up. Not particularly pheasant err pleasant I can tell you! Second was the cracking, then snapping of my rear axle. Not the QR but the metal axle that runs through the hub.

If you're not sure what you are looking at there should be a freewheel and cassette on there! The silver metal tube should protrude quite a bit further, instead it's sheared clean off.

It should look like the black hub at the bottom of the picture below:

Nicht Gut. I need to get on to Hope on Monday morning. I'm led to believe that they will replace this as a warranty issue.

We limped back to Glossop and had a coffee and croissant at Steves' whilst the rain continued to beat against the windows.

Only 12.4 miles done today because of mechanical issues. It was still good fun though it was worth it for the coffee at the end. I'll have to do some more roller work today to try and get back on target.