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Had a couple of dodgy training spins recently starting with an incident with a car. Having survived 3 hours of ‘dangerous’ mountain biking I was coming home through Dundrum and a guy decided to turn left without looking sending me over the bars and almost onto the bonnet of another car! I was very lucky, managed to avoid full impact and somehow landed on my feet. Drivers on their way to go shopping seem to leave their brains at home.

Then last weekend I hit a patch of black ice on the road heading toward Glencree youth hostel. One second I was riding along happily, next thing, wham…slamming onto the ground and skidding along the road. I landed right on my coccyx which is a pretty painful place to hit. The next day i was walking round like a cripple so instead of my normal gym session I went into the sports centre in UCD for ice bath intervals. It was unbelievable, 30 seconds of hot shower followed by 30 seconds in a huge tub of cold water and ice cubes x3. Pretty nasty getting into the bath but afterwards you feel incredible and my back was considerably less stiff. I’ll be back for more, its great for easing tired legs and speeding up recovery too.

Now no more procrastinating, back to my dissertation…

I’m just back from my annual international ‘training camp’ in Yorkshire (aka Christmas holidays!) – and since its home of the next race on the World Cup circuit it really is a pro training destination. Dalby Forest is the closest place to York to go biking and one of the places I started riding so to have the best riders in the world there is going to be very exciting. My intention was to get lots of practice on the course with the aim of competing in the race in April. Unfortunately snow messed things up and I only made it up there once – more of that later.

York is pretty low, something like sea level, so it doesn’t get much snow, but the place was white over the whole two weeks I was there. So between all the usual Christmas and New Year stuff I got in plenty of fun cold spins with Eoin. On reflection it turned out to be pretty eventful too, generally down to bad planning.

On Christmas Eve, mountain biking through 30cm of snow was cool, surprisingly ridable once you get some rhythm going, and it makes steep rocky descents great fun – sliding down, floating over rocks and soft landings when you fall. At one point we were in amazing blue sky and sunshine so views over the Moors were spectacular. There were even people ice climbing – almost alpine! Unfortunately snow also makes a spin take much longer than normal so it wasn’t fun running an hour over schedule, tired, out of food and water, pedalling across a moor in freezing fog with 50m visibility and no idea how close you were from the end! Glad to finish that one.

Christmas day we went sledging with my mum instead of biking for a change. More snow covered fun in the sun and homemade sloe gin after makes it even more worthwhile (Eoin spent his time posing for photos as you can see!).

Then we finally got to Dalby on a day with slightly less snow, but instead all the fireroads turned to huge sheets of ice. There was nothing for it but to pedal but we both managed to slap ourselves on the floor a couple of times! Luckily most of the singletrack was in better condition so we got in a lap of the world cup course. All I can say is I don’t need excuses to ride lots of technical mtb trails before April – most of the course isn’t that technical, normal trail centre stuff. But… they’ve built in some rather big drops and rocky bits which take a bit of getting your head around. I managed to cream myself on one, pulled the front break and went over the bars with my bike somersaulting 4 or 5 times down the hill!

Again the ride took longer than expected so not having brought lights we had to sprint 20km back to the nearest town to catch a train before it got dark. It was getting a bit dodgy (on a main road) when suddenly we got hailed over by an unmarked cop car on the side of the road and a big lecture about lights and preparation. He wasn’t wrong but with muddy bikes he wasn’t offering a lift either so it was more sprinting to make the train by the skin of our teeth.

Then I went out on the road and got stuck 30km from home with a puncture and extremely ineffective pump just as the weather changed and a big blizzard came making visibility terrible and the roads treacherous. Mum to the rescue!

So theres the lesson – prepare for everything!!

The UCD roadies have been taking part in a race league with a few other clubs over the summer, and on Sunday it was the ‘Christmas hamper’ race. I’ve been threatening to give road racing a try for a while, and as something fairly short and not too serious it seemed like a good opportunity to find out what the fuss is about. John from Think Bike very kindly lent me a ‘real’ road bike since I don’t think mine would have made it round the course.

It was on somewhere out in Meath so riding out with Niall and Gavin was more than enough warm up, especially with slightly tired legs after doing a long timed hill climb the day before. There were loads of people, apparently some pretty good, but I don’t know much about these things! In fact I felt pretty clueless altogether, no idea about road racing or tactics. All I knew was don’t get stuck at the front doing all the work, and don’t get dropped!

We set off at a pretty cruisey pace, the occasionally burst of energy but nothing too hectic at all, and I almost thought it was all too easy. I was a bit concerned beforehand about riding in a bunch since I’ve never been out with more than four of five others, and never riding at speed. It wasn’t as scary as I expected at all – having a bike I could trust made a lot of difference too, made me realise how bad my road bike is! The route was nice, mostly flat with two 20km ish laps, and as smooth roads as you can hope for in Ireland.

Into the second lap the pack was a bit smaller, I’d managed to survive a few attacks and was keeping my eye on another couple of girls who were still up there. The pace was still ok but Gav warned me to watch out for a break coming up. A bit more cruising along with the pace gradually picking up a bit, then as a couple of the ‘A’ category riders came by from behind it suddenly all went a bit mental. Out of the saddle sprint and then head down, legs burning, heart rate racing, powering along to try and hold onto the pack. I was working hard but just sticking to them and hoping it might slow down again.

Unfortunately not! The main bunch of the ‘A’ pack came wizzing by, upping the pace in the process. At that stage I was struggling, hanging off the back – especially frustrating when you know the guy 15 metres ahead is working far less to go the same speed. It was like huge long nasty interval but I was getting know where and eventually had to step off a bit and let them go. In fact probably should have done so sooner since I just ended up wasting energy but I don’t like giving up! Annoying since there wasn’t too long left at all. The last few km was still hard going, I was at the front of group of 4 or 5 trying to keep the pace up till the end. Not sure where I finished but first or second female I reckon.

So a weird experience I have to say, totally and utterly different to a mountain bike race. I’d say about 90% is fairly easy (for a race!), 10% hard but the real key is the 5% that’s ridiculously hard! It wasn’t quite the same buzz as an mtb race, but I did really enjoy it, a nice reminder of the combination of pain and adrenaline that makes racing so great. Might have to do more of them next year, it would help improve my speed on the flat if nothing else.

Thanks very much to John from Think Bike for the loan of his bike, made an incredible difference.

The worst part of the day was a disaster with my garmin but I’m too traumatised to explain. I’ll just say that a big chunk of my fund for a new road bike will wasted on a new garmin. Not happy.

My big change for this season is starting to do some weights and core strength work in the UCD High Performance gym. I had no idea if I was going to like this, I’ve always been fundamentally against the idea of being in the gym when you could be outside doing fun sports! I’m coming round to the idea though, its surprisingly enjoyable and a good challenge.

I do feel a bit silly struggling away with these little weights while some of the athletics guys are lifting huge things that weigh more than me, but I’m assured it’ll come with time. The guys coaching me are great too, watching every move and making sure I do it right. There are a lot of awkward positions and movements that take a bit of getting used to. It’s a bit dodgy going back to the studio afterwards and trying to draw by hand, or even worse make models – everything gets a bit shaky!

I’ve now one week more in college and then a month off for Christmas (and to write a dissertation but I’m trying to forget about that one!), time to catch up on normal life and up the training volume before starting my final thesis project in January.

Well not exactly but it was rather nice for a rare afternoon off work. Ciarán started a Culinary Arts degree in DIT this year and part of the course is going to eat in nice restaurants. He managed to get some extra tickets for a 6 course lunch at L’Ecrivain, a Michelin starred restaurant in Dublin. A student rate with champagne reception and all the wine you wanted included. Nice, I could used to that kind of thing! …and will be expecting Ciarán to feed me like that on a regular basis

In November I started back into training, building up endurance for next seasons racing which starts in March. Unfortunately this coincided with college work taking over my life and its been a real struggle to fit things in. Architecture and cycling are two of the most time consuming activities possible and a bad combination! For the last 6 weeks I’ve been doing about 60 hours a week in college and reckon I clocked up 80 last week coming up to my final project presentation for the semester! Not good, doesn’t leave many hours left in the day to get out on the bike and all forms of ‘normal’ life seem to have disappeared.

Still though, the less time I have the more determined I get to fit it in. I’ve managed to keep the long weekend spins up and during the week had to realise that 6am is a time that exists and is actually not that bad once you’re used to it. I can only see dark, cold, wet mornings as character building! The weather recently has been nuts, hurricane winds and lots of rain. I seem to frequently come home shaking with cold and soaked through no matter how many layers I put on! Somehow managed to avoid getting pneumonia but I don’t know how. My turbo trainer has still never made it out of its box but its beginning to look more and more appealing. Will put it off a bit longer though I think.

I started running a bit too since its much more time efficient than biking. It was pretty nasty at first but it no longer takes me three days to recover from a short run, and its nice to clear the head after a long day in studio.

There’s been a lack of posts recently, I’ve generally disappeared off the radar, trapped in the architecture studio 12 hours a day, barely aware that the rest of the world exists. Its been sucking my soul away! Thankfully I’ve just finished this semesters project and writing blog posts seems a great way to procrastinate writing my dissertation.

It long time ago now, but after the last race of the year in October I took a few weeks break from proper training. Nice to catch up on all non-bike related stuff, back to college parties and that sort of thing. At that stage the weather was really good so I made the most of it for a few fun, sociable mtb spins . It was great on beginner spins with UCD and Think Bike to see people so enthusiastic and keen to try new things.

We had the UCD CC awards night and I was honoured to win the Brian Lennon Memorial Cyclist of the year award for the second time running. The roadies have had a very active club with some of them doing very well this season so I had some tough opposition. The perpetual shield is so big I couldn’t cycle home with it so its on display in the sports centre!

That’s it done, no more training, no more racing – well for a few weeks at least. The final round of K Capital Challenge in Kippure on Sunday was the last xc race of the year. I had given up serious training after Plymouth the weekend before and switched into off-season mode of fun night rides and taking UCD beginner spins at a leisurely pace. So I thought I’d be interesting to see how much difference proper race preparation makes – seems it does have an effect, i felt like I was struggling all day!

Over 100 people lined up for a mass start from Kippure House, neutralised for the first km or so as we made our way up the road in a big pack –don’t think I’d like road racing, scary! As we hit a fireroad climb the race started and the pace jumped up. I was in a good position towards the front, and kept it up as we hit a cool new singletrack descent through some forest. We bombed down a rutted grass track with was a sharp corner at the bottom, I tried to take a sneaky inside line not realising it was a huge hole covered in grass. My front wheel plunged in, bike catapulted and I went over the bars. Managed not to hurt myself too much and jumped back on with blood dribbling down my knee!

There were several nice long climbs that normally I’d enjoy, but my legs weren’t really feeling it for some reason, so I was surprised to find myself fairly well up in the group. The trails made up for it though, really enjoyed loads of great, technical stuff with a slightly wintery feel to the day and a return to the usual mud after a few dry weeks. There was a nice mixture of natural trails across open moorland and tight singletrack through the woods.

I was doing my best to stick to a couple of the Rocky Mountain guys all the way through, and coming to the top of the last nasty long fireroad climb I still had one of t their jerseys in sight. By this stage we’d caught up with a load of riders doing the short course and a guy fell off right in front of me as we went down one of the last descents. I had to wait to get past, loosing a place, and then in my haste to catch up I followed someone else in the wrong direction and lost another spot. Doh! So a couple more ridably muddy, rooty descents later and I rolled into the finish in 13th (1st female) – not too bad all things considered. Full results are here.

A big thanks to Robin, Luke and Team Worc for all the effort that went into building the course – another fun place to head back to for a spin some day.

It was feeling like forever since my last ‘proper’ xc race so I was very excited about heading over to Plymouth at the weekend for the final round of the British NPS series. It carried a C1 classification so attracted some top class international riders from 7 different countries, including mtb celebrity Gunn-Rita Dahle Fleshja of Norway (former Olympic, multiple world and European champion).

Mel Spath and Ciara MacManus had also travelled over from Ireland and I had raced against the girls on the British team over in the Alps so I had some idea of their standard, but didn’t know much about how I compared to the others. I thought I’d try to get as close to the lead group as I could manage at the start and play it by ear after that.

It was straight into a grassy climb, and though I was gridded on the second row, the starting pace wasn’t as crazy as I expected and I found myself in 5th by the top. That’s not to say it was easy since once I’d got up there I had to try and stay there! I kept the leaders in sight for quite a while and was totally kicking Gunn-Rita’s ass but eventually she passed me and I couldn’t quite stick to her! Then after coming down a big steep descent I thought my bike was feeling a bit funny and had to stop and check it out – good job I did, the front wheel quick release had come really loose! (my fault for not checking it). Although I was only stopped for seconds I lost 3 places and spent the next lap trying to fight my way back.

After all the recent good weather the course was bone dry and super fast so it was tough going. There was quite a bit of climbing with some nice singletrack through trees and a couple of nasty, deep river crossings that didn’t serve much purpose other than soaking you. I had a really close battle with Lilly Mathews and Jenn O’Connor for the next few laps, I was going well on the climbs but had to put in a lot of effort to keep ahead on the flats and some of the descents. Normally I’ve no problem holding my own on singletrack descents if its technical but this was almost too easy and I’m not used to going that fast! On the fifth lap I was able to pull away slightly but then Jenny Copnall came flying out of nowhere to pass me. I stuck to her for a while but was beginning to tire after my exertions at the start and a long race so couldn’t hold on to her.

The rest of the final lap I was out on my own a bit but was able to use girls from other categories as targets to try and keep the pace up. I finished in 8th place in just over 2 hours –the longest xc race I’ve done for a while and especially hard having to push all the way through. Full results are here. Really enjoyed it though and was happy to be ahead of some good, experienced riders and not far behind some even better ones!

It was fun after the race to watch the elite and masters men’s race running about taking pictures, doing bottles for Richie and James and chatting to other riders (one thing you miss in Switzerland when they’re all talking German!). Overall a great event and I’d definitely like to try and do more of the series next year.
Check out the report on irishcycling.com too.

We enjoyed a couple of pints in Plymouth on Saturday night, mad place full of rowdy students and the craziest Irish guy ever in the pub! It was pretty miraculous that all the logistics of trains, planes and car-less transport worked out for Richie and I. My arms and shoulders are still sore from our sprintervals lugging heavy bike boxes up and down several flights of stairs at top speed to make the train on the way home! Then we had to deal with Fly-Maybe where they insisted on unpacking our bikes to check for explosives – my poor cardboard box just survived and they still missed the CO2 canisters! All a big adventure though. That’s it for the year now, fun mountain bike spins only, K Capital Challenge next weekend and time to do some college work!

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If this doesn’t make you want to race your bike in Ireland…