K Capital Challenge

Sunday was the first of a series of 3 ‘challenge’ races run by Team WORC, with an emphasis on fun mountain bike racing and great trails. The race took place at Kilruddery Estate just outside Dublin – a place with some really cool trails that’s normally off limits for bikes. After last week I was looking forward to a less serious race and enjoying some real mtb trails.

180 riders lined up in a chaotic mass start for 2 laps of a 17km course. I was fairly near the front and after a small bottle neck was able to ride the first singletrack section without too much hassle. Although the weather was quite good, really heavy rain overnight meant most of the trails were super muddy. After 6 months of dry trails I was worried I’d have forgotten how to ride mud, but I was loving it, out of control bike surfing at its best! No brakes and hoping to slide in the right direction seemed the only option.

A 10 minute fireroad climb began to spread the field out a bit and I set about making up a few places. My legs were feeling strong and since I was ahead of the other girls I thought I’d try to increase the gap. A new long descent down from the little sugarloaf was great, fast and rocky then into slippery steep switchbacks. After this were long sections of fun singletrack twisting through the forest with a few short fireroad climbs. It was really cool, a bit of an interval session, sometimes flat out racing but other times more like a fast social spin since you were constantly surrounded by other riders and bottlenecks made it hard to go fast at times.

I found the descents easier to ride on the second lap since I wasn’t doing them blind, but the mud got worse with the trails suffering from so many riders churning them up. I was riding with Sean Downey much of the lap, sharing work on the windy climbs. Halfway round bike problems started to slow me down a lot – the case for lot of people due to the conditions.

Mud meant the bike doubled in weight and my gears were all over the place. I gave up on the middle ring and kept getting chain suck, having to stop and turn the pedals to get going. I was getting paranoid that Beth McClusky would catch up with me but luckily it didn’t happen. It was ok if I concentrated on riding steadily in the big ring on fireroad climbs, but as soon as I put any power down I had to stop again – a problem on the singletrack. The last couple of sections I had to run a lot and lost a load of places – annoying since my legs were still feeling good, but at least it was the bike that slowed me not my body!

I got myself a nice trophy, finishing in 2hrs 27 minutes, 1st female and 27th overall. The whole event was very well run with a great atmosphere, great trails and a reminder of all the enjoyable aspects to racing in Ireland. Afterwards it was good to catch up with loads of people I haven’t seen in ages. Thanks to all the organisers, looking forward to the next one!

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