caitelliott.co.uk

escaping to the sun

Cait — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:25:20 +0000

Under the disguise of a family holiday I escaped for a Christmas pilgrimage of mountain biking and coffee in the Spanish sun last week. We stayed in Lanjaron in the Sierra Nevadas, an area I know well but that gets better with every visit. With dusty trails and 20°C in December I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.

The trip was made all the more exciting by the arrival of my new long travel hardtail – a Ragley Mmmbop with 150mm travel forks, fat tyres and wide handlebars. Not wanting to do things by halves I went all out freeride and got a quick release seatpost and some baggy shorts and there’s no looking back. The bike is a bit of a beast to lug 1000′s of metres uphill when you’re used to dancing around on a lightweight carbon thing but it’s rock eating abilities on the descents makes up for it.

Tello descent

Eoin riding Brutus for Men

Google Mountain ride

urban mtb in Pampaneira

Eoin spent most of the week getting sideways at every possible opportunity until he broke his bike and disappeared to join the Spaniards in the bar!

Google mountain ride

Its not just the biking – the relaxed sociable lifestyle, the food and drink, the weather and the language make it an amazing place to be. I’ve spent the last 3 months attempting (fairly unsuccessfully!) to mould myself into an uber-efficient German speaking Swiss working machine and I’m pretty sure the last week has just undone all my hard work. Thank god!

cortado sampling

Thanks to Freeridespain for the use of their back garden. More photos here.

A week is nowhere near long enough, it could be 4 months before I wear shorts again, already thinking about the next visit…

Swimming

Cait — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:18:14 +0000

For several reasons I’ve been mixing up my winter training with a bit of swimming this year (one being that snow has finally hit Zurich!). Not cool. I don’t get it. Why anyone would choose to repeatedly swim up and down a rectangular box full of water is beyond me. Its so boring! Where’s the adrenaline? Where’s the sense of exploration and adventure? the sense freedom? the only thing I can find some interest in is the challenge of overcoming the boredom and forcing myself to stay there until I look like a wrinkled prune so I at least come away feeling tired.

view from the pool

I don’t know much about actual swimmers so I wont question their logic but triathletes are another matter -I always thought there was something a bit odd about them but this has confirmed things further, they ride bikes so should realise where its at!

You can’t chat to your mates or listen to music to pass the time, there are loads of old people who go really slow and refuse to get out of the way, there are herds of hyperactive kids jumping around and splashing water in your eyes, and even worse there is an amazing view of the Alps out of the window.

Makes me far too grumpy, better stick to bikes…

The ‘Euro-goober’

Cait — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 15:47:02 +0000

They’ve been around in the UK for a few years, typically known as ‘all the gear, no idea’ riders. The construction of man-made trailcentres in Ireland in the last year or two has meant they have become increasingly common sight in the hills around Dublin leading to the term ‘goober’. You know the story – shiny new bikes, bad setup, lots of expensive kit, a reluctance to ride anywhere other than marked trails, riding veerrryyy slowly up the hills, riding very badly back down again but able to tell you everything there is to know about the latest bikes and components (providing it has been written about in a magazine).

It turns out this could be a world-wide phenomenon, Euro-goobers take things to a new level with the Zuri-goober being possibly the pinnacle of gooberness. There are lots of people with too much money and no idea what to do with it. There even seem to be some Euro bike brands that specialize in making such bikes.

I’ve seen beautiful €5000 carbon xtr clad bikes utterly destroyed by the addition of a stand, a gigantic GPS, a bell, mudguards, bar ends, luggage racks and even wing mirrors. I have to question what goes through these people’s mind when they buy such accessories, its a crime against cycling and good design. I’ve seen hardcore downhillers with 100s of mm of travel, full face helmets and full body armour getting loose and wild descending the fireroads beside Zurich (I wouldn’t mind but there is even a goober friendly waymarked trail they could use!). I get funny looks for riding up the hills when I could take the tram and even more funny looks for hurtling past such people on my little hardtail down the singletracks.

There is even an equivalent hiker – fully clad in gore-tex, mountaineering style hiking books, rucksacks large enough to survive for a week, and essential here are ski poles to aid walking slowly up the hills. They only walk on fireroads in the small hills beside the city, stop for a picnic after 10 minutes and get in the way but complain like mad when mountain bikers want to get past.

I’ve started to make a collection of photos of their wonderful bikes, here is a taster to be updated with more soon:
Maybe I shouldn’t be so judgemental, at least they’re getting out and doing something!

Images

Cait — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:30:38 +0000

Exploration is the name of the game at the moment. I have to admit, Zurich has some great mountain bike trails but I quickly realised it comes nowhere near Dublin when in terms of quantity and variety of riding. Too many fireroad climbs and not enough singletrack. I was almost starting to get bored until I got on a train to Zug and was shown around by some of the locals. Suddenly the climbs got technical, the descents steeper, the riding more varied. Happy days.

Today I re-discovered road biking after 6 weeks off due to my bike still being in Dublin. Nice climbs, long descents with swooping corners and super smooth wide roads. Speed is fun. Even found a mid-ride bakery open on a Sunday. Awesome.

Some images:

Greifensee road ride

Greifensee

Lindt chocolate

Horgener Bergweiher

Zugerberg ride

alpine views

18 degrees in November!

zurich night spin

No sign of snow yet.

Switzerland

Cait — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:57:25 +0000

The last few weeks have been a bit hectic relocating to Switzerland and adapting to a new job and a new life – exciting times but there is also a lot of hassle involved so its lucky October is the off-season and I haven’t been trying to train. I now have a place to live, a residence permit, a Swiss bank account, compulsory health insurance, a Swiss phone number, a few people to go biking with, a few more people to go partying with, and a few words of Swiss German.

Zurich seems to be quite an eclectic city. Super rich, sharply dressed bankers with horrible slicked back hair driving fast sports cars. Trendy graphic designers, artists and architects posing in cool cafes. Adventurous types taking the opportunity to do every adventurous sport you can think of in the surrounding mountains.

A few general observations:
Switzerland is THE most expensive place I have ever been in my life but you always get good quality for your money.
Shops are never open when you need them, EVERYTHING is shut on Sundays.
Supermarkets have a bigger selection of chocolate, cheese and yoghurt than you could ever think possible.
Swiss German sounds like gobbledegook and is entirely incomprehensible.
Rules are there to be followed, everything is accurate, it is not acceptable to be fashionably late.
The hills here can be steeper than you would think possible, biking down such hills in the wet with summer race tyres can be scary.

Riding to work along the edge of woods full of trails looking at views of the Alps is a bit of a killer but the weekends are good. Paragliding, lakeside running and chasing freeride mountain bikers down hills have counteracted all the Swiss cheese and chocolate – so far the weather has been great but I’m starting to get scared about winter. Weeks of pedalling on a turbo in the basement could be looming…

morning commute

Sunday in Switzerland

running by the lake

Davos

flying in Davos

Walking off a cliff

Paragliding!

MTB in Zurichoberland

Zurichoberland

Offroad2Rio

Cait — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:00:27 +0000

Thing are coming together for the Offroad 2 Rio project, check out the website for more information:
www.offroad2rio.com
@Offroad2Rio

photo credit: Maciej Staroniewicz

Sticky Bottle article here
Bike Magic article here

BMBS – Newnham Park, Plymouth

Cait — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:51:55 +0000

I love mountain biking.

After last weekend I was almost ready to quit cycling and had no interest whatsoever in going the final race of the year at the BMBS in Plymouth. I only made the effort because everything was booked and paid for but I went into it with very low expectations, only hoping that I could at least rediscover an enjoyment of racing.

elite women's start

Newnham is usually a good race venue and pre-riding the day before we discovered the course was better than ever before. 3 main fairly steep climbs which were all rewarded with long sections of slippery, rooty singletrack. I managed to crash on a new descent that wasn’t fully bedded in yet, taking the top off an old scar of my knee. Pouring blood and some over enthusiastic first aiders resulted in butterfly stitches and a bandage the length of my leg! muppet.

Photo credit: Bob Bogdan Williams

Race day. I didn’t get the best start but after the first singletrack I managed to move up to 5th and before long we had a gap on the rest of the field behind. Maddie Horton was just in front of me and I had to dig in to make sure she didn’t pull away on the longer climbs, and then fly down the descents to close the gap. Having barely trained for the last month I was surprised to be feeling pretty good and able to push hard. The trails were very much like Irish mountain biking, lots of off-camber rooty, fairly steep technical descents and greasy but fast muddy sections. The faster you rode the more fun they were!

photo credit: Bob Bogdan Williams

On the second lap Maddie didn’t seem to be any quicker on the climbs and coming to the top of the last steep one I put in an effort to get onto her wheel but couldn’t quite do enough to get in front before we hit a long, fast singletrack descent. Halfway down the trail split and I took a different line to sneak past and attack down the hill. Back being able to race, riding totally flat out, amazing!

Photo credit: Bob Bogdan Williams

Maddie and I came through the start area together and realised we had begun to close the gap towards Mel Spath and Lee Craigee ahead. We agreed to work together to get up to them and I let Maddie ahead to take a turn on the front. Into the next climb and suddenly my legs switched off! My calves still don’t seem capable of going race pace for the whole race and I had to watch Maddie ride away. Frustrating as it was, I was expecting this to happen at some point so rather than letting my head go down as with last week I pushed on as hard as I could for the rest of the race, enjoying myself on the descents and hoping that I had already done enough to hold off people behind.

Photo credit: Bob Bogdan Williams

The climbs were hurting a bit by the last lap but the thought of not having to ride hard like that until next year made it easier. I hung on to come in 5th and finish 4th in the series overall (results here). It was good to finish the season enjoying racing but I’m looking forward to party season now!

photo credit: Bob Bogdan Williams

Thanks to all the organisers, its been a great series and definitely the best course was saved until last. A big thanks to WXC for all the support and assistance both today and throughout the season. Thanks to Bob Bogdan Williams for the cool photos

Irish Marathon National Championships

Cait — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:47:05 +0000

I don’t want to write this blog post.

The Irish marathon champs were on Sunday run by MBCC at the Ballyhoura trail centre. I really enjoyed this race last year and the course was similar again, a mixture of man-made trail centre and muddy, rocky natural riding (though slightly less natural stuff this time). I didn’t specifically prepare for the race and not having done many long spins recently I was hoping a good winter base might drag me. I was wrong.

We started into a longish climb and I set a good but comfortable pace with Ciara McManus on my wheel. We were mixed in with the guys and for the first half hour or so it was incredibly frustrating getting stuck behind slow riders every time we turned into a singletrack, the trails are very narrow with no chance to pass people and I lost any descending advantage I had. Eventually I put in an effort to get ahead of a few people on a climb so that the descents could be ridden properly. Although not particularly technical some of the manmade stuff was actually great fun and I was feeling quick when I did get a clear run at it, lots of pumping sections, little jumps and bermed corners to skid around.

photo credit: Cieran Maunsell

Ciara was looking pretty strong on the climbs, making up the time I gained on the descents, so we were riding together much of the time. Initially I wasn’t too concerned, thinking I’d be better off keeping steady early on and attacking towards the end. Around two hours in she put in an attack on one of the climbs and got a decent gap, I was starting to suffer. At the top was a long, very muddy and slippery downhill section which was definitely my favourite part of the course – I pinned it all the way down, scaring the life out of myself totally off the brakes to make up 500m in a few seconds, awesome! The then next hill came and I was gone. I’d already started to get twinges of cramp and now my legs just gave in. My head soon followed and the final 25km of the race was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had on a bike both physically and mentally. I felt like I’d lost my racing personality, I had no fight in me, I wasn’t even enjoying the descents never mind the climbs. I got dropped by Ciara and the group of guys we’d been around until then, and passed by others from behind. Stuck out on my own crawling along like a snail, it started to drizzle, there were some horrible strong headwinds, it was wet and muddy and I just didn’t want to be there. Not great.

Congratulations to Ciara, great ride. Thanks to MBCC for a very well run and event on a good course. Thanks to Think Bike for the bike service and lift down.

I’ll be back.

A week in Zurich

Cait — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:30:03 +0000

My plan to escape Ireland in October using the cunning method of applying for jobs according to google maps terrain setting finally paid off, resulting in a spontaneous last minute trip to Zurich last week for a work trial. Switzerland is the home of über-cool concrete architecture, a functioning economy and most importantly of course, the Alps!

lunchtime at work

I got the job and Zurich passed the test as a suitable city to live in as a mountain biker. Its surrounded by small, steep mountains that are riddled with awesome technical singletrack, including some semi-manmade downhill courses, jump parks, and a pump track. I got a lot of funny looks from people on downhill bikes as I hammered down on my carbon hardtail, it was fun but I’m buying a freeride bike asap!

Alpine backdrop

The Alps are a short train ride away and make an amazing backdrop to the city. Even better there are 5 UCI races within an hour of Zurich (Swiss Cup), 4 World Cups can be accessed without going near an airport, German and Italian races are close by. 2012 race schedule sorted.

Now I have 2 weeks to learn German, learn that rules are there to be followed, learn to turn up early for things not late and attend to some unfinished business with the 2011 race season…

view on an evening ride

Lake Zurich

lake zurich & the alps

Zurich city centre

River

Stedelhofen Station by Calvatrava

World Cup Val di Sole, Italy

Cait — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:56:09 +0000

The adventure continued after Czech when Mel and I flew from Brno to Milan for the final round of the World Cup series. We had a week to recover, acclimatise to some extreme heat and get to grips with another new course set in the spectacular alpine area of Val di Sole.

xc - downhill - 4x

The most noticeable feature of the course was the hills. They managed to fit in more incredibly steep climbs into than you would ever think possible, making it one of the toughest courses I’ve ever ridden (230m vertical climb over a 4.2km lap!). There was a mixture of fireroad, grassy meadows and greasy, rocky singletrack climbs, all of which were steep and hard. On top of this temperatures were in the mid 30s making doing anything fast feel like a chore never mind riding your bike. Luckily the climbs were interspersed with flowing alpine singltrack, fast rocky trails and rooty switchback descents so there was still a lot of fun to be had.

Jose Hermida picks his line

With 4 days to train on the course and since most people had also travelled straight there from Czech, there were opportunities to follow and learn from some of the best riders in the world, making sure we knew the best lines on the technical sections. A race pace lap on Wednesday left me wondering how a full race could be possible with the heat nearly killing me, but natural ice baths in Alpine rivers were perfect to cool off afterwards.

recovery ice bath

Race morning was slightly more stressful than I’d have liked, we somehow managed to miss the fact that the race was starting half an hour earlier than originally advertised meaning we spent a frantic 20 minutes running round sorting new feed zone support, finding timing chips and arriving on the start line having had no warmup at all (luckily less important in the ridiculous heat). In comparison the pros sat spinning on their turbos shaded by umbrellas, wearing cooling ice vests and able to focus on the actual race ahead. Some day.

Bang, off again. Within seconds I was caught at the back of a crash leaving me chasing the back of the pack as we hurtled around a flat start loop. Before long we were into a long climb and I was able to get up to a group of the same riders I was around last week. There was the usual first lap queueing and aggression with riders scrabbling to try and make up places where ever possible. Eventually things spread out a bit but the combination of heat and steep climbs was killing me. It felt like all the trail sessioning earlier in the week was going to waste, the climbs took so much energy that I was left wrecked for the first half of every descent, all over the place struggling to recover and gain some composure.

As time went on I was going backwards, loosing contact with the group I was with and eventually getting passed from behind. It was like racing in an oven and I just couldn’t push hard. The shorter laps this year are making it increasingly difficult to stay in the race and I got pulled due to the 80% rule with 2 laps to go, much sooner than I’d have liked.

Racing the world cups this year has been an amazing experience and I’ve learnt a lot. Next year I’ll know what to expect and have a huge list of things to do differently which will make racing easier. Travel arrangements will be far easier doing it for the 2nd time, I’ll know to train on the steepest climbs I can find, to train in a sauna, to go to the manager’s meeting before a race, to allow more time than you can ever imagine to get to an Italian airport, that you can’t fit 2 bike bags in a Fiat Panda, to rob a bank so I can fund some more races….

Racing aside we had a great week camping and enjoying an outdoor lifestyle, catching up with other riders from all over the world and giving the bronzed Italian posers something to stare at by revealing our cycling tan lines at the swimming pool. It took a lot of dedication not to waste energy exploring the local singletrack, or to overdose on pizza and icecream before the race but off course everything is ok in moderation!
More photos of the trip here.

world cup course

sessioning the course

[caption id="attachment_2518" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="team village"][/caption]

downhill

skillz