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Spanish Training Camp

Cait — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 19:25:51 +0000

Despite the mild winter in Swissland this year there is only so much mud, bike cleaning and kit washing I can take. A week in the Alpujarras in southern Spain was the perfect solution. Epic climbs and even better technical rocky descents, warm sun, good food and of course rocket fuel coffee. The Enduro 29er passed the Spanish switchback test and scared me a few times with the speed it wanted to be ridden.

Suffering major withdrawal symptoms but spring has arrived in CH and the racing season is on the way…!

Mallorca – road biking

Cait — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:00:42 +0000

With sub zero temperatures and snow hitting Zurich 2 weeks ago the first reaction is to think how much you’d love to jump on a plane to Spain. So I did. Mallorca seems to be the place to go for road bike training and a must do for any cyclist, this would normally put me off because I don’t like following the crowds but the opportunity for a last minute trip was too good a chance to miss. It lived up to it’s reputation despite the weather being ‘bad’ for most of the week – just meaning the locals were out in their winter boots and down jackets and there were some very strong headwinds but no leggings required for cycling. Lots of big climbs, super smooth tarmac, undulating roads along the coast, millions of hairpins bends and of course some sunshine.

7 days, 18 hours riding, 13500m climbing, 460km and plenty of coffee stops. Calves survived thanks to Compressport Full Legs and I now have an excuse to avoid riding the rollers inside for a while!

WXC team weekend

Cait — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:27:18 +0000

Last weekend the WXC World Racing and UK teams joined up for a pre-season break in the Scottish borders. There were 18 girls aged 14 to 40s staying at the Rock Uk adventure centre in Newcastleton for a fun, wet and soggy weekend of mountain biking, activities and team building.

The first bit of excitement and laughter came with being presented with our new 2011 kit, with some awesome spotty skinsuits I can safely say you won’t miss the World Racing team this year! Joolze Dymond was on hand for some pro style photo-shoots as we tried to ignore the rain and cold, stop giggling, look the right direction etc – slightly chaotic but lots of fun!

wxc uk squad

Of course there was plenty of cycling – a night ride, a long group ride with a warming coffee shop stop, action shot photo-shoot rides, and even some pain drills. The trails were wet, it rained most of time, it was pretty cold, yet we all had a brilliant time. It was great to see so many girls out on mountain bikes, watch out for some team podium domination this year, standards were high!

team ride

After riding the action continued each evening with outdoor activities and team building games. One particularly fun activity was being zipped inside a giant inflated plastic ball that floated onto the swimming pool – balancing, staggering and finally running on water ended up an being a hilarious extreme leg workout.

blow up balls!

good balancing skills

Thanks to WXC for a great weekend. Also to the RockUK, Joolze for the photographs, and the SIP events crew for showing us their trails.

Next up, in a moment of maddness yesterday I signed up for the Andalucia Bike Race in Spain. With stages of 60-80km and 1-2000m of climbing for 6 days, it looks pretty hardcore. I’ll be riding in the mixed pair category with Josh Ibbett of the Torq Performance team and it starts next weekend…!

January images

Cait — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:16:22 +0000

York Racecourse

Welcome home from Spain – A foggy, dark day for some drills on country roads in Yorkshire.

Boat leaving Hollyhead

Rail & Sail – the paupers solution to last minute travel with lots of luggage to Dublin. A 14 hour trip rather than a 30 minute flight.

A nice day for a road spin converting the brother that doesn’t normally cycle.

5 hours of sunny mud-free singletrack – not bad for a Tuesday morning in Irish January.

Coaching the rapidly improving ThinkBike beginners spin in Ballinastoe.

A slightly epic tour of Wicklow on the road bike on yet another pleasantly mild day. It was great until I had to ride alongside the Miners Trail singletrack descent in Glendalough and really wanted to be on a mountain bike. Rounded off by a wrong turn, a big main road and nasty headwinds – I was glad to get home.

Freeride Spain – part II

Cait — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:55:48 +0000

‘Google mountain’ – another brilliant ride with a big variety of terrain and lots of spectacular scenery. Long climbs were rewarded with long descents and with 5 of us tearing down chasing each other it was exciting stuff. Someday I’ll be as fast at Si and Eoin going downhill! The day ended with a descent through a huge gorge along a dried out river bed. There was no trail as such, but it felt like skiing on a bike, surfing over loose stones at high speed on the verge of being in control – a very wierd experience but great fun.

google mountain descent

Eoin nailing it

nice view

Eoin & Si mon halfway up the climb

Simon showing how its done

spot the rider

reward for all the effort

‘Coast ride’ – EÓin and I began the day with a 1.5 hour road climb to get to the start of the ride – with smooth, wide roads its a great spot for road biking if you’re that way inclined. After a quick coffee fix we met the other guys for a great mountain bike ride down to the Mediterranean Sea. With legs beginning to tire it was good to have some tricky technical climbing to mix things up a bit, and the descents included a loose, dusty downhill course as well as some super rocky farm tracks that left me feeling a bit battered riding a hardtail. As we got closer to the sea the temperature increased nicely and biking tan lines have started early this year!

road climb

technical climb

nice trail!

windmills at the top

riding in the sun

more singletrack

After 23 hours of pedalling with thousands of meters of climbing and descending its been an awesome week. The trails are even better than I remember, the weather was perfect, coffee beer and tapas in local bars hit the spot every time, and I must be a lot fitter and faster than before I arrived. A huge thanks to Si and Emma at Freeride Spain, I can’t recommend them enough. Now unfortunately its back to the reality of winter, suffering withdrawl symptoms already.
Full set of photos from the week are here.

view from the apartment

Freeride Spain training camp

Cait — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:49:04 +0000

It’s a good sign when coming to the end of a 5 hour ride today that all I could think of was how much I was looking forward to doing it again tomorrow! Swapping the cold grey weather for a week of blue sky, hot sun and dry trails with Freeride Spain has been the perfect winter antidote.

Yesterday began with a 2 hour road climb chasing Eoin and Simon (Freeride Spain guide) at a blistering pace up the mountain, with a reward of coffee and tostadas outside on a terrace in the sun at the top. From there the fun started as we joined up with other guests and hit the local singletrack. The riding here is phenomenal, technical rocky descents on traditional shepherd’s tracks that even in January are bone dry and fast. I resurected my old Maxlight as a new freeride bike equiped with wide riser bars, 120mm forks and fat tyres, and though it took a bit of adjusting to, even after one day I wasn’t thinking twice about riding big rocky drops I would have barely considered possible before. After more climbing we descended through 3 pretty traditional white washed villages, ripping through the steep, narrow cobbled streets and down flights of steps sending locals scattering as we went, before another obligatory coffee stop in a sunny square. Every trail leaves you pumped full of adrenaline and smiling ear to ear, it seems impossible that it could get any better yet it did every time.

Eoin on the climb

looking across to Pampaneira

coffee!

Bubion coffee stop

descending through Pampaneira

Eoin descending the streets

snow capped La Valeta

Today Eoin and I rode the ‘adventures of Ryan’, climbing up to 1900m (where it was still warm enough to sit in t-shirt and shorts despite it being January). There were spectacular views of the snow capped mountains one way, and down the valley towards the sea the other. We rode more steep, rocky descents through the terraced fields barely meeting another person until we passed through a tiny village to fill the bottles with chilled water from one of the many ‘fuentes’ that save you carrying loads of water around. The area is really unspoilt and traditional with very few tourists and incredibly friendly locals. The riding is so enjoyable that the training benefit becomes merely a side effect with memories of the brilliant descents at end of the day making you totally forget the hours spent climbing.

typical January weather!

rocky singletrack

trail along drainage channel

Spanish singletrack

More to come, can’t wait!

More winter weather

Cait — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:56:54 +0000

Last week deep snow and ice made a return to Dublin causing utter chaos in the city and forcing me to spend more time on a turbo trainer than any sane person would admit to! Training has seemed like more of a test of mental strength and determination than the usual enjoyment, but luckily sanity was somewhat retained with one urban mtb ride where snowy roads in the city could be ridden like trails. It was too cold to stop and take many photos but Phoenix Park was amazing – pristine snow, blue sky, and almost empty except for herds of deer.

Phoenix Park

Christmas Day in Dublin

My flight home to England for Christmas was cancelled and my brother and I got stranded in Dublin. We enjoyed the deep snow and sunny weather and had a second Christmas in York two days later.

This week has been my annual international training camp in Yorkshire. It may be a pro mtb destination for the world cup in May but December is not the best time to come. Although it has been a relief to ride a moving bike since the roads are clear of snow here, the weather has meant more mental strength training to endure the cold and wet. Yesterday I was soaked and feeling like an ice cube after an hour, so by the end of five hours… At least there is proper tea here to warm up afterwards!

Yorkshire Tea

frozen river in York

Two cold rides left before international training camp part two – a week in the Sierra Nevadas in Spain with Freeride Spain. Great hosts, huge climbs, THE best technical descents in the world, rocket fuel Spanish coffee, good weather – excited is an understatement!

attacked by ice

Cait — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:06:53 +0000

Looks pretty? NO, its evil! The crazy cold weather continued this with unusual subzero temperatures in Dublin turning snow from a last week into hard ice and freezing all the puddles. I’ve had to acquire cold weather survival skills – setting off with boiling water in my water bottles meant they didn’t turn solid quite so quickly. I’m also considering undertaking a mince pie diet to try and keep warm, skinny cyclists are not suited to this weather!

For 98% of the time its fun to bike on solid frozen ground without worrying about getting muddy, the only problem is you have no idea when a patch of ice is going to pop up at ruin things. This is what happens when it does:

back to the turbo trainer?!

Training in the snow

Cait — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:02:19 +0000

streets of Ranelagh

River Liffey & Calvatrava bridge

The snow didn’t stop after last weekend and a week later there is more snow in Dublin than I’ve ever seen outside of the Alps. The city is in total chaos with public transport not working, streets blocked with snow, pavements turned to sheets of ice etc. Commuting to work through the snowy streets on a road bike with skinny tyres has been great fun although once it started to get icy the mountain bike was a safer option. At least the snow makes everywhere look pretty and gives people something to think about other than the country’s economic doom.

frozen canal

interesting commute

Training wise I cracked big time and was forced to embrace the inner roadie for some turbo training madness. I bought a turbo trainer 2 years ago but this was its first time out of the box. Rather than sitting indoors staring at four walls for hours on end, I set it up outside under the porch in front of my house so that I could look out at the snowy street and watch people go by. It helped to stop me looking at the clock but I did get a few funny looks as people slide around fighting through a blizzard and I sat there in a t-shirt pedalling away like crazy!

turbotastic

It’s actually almost enjoyable once you figure out how to play mind games with yourself so that time doesn’t come to a complete stand still. In my head I’ve spent the week doing laps of race courses all over the world – shut your eyes and use your imagination it comes as a shock to open them again and realise 20 minutes has passed and you actually haven’t moved anywhere!

Some good pumping music is another essential. At the moment my playlist includes Holy Fuck, Girl Talk’s new mix, Leftfield, Deadmau5 and Underworld. Any more suggestions welcome…

view from my bedroom

Thanks to the guys in the Think Bike workshop for putting the turbo together, the most complicated piece of apparatus imaginable.

thankfully real biking again at the weekend

Snow in Dublin!

Cait — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:39:11 +0000

All of a sudden winter is well and truly upon us and an incredibly dramatic storm on Friday night left Dublin covered in a blanket of snow for the weekend. So while the roadies sat indoors for hours on their turbo trainers, we headed for the hills for some fantastic mountain biking.

singletrack starts at home

The off-road ride begins at your front door in this weather with loads of sliding around on the snowy streets.

Dublin Bay

Three rock on Saturday was a fast, slidery playground with a perfect amount of snow for riding through with just enough grip. Sunshine, dramatic skies and spectacular views over Dublin and the sea.

Road biking suddenly seems more interesting

This morning we headed further afield, taking the mountain bikes for a road ride to Djouce and then ducking into the woods for a few trails. There was a real sense of expedition, an eerie silence and only deer prints for company as people in cars couldn’t make it up that far until later in the day when the roads began to melt. I hope the novelty value can last, at the moment I love winter! A four hour ride in the snow is lot more tiring than it would normally be though.

Powerscourt waterfall

GC is a narrow singletrack with a big cliff drop off the side of it -gets pretty interesting when covered in snow!

'GC' singletrack

There are a few more photos taken over the weekend here.