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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…

Round 2 of the K Capital Challenge took place at Carrick Mountain – an area of Wicklow previously unexplored by most mountain bikers. As usual Team Worc put on a great event with some serious work gone into trail building and putting the course together. A terrible weather forecast and muddy trails didn’t seem to put people off, with over 100 riders entered for a single lap, 30km race.

We flew off at the start straight into a long fireroad climb with everyone fighting to get into a good position. I was surprised to be feeling pretty good having felt tired the last few days, and began moving up the group as we went. On the first half of the course there were a few nice bits of singletrack but each seemed to end by turning into a long climb. Overnight rain had made the trails really wet and muddy meaning lots of sliding around, but overall the course held up very well and was all rideable. Not having ridden any of it before added an extra element of fun – flying down slippery descents having no clue what was coming up around the next corner!

It was difficult to know how to pace yourself without knowing much about the route, but at least I had my Garmin so I knew the distance remaining – or so I thought! For much of the race I was in a group of 3 or 4 others making it easier to battle the strong wind. Having got most of the climbing out of the way, we hit some really fun technical singletrack across moorland and twisting through the forest. I was pleased to be keeping up with the guys but eventually dropped off the back with both sets of brake pads wore down to the metal. You’d think having no brakes would make you faster but actually it made going slow pretty scary! As the course twisted steeply down through the trees, super slippery mud and no stopping ability meant I had several near misses with trees – dodgy! (even more dodgy riding home across the city centre without brakes!)

I was a bit surprised to come round into the start area after 25km but presumed there must be another loop to do. Unfortunately not! Turns out the course had been cut short due to weather – it was really annoying, I’d have gone a lot faster if I’d have known, I was geared up for a long steady race and was still really enjoying myself! I won the Ladies category and placed 18th overall (results here).

So the course not being long enough was my only complaint but that’s definitely a good sign. It was funny seeing everyone afterwards almost unrecognisable covered from head to toe in mud. Luckily there was a conveniently located stream to jump in and clean off for both bikes and people, followed by lots of hot tea and sandwiches. You’d think it was winter.

Thanks to Robin and Team Worc for another great days racing. I’ll definitely be heading back to the area for another go on those trails!

This video is good for a taste of what the Big Dog race was all about:

I’d no idea someone was following me with a camera for so long!

Last weekend my brother Eoin and I travelled down to Brighton to compete in the Brighton Big Dog, a new 6 hour endurance race that can be done solo, in pairs or in teams. We both entered the solo category – other than the last couple of weeks I’ve not done any long rides since April so I thought this would be good training and a bit of a challenge!

There were about 200 people on the course at one time, beginning with a mass start straight into a tough singletrack climb. 11 girls entered the solo category and not having done a race this long before I intended to let them take the lead and try to match the pace for the first few laps. I’m used to fast xc starts though and 2 minutes in I couldn’t help myself getting into the lead. The course was brilliant, set in parkland just outside the city with 11km and 250m ascent per lap. It was nearly all singletrack, fast descents twisting through the trees and several steep, rooty climbs. Flying down one of the best sections I felt a sharp pain in my leg and looked down to see a wasp stuck in it. At the same time there were several other shouts of pain and it turns out someone had hit a wasp nest! 2 days later my legs was blistered and my ankle/foot swelled up like a balloon to 3 times its normal size!

After the first lap I seemed to have a bit of a lead so I cut back a bit, concerned that I still had 5 hours to go. After that I didn’t have much pressure from behind so it was really a case of chugging along and enjoying the trails. Most of the climbing was in the first half of the lap so you’d start to feel tired but then the adrenaline and buzz from the descents gave you energy to do it all again. It was very different to an xc race – time to have a chat and meet new people in the middle of the race, and well as thinking about all kinds of rubbish as you’re pedalling along.

Alongside the main race there was a fastest lap competition ending with cake for people who just wanted to give it a go, making a real cross section of riders and a brilliant atmosphere. There was music and plenty of encouragement each time you passed the start but I was a bit envious of people sitting in the sun drinking beer as I began to get tired!

It was very hard to know who was in my category and how much of a lead I had. Going into the last lap a guy from squirt who was helping us in the pit (thanks guys!) told me I was 4 minutes ahead so I thought it was just a case of keeping going – I was starting to tire but still had some energy. 10 minutes from the end I got a shock when a girl caught me unaware and came past on a climb. I didn’t recognise her and couldn’t work out if she was in my race or not. I put my head down and tried to keep up, but couldn’t quite do enough to get ahead again. As I crossed the finish line she was less than 50m ahead. So after leading for so long and racing 5 hour 30 mins/76km/1725m climbing I was convinced I’d come 2nd ,telling everyone how gutted I was.

A recovery beer made me feel better (free on tap as you finished!) before watching the presentations. We had a bit of family domination with Eoin (riding for freeridespain.com) having a great ride to come 4th in the solo men’s race, into the prizes but narrowly missing the podium. When they called out 3rd and 2nd in the female, my name wasn’t there and I couldn’t work out what was going on. It turns out the girl who passed me was in the team race and I’d won after all – my first international podium (results here). I got to spray champagne around the place (need to practice that one!), and won some awesome prizes. A big trophy, enough money to pay for my weekend and best of all some new USE Exposure night lights!!

That evening there was an after party in a bar right beside Brighton beach with profit from the race going towards the bar tab. A great way to end the event! I’d really recommend this race to anyone – fantastic course, atmosphere and organisation as well as racing to suit any ability or fitness level. Brighton is a really cool place to visit for a bit of a holiday and a night out. Many thanks to Ian Liech for kindly putting us up, and to everyone involved in organising and sponsoring the event. Looking forward to next year!

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!

This weekend I had the challenge of defending my National Champion title in my first Irish race of the year. I was looking forward to getting back to the friendly race scene here and riding a new course at Dunmore Mountain.

There were no pre-rides the day before so I headed up early to get in a practice lap on the morning. The course was cool but really tough. 100% singletrack, much of it on thick grass with a few schlompy patches to power through and lots of sharp rocks. It was full of short, steep kickers with 2 slightly longer steep, rocky climbs each followed by some nice descents. There were a couple of steepish, rocky chutes but overall nothing super technical.

I had a good warm-up but a 10 minute delay at the start left meant I’d really cooled down and struggled to get going for the first few minutes. The ladies race became an open championship, a combination of the Elite and Masters category – a great idea to make sure we had a competitive race despite the low numbers competing. Four of us lined up at the start, with masters rider Beth McClusky posing my main threat.

We started with Ciara McManus going off like a rocket and getting ahead to set a ferocious pace. I managed to hold on to her and sneaked ahead a few minutes in as she slid out on an off camber section. Beth was right on my back wheel and later pulled ahead on one of the short climbs. I had to really go flat out to hold her within easy sight for the next two laps. I had my work cut out, she was flying up the climbs but I found myself lacking power and struggling to keep up – give me a long, steady climb any day!

On lap 3 Beth began to pull away, I totally blew up, just couldn’t keep the pace up and dropped nearly a minute on lap time. The course was so intense, there was no chance to recover at all, straight from a hard climb into a fast, physical decent and then repeat! Getting chance to drink was nearly impossible.

On the 4th lap I really dug deep, trying to find some extra energy so that I could work back and raced the Masters men to help keep pushing. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t go any faster. With no sign of Beth in front of me and I began to realise there would be little chance to catch her but kept going just in case. By the last lap I nearly had to give up braking as I was getting finger cramps every time I pulled the levers and was pretty happy to cross the line just before a torrential downpour began. I finished in second place, 2.5 minutes down (full results here).

So a bit of a frustrating and disappointing day, although I was going ok, I know that I haven’t hitting the best form recently, I think all the racing in June is still taking its toll. I would have loved to win, but congratulations to Beth, she was really strong on the day. I certainly enjoyed having such a hard, close fought race and it’s another experience to learn from.

Thanks to UCD, Met and Think Bike for their support and to Dromara CC for the organising and a great course.

So unfortunately my time in Liechtenstein has ended and I’ve left the ‘mainland’ and its opportunities for racing. The whole thing has been a great experience, I had no idea how much there is to learn doing these international races. No matter how well a race goes you always come out of it learning more about your strengths and weaknesses, and motivated to improve before the next one. I’ve also learnt a lot about training and my own body, how much I can push it and when I should take it easy. I did seem to learn a lot of things the hard way – how not to do it, but at least they’re done now! (Collar bones etc)

It opened up my eyes to a whole new world of riding and racing – to compete against so many other girls at such a high standard is amazing, not to mention the amount of supporters, the culture of cycling there and of course great trails.

Some things to note for racing and riding in the Alps:
1 Don’t crash into trees
2 Don’t go skiing
3 Olympic and world champions are pretty damn quick!
4 Be prepared for anything

1 Don’t follow marked mountain bike routes – they’re boring
2 90% of footpaths are awesome to ride. The other 10% can get very scary and you should not go near them with a bike!
3 Don’t trust local riders when asking if a trail is good – they’ll point you towards fireroads and away from the good stuff
4 The mountains are very high, very steep and very tiring

But the season is by no means over; it’s now time to readjust for Irish racing with the national champs on Saturday.

I quickly realised that just because the mountains are small doesn’t mean it’s easy, in fact quite the opposite! I already enjoyed getting my ass kicked by Mel at the Epic club race on Thursday and some great mtb on the world’s best secret biking location yesterday – the North York Moors (but only in summer!).

Since I told everyone I’d be competing in the Racer Bikes Cup last Sunday I’d better explain why I didn’t. The race would have taken 4 hours to get to by train and starting at 11am meant going on the day was impossible. Unfortunately I couldn’t go the day before because of an exam so i had to skip it – very annoying! especially since it was the last chance to race here and there were way fewer participants than the last few so there would have been chance for a good result. C’est la vie I guess. I need a driving license and a car – or a pro support team! any takers?!

So instead I had a much needed recovery week (well timed for a week of horrid weather!) and did a 30 minute time trial at the weekend by the River Rhine to test my lactic threshold. Not quite as good as a race but these are surprisingly fun in a sick kind of way! The first 15 minutes were quite hard but still enjoyable, then for the next 10 minutes or so it got progressively harder to keep the pace up with my legs starting to burn and heart going like crazy. The final 5 minutes were like hell, breathing like a donkey and starting to feel sick! I broke it into 2 minute blocks, just trying to get though each and managed to keep going until the end.
As soon as it was over I was feeling great again with a good sense of achievement and improvement from last time I did this. I’ve just finished reading Graeme Obree’s autobiography – his determination is really inspirational for focus and motivation doing these things.

Now one more day of college and a week to make the most of Alpine trails before I head back to Dublin. I’m already thinking of when I can come back though!

Oohh and check this out on MET’s new website…!

The international fun continued yesterday at the Racer Bikes Cup in Winterthur. I had an early start, leaving home at 6.30 to catch the train to meet Richie Felle and James McCluskey who were already there.

The starting line-ups are getting tougher each time, today 42 Elite Females, with 12 nationalities including the British, Dutch, USA and Argentinian national teams. We were lucky that the course was in good condition despite really heavy rain over night.

I was gridded 32nd and a really tight tarmac start loop at the usual ferocious pace meant it was hard to get into a good position. I waited until a nastily steep climb before starting to make up some places. The course was good, a real mixture with something for everyone. Steep climbs on tarmac/fireroad, fun sliddery switchback descents, and long flat fireroad sections (too long if you ask me, I haven’t trained to go fast on the flat!). It meant the racing was really close with different people making time on different sections.

I certainly feel I’m getting stronger, especially on the climbs I was really able to make up time, but didn’t quite feel as fresh as last week (too much training in the week I reckon!). It was a long race, nearly 2 hours for me, and the last lap was tough, I kept seeing the bright orange kit of a Dutch rider closing in on me, but managed to hold her off in the end. I finished 25th (again!) but no getting lapped this time and if I can get 13.8% faster I could win these things!

Afterwards it was fun hanging out with some girls I met at last week’s race and then watching Richie in the men’s race. He wasn’t as lucky with the weather as we were, it started to rain and the course looked super greasy. It was cool to watch Absalon do his thing too, blasting up the hill in the big ring where I was in the granny by the end!