It was my last weekend in England for a while so I headed over to Sheffield to stay with Eóin and do some hardcore xc in the Peak District. On Saturday we went for a longish ride on some lovely muddy, rocky, snowy, slippery, technical trails! Although the snow was still deep in parts, it was nearly all ridable and a good chance for some skills practice. After living in York for the last couple of months, it was such a luxury to be able to ride from the house and be on the trails in less than 10 minutes. Hopefully recent training is starting to pay off, I was feeling pretty strong – we did 60km/4hrs without too much hassle, and got back in time to go to the pub and see England get beat in the rugby.
On Sunday Eóin had organised a handicapped ‘ghetto race’ along some of the local trails with Sheffild Uni MTB club. Unfortunately it had warmed up overnight and a lot of the snow was melting, making everything really wet, muddy and icy. The course was quite technical and a lot harder to ride than yesterday, especially the climbs. Still, there was a good turn out and it was really enjoyable. I’m not sure the handicaps were too fair, I set off 15 minutes behind the first guy – a bit much to make up over a 40 minute race! Good training though, and good to be reminded of how hard racing is.