After a lot of effort and negotiating from everyone involved it’s finally all come together and the other day I went to collect my new bike! I’ll be riding for UCD CC on a new Trek Elite 9.8 with Shimano XT, Bontrager finishing kit, and Fox forks. It was made possible by funding from UCD AUC and the kind support of ‘Think Bike’ shop in Rathmines. I can’t believe its mine, all that carbon! I’ll have to ride super quick this year to 
justify it.
I gave it a real test on Sunday riding the Wicklow Way up 3 Rock, Prince Willies, over Maulin, and
back through Djouce with Oisin. What a spin! The trails were incredibly dry after all the snow, the sun was out, and it felt almost like summer at times. The bike felt so good, it wants to ride fast all the time, flying up technical climbs effortlessly and floating over everything going down. Really nice to have everything new and working perfectly too! I was tired by the end though, its been a hard week and by the time I’d ridden back to Drumcondra it was 77km, over 2000m climbing and 4 hours 45 minutes.