Where did the past 6 months go?! Well, the training/riding started for me in late December. The plan has been to get out every Tuesday and Thursday for at least 2 hours at a good- non- stop pace and then something long on the road or mountain bike at the weekends. This has happened most weeks but with work at the weekends, there’s been the odd missed w-end spin with a late night the night before. I did the first round of the Biking Blitz last month to gauge what the training has been doing for me. Overall, I was happy with how it went. This season I have been concentrating on trying to increase my cadence and pedaling technique. I’ve always been a masher of big gears which I’ve know is completely wrong. With the help of Andy Kenny’s savage Wednesday night spinning classes and some time doing long, easy road spins, I’ve definitely improved at this. So with this new-found technique and good form on training spins, I decided I'd head over to Galway for the last round of the Biking Blitz yesterday to see where I stand. Admittedly, it wasn’t a stacked field but that didn’t matter- I wanted to have two consistent laps not too far off the winner’s time. Job done.
After an un-necessarily long drive down (I went to Headford instead of Clifton!) , I arrived 20 minutes before the start. After a futile warm up, I lined up for the start of two full laps. The course was nothing short of grim. Very, very rough with technical climbs and flatish, slow descents. The fire road climbed for half a K before the first singletrack climb of the day. I found the bike completely alien and was riding brutally for the first lap but I dialed the rebound down a bit which helped. I’ve never wanted a full sus in a race before yesterday. The whole course was relentlessly rough and after a lap of being thrown all over the place I wanted nothing more than to rob the guy in fronts anthem and give my back a rest. On the first lap “descent”, I managed to catch Mick mc from MAD in third place. I put a few minutes into him on the descent and started the second lap with a comfortable lead. He managed to catch me on a long singletrack drag and put the hammer down to get a very comfortable lead (he was out of sight). On the second last section of descent I managed to catch him and get ahead on a fire road sprint and stayed ahead until the finish. So with that- my first podium of the year! I know I’ll need to be riding a lot quicker for the Leinster League round next week if I’m to be anywhere up there again but it’s a great start to the season. Wexford; bring it on.
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