NPS 5- Park Racing At Its Best

I had not been looking forward to this one having raced the course a couple of years ago. It is a very fast, close racing course with not much climbing and nothing in the way of scary descents. This makes for very close, relentless racing and yesterday was no exception. The weather man was predicting lots of rain all week which had me scrambling for spikes on Friday night but we were greeted with perfect sunshine and a tacky track on Sunday morning.

I woke up feeling terrible but after a kip in the back of Fergal’s car (the Venga Bus), I felt a lot better. For the first time this season I was gridded so being held up for the first couple of laps could not be an excuse this time..! I got a brilliant start off the front and got into the singletrack 2nd and motored the first lap and a half in a train of Simon Curry, Johnny Mc Cabe and Brendan Doherty. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite hold the pace and had to drop back a little on the third and final lap.



I could see the green plates of the colm-oscar-fergal-gene train catching me as I went through the feed zone for the last time and had really resigned myself to being caught on that final lap. I pushed as hard as I could in the singletrack with a real ‘all or nothing’ sentiment going through my head. I didn’t want to leave anything left in the tank. On the final grassy climb into the finish, Colm from Epic caught me but I managed a little sprint to get a couple of bike lengths between us and the finish line. Third place was only 30 seconds ahead but there’s no use in dwelling on that could’ve been stuff.

So… another fourth place! I am very happy with that result considering the competition and course. I’m going to stick with my tactics of Tuesday, Thursday club race this week and Thursday race next week with a solo spin on the Friday. This seems to put me in a good physical place for racing on Sundays. The next one is in Limerick and is supposed to be a savage technical track. There is a lot to be said for wheel to wheel racing in a park but nothing can beat a skin of your teeth tech descent in a race!

Huge thanks to the MAD’s resident podiumers Claire and Conor for doing a deadly job in the feed zone

Reviews and such
The bike is still superb. I didn’t really get a lot of benefit from the full suss on that course but the terralogic fork worked so well and everything from the XX groupset to the carbon wheels just wants to tear the trails up. The terralogic really lets you to accelerate out of every corner which is especially useful as I found myself overshooting a lot of them as I started to fade! The Formula R1 brakes have really grown on me too. Their stopping power is unbelievable. Their modulation is fairly questionable but I find it doesn’t really matter in all-out XC as you’re locking up at the last second while pushing it most of the time anyway. I had a deep tissue massage with reflexology treatment from a guy called Michael McElroy on the Clonsilla road today. Jeeesus, I’ve never felt pain like that in my life! He targeted muscle knots in my feet that released the tension in my legs and back. It was utter torture at the time but I feel like I’m walking on air now so well worth it. I’d highly recommend him but bring lump of wood to bite down on!