XC NPS 5 - Lady Dixon

I wrote this a good while back, for Richie Byrne's 'test pilot' thing, but as I've currently nothing better to do I thought I may as well stick it up here as well to give you's something to look at. It's a bit shorter than the rest you'll be glad! -

Race prep started the day before, with a ‘leisurely spin’ round the track with one of Dromara’s top pro XC racers and nice guys: Phil O’neill. I say ‘leisurely spin’ as after taking a mad brainwave to go for an hours run the day before, my legs were a bit dead and screaming out for some elevation and sleep but yet I found myself sideways in the wet around the track at the top end of my wee heart’s capacity! At this stage the track wasn’t marked out so a bit of local knowledge was invaluable (realised this as I tried to do a couple of laps on my own after Phil left and ended up lost for 40mins) cheers Phil.

Getting my laps in the day before meant I didn’t have to get all dirty on Sunday morning which was a fab job. Just chilled with super pros Rob Deegan and Aaron McCann for an hour, before my inner wee girl came out and I sat in the heat of the car for half an hour to stay out of the savage wind. Scoffed some Haribo, paid a few visits to the porta-loos and worked a bit of charm for some free red-bull and before I knew it everybody else was at the line (never quite got round to warming up, bit windy..)!

Race started as usual with Holeshot King Dan Runciman gunning it from the start while I rolled along attempting the seemingly impossible task of clipping my foot into my new fancy pedals. By the time most people had got to the first corner I had just about got the feet in and realised how high a gear I’d left the bike in. Sent her on anyway trying to spin up through the gears and after a bit of dodgy passing round the first few corners was sitting tight on Rob’s rear end. Before long we got out onto the grass and Rob so kindly let me past so he could get a bit of shelter, while Aaron brought up the rear. Unfortunately for Rob as we came off the grass into the singletrack his chain slipped off the front. I waited for as long as my trackstanding skills would let me but that wasn’t very long so I headed on at a steady enough pace hoping he’d catch up and we could have a race.

In the end my steady pace ended up being a bit harder than I thought and he didn’t catch up, so I pushed on so that he wouldn’t be able to see me on the open grassy bits as I knew if he’d something to lock his sights onto he’d soon be up with me again.

2nd lap was a bit wild as all the S4s had skidded their way through what were sort of grippy corners in the first lap. This resulted in me lamping her into them and having 2 fairly huge crashes, but luckily the ground was nice soft stuff and I missed the trees.. just slid about 10m down the track each time and had to sprint back for my bike!
Other than that there wasn’t really much excitement in the rest of it. The jumpy thing as you entered the singletrack bit at the very end almost killed me in every one of me laps, but thankfully my foxy forks are lethal and I was in good hands as I nosedived through the air about 5 foot past any sort of downslope.

All in all, had a super time, great organisation, great craic, great track. Free water tablet things at sign-on were a fine job, medals were nice(although money is cool for U16s and Juniors that are too young to work/still at school but have bikes to break every weekend) and the wind, although it was trying, didn’t manage to blow any of the porta-loos over. Cheers XMTB and all involved.

This Blogging Business

Right, upon reading previous writings, I gotta start writing about interesting stuff rather than trying to make normal stuff sound interesting and coming to huge anti-climaxes. Shall try to do this from now on, so if you're not impressed or even slightly entertained, comeback sometime and see if you approve.
Also intend to update this a bit more regularly, but we'll see how regularly interesting stuff in my life happens and work from there. Scroll down a bit for NPS Castlewellan report.
Cheers, Monty.

Irish NPS Round 7 - Castlewellan

The final round of this year's Irish National Points Series was held in Castlewellan Forest Park at the weekend. If you've never been, make it your business to get down and get a rip round it, it's shredding like you've never experienced before!

After checking the weather forecast every day for a week, and my fingers nearly dropping off after crossing them so much(such is life when you can't afford a pair of wet tyres) Saturday finally came round. Friday night had pissed it down. Brilliant. Dad left me up on Saturday morning and I got my stuff together and headed down to check out the track. It wasn't actually that wet which was good to see, but there was just a layer of grease sitting ontop of the trail that was making it next to impossible even to get up the first climb! Not good with the race less than 24hrs away and more rain forecasted!


Luckily enough things seemed to have dried up for Sunday, raceday. Hadn't really planned on doing a practice lap as it was only going to be the same track but drier than I had ridden the day before. But then I bumped into fellow Dher Michael Rea as I was just riding around, and thought I'd head for a shred with him to take my mind off the race. Practice lap went well, as imagined everything was a lot handier to ride than the day before, so was all sweet to the beat. Practice lap took a little longer than planned, and time went a little faster than planned, so before I knew it, there was like 10mins to my race and I hadn't started a warmup or got the right bottles, I didn't even know where I was gonna do a warmup! Mad times. A sudden urge to let some weight off in those classy portatoilets that arrive at every race took over me, and I searched the surroundings in desperation for the little green tardis's of happiness. There were three down beside the start line, sweet. Picked the nicest looking one and opened the door to Narnia. Unfortunately there was no toilet roll in Narnia. On I went to the next door, no toilet roll in it either. Even risked complete public humiliation and tried the 'Ladies only' portaloo with my fingers crossed. Nope. No bloody toilet roll again, and even worse, a huge dump sitting there in the toilet. Fair play the poor lass probably needed the whole roll for that one! I'm not one for pre-race rituals or anything, but this certainly wasn't going how I'd planned!

Luckily there was a carpark about half a mile up the road and someone had been so kind to stick a portaloo up there, and even kinder to put some toilet roll in it! Hero. I'll save you from reporting every little detail of the next bit as I do want you to come back to this website sometime! haha. But anyway I tried my best to get the heartrate up in Narnia as at this stage there was about 5mins til my race started and the warmup boat had sailed long ago!

Hopped out of the loo and into the light with a terrific sense of achievement and fulfilment, ready to take on the world and all it's challenges. As the 5 people queuing outside looked on in disgust. Haha. Enough of that and on to the race..

Well actually before the race I fell on my face. Within the 2 minutes of hopping on my bike and riding half a mile back to the start line I'd managed to fall on my face, yes. Even better, I'd fallen straight onto the fireroad, so there was a lovely bit of bleeding coming from my cheek and jaw, major lack of skin on my shoulder, and I'd managed to smack my knee, which was already in agony and I'd been resting it from coming off the bike 2 days previous. Soup-ar.

Race began straight up a fire-road hill with 140ft of climbing, pace was crazy. Chris Oakley took off like someone was hanging a kit-kat up the road and it was him in the lead, Rob Deegan 2nd and myself sitting in 3rd. I kept the power constant, passed Rob, passed Chris, and got into the first singletrack climb first.

That was the plan. Feeling good now, going flatout up the first climb, nailing every line, all the track practice coming into use now. By the top of the first climb, about 5mins in, I'd made a good 10 second lead. A short downhill/flat and a steep uphill followed, and I gave everything to increase my lead. Plan to blitz the first lap to get away and then recover second lap obviously wasn't going to be as quick as riding a steady two laps, but it worked out ok coming across the line with the 2nd fastest lap time of anyone on the day for my first lap, 2mins 30 up on 2nd place, and then dropping back to a slightly slower 2nd lap. Ended up with the win, 2nd place 6mins 30secs down and 3rd 8mins 30secs down.

Pretty happy with the result, real nice to end the season on a high, winning the last NPS! Pretty sure I could have gone a bit faster had I had a warmup and a bit of a better pre-race, but dealt with what I had and got the job done. Track was a complete joy to race, so a huge thanks to XMTB for holding the race and getting the track into shape!

UK School Games is the next big event up on the cards. Have injured myself, so already carrying a screwed left knee for the whole year, I've now added the right knee to the mix too! Hoping I can get it working again in time for the UKSG, just a bit of a shame all the high intensity stuff I'd planned for now, to peak and then recover nicely, has gone down the drain. Life's a bitch sometimes. Just swimming and walking and lying up in the local leisure centre's sauna and steamroom, smashing out runs on the slide and stuff at the minute. Could be worse I suppose.

27 Quest-ions

Competed in the final Irish XC NPS round yesterday, but I don't really feel like writing a report. Will get it up before the night's out. So for now here's 27 questions that I'll pretend someone cares enough to ask. Borrowed 'em from the internets. Enjoy.

How are you feeling right now?
Allllrightey. Stoked on finding the 'bold' button! haha. Body is a bit wrecked from yesterday, lacking quite a bit of skin on my shoulder, face and knees, couple of bruises here and there but that's the harcoreness of XC racing!

Type of music you like most?
Depends what sorta mood I'm in. Bitta ACDC sometimes, bitta Chase and Status other times, Kanye, Rise Against, Biffdawg Clyro, Maveric Sabre, Ellie Goulding, Frank Turner, Tinie Tempah makes some good sense, Deadmau5..

Berms or flat corners?
A good moist rooty and roosty flat out foot out corner on a DH bike, but gotta be the safety of a big berm to rail on the XC bike.

Can you barspin?
Did one a couple of years ago, haven't tried since then!

Can you wheelie?
Reasonably. Not the best, nor the worst, wish I was a bit better though, must get a bit of solid training done this winter!

If you could change something about your home, without worry about expense or mess, what would you do?
Lift it up and set it down beside some trails!

If you could eat lunch with one famous person, who would it be?
Not really that into famous people like, wouldn't turn down Beyonce though. She probably wouldn't eat much, I could finish up for her.

If you could meet any one person (from history or currently alive), who would it be?
Austin Powers. Lad.

Type of music you dislike most?
Bruno Mars-esque crap.

What are your worst characteristics?
Describing everything in too much detail is probably a big one.

What is on the walls of the room you are in?
Paint, stickers, posters.

What was the last thing you bought?
Ordered some new cleats for me shose today. Ain't that exciting!

When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
About an hour ago, getting the post.

Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Lack of a credit card would mean this one would be pretty hard, but if I could buy unlimited stuff from anywhere it'd probably be CRC or somewhere.

Who was the last person you ate dinner with?
Me dad

What’s your current Facebook status?
"YESSSSSSSSS!" - result of too much caffeine and winning the last NPS.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Owl for life! Not looking forward to getting up early to go back to school again soon!

Do you have a garden?
Yes. It's got 3.8miles of grass that takes up on 3 or 4 hours to cut. Raaad times.

Last mtb product you picked up?
MBUK mag

Last trail you rode?
Castlewellan!

What do you think about the most?
To be fair I don't really think all that much. Some empty space up here. S'pose it's gotta be bikes though!

What is the last thing you downloaded onto your computer?
2011 XC League Table.xlsx.

What is the last thing you watched on TV?
300 last night. S'a bit repetitive them boys slaughtering the other boys like.

What time is bed time?
Normally about 9.30 but sometimes I get loose and don't make it til 9.45. Trying to cut down on dem wild times. 11ish.

What was the first time you rode your bike in a competition?
Epic Blast 2010. Yehhhhhhha boy! Good times were good!

What’s under your bed?
Some immigrants, lots of spiders, and other stuff that shouldn't be disturbed.

With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
Beats and cows mooooing.