Pre-season training literally consisted of 3 weeks of what I would call, proper training, the rest mostly spent rolling around the floor stretching, or on the foam roller. From August 2011, my knees have been giving me grief, and been putting a mighty limiter on what training I can do before they blow up. After many, many labouring weeks and months of trying to get anything useful out of the NHS, I ended up with a MRI scan on one knee. Turns out there's some tissue growth disorder in and around my knees, which, according to the 'specialist', is actually fairly common in kids my age, but only flares up in those that do excessive exercise. The bone is growing too fast for the tissue, so the tissue is stretched, and then you go and do a load of training on top of that, tightening the muscles, so the tissue is stretched even more and that pulls everything every shape. Not good. What fabulous preparation for the season... and that's not to mention breaking my wrist 10 weeks ago aswell!
Thankfully I 'will grow out of it', the advice for now was 'not to push it to the limit'... oh the casual ambiguity around what could potentially destroy me future in cycling/world domination.
Race day began at 0030h with Barry and Brian arriving back from their midnight track walk. I seemed to have had fallen asleep (sleeping bags are for wimps), only to be awoken with Barry's torch flashing into my tent and him talking to me. At least this meant I could finally get me sleeping bag and also got kindly donated an air mattress thing, it was boss, many thanks to the Kellett Krew/Team Maxbo. After that I got to sleep fairly quickly, and other than the noisiest birds you've never heard in your life waking me up about a hundred times, sleep was good.
Unfortunately this was next to no use when the race began. Turns out racing with 30+ S2 men is fairly different than racing with 3 or 4 U16s. With U16 racing, most of the time you're on your own, or in groups of 2 or 3 max, so there was never any worry about missing your lines, whereas S2 turned out to be absolute chaos off the start! Fun nonetheless! Additionally, it kind of added to the madness as I realised that I'd forgot to put contact lenses in about 5mins before the start. This resulted in me running back to the tent, hoking me contact lenses out of the bag at the other side of the tent while trying to keep my dirty shoes out of the tent. Got them out, got positioned nicely infront of Brian's door mirror, think I remembered which one was for the right and which was for the left, and got set on getting the right one in with my muddy fingers. Proceeded to get the left one out of the packet, onto the tip of my finger and heading towards my eye, BAM, gust of wind, goodbye contact lens. Brilliant. Tried looking about, but then realised I was looking for a transparent contact lens in a cattle field and had about 2mins to the start of my race and decided to screw that and get to the start line.
Track started with a 2-3min fire-road climb. Thankfully I got clipped in and off the line well, and was top 15 coming up the climb. Content with this, took it easy and made a few more places before the trail entrance, but didn't exert myself, plenty of time yet. Then we got to the 2nd bit of singletrack, and the rider infront of me slides out on a root. Chaos squared. I try tripoding the bike round him but proceed to almost fall over myself. Not quite the start I wanted. Got past anyway, and got motoring to catch the boys infront that had made a bit of time now.
Got caught up with them, and was probably sitting in top 7 or so now, but still not really feeling as if I was exerting myself. Saw BanbridgeCC man Simon Curry 2 men ahead, so got up to him and sat behind him for a while, knowing that he's a steady rider who consistently finishes top 3 in S2s, thinking if I can sit on his wheel for the rest of the race, that'll be more than enough to ask for in my first S2 race. This went well, until I took a different line to him coming into a technical section, and it was quite a bit faster, so I ended up coming up on his right hand side on a bit of trail only wide enough for one of us! Luckily averted disaster and squeezed infront of him. From then on, I rode steady, and before I knew it I had caught what seemed to be 1st and 2nd position, but couldn't know for sure whether there were riders in my race ahead of them, or if this was the front of the race! Thankfully at the start of the 2nd lap we passed S1 rider Lance McCarthy, and after trying to tyre buzz him for a while, he let me past and confirmed that they were the 1st S2 riders to go past him. Sitting in 3rd then, sweet.
Rode for a bit longer, in 2nd place coming up a windy straight, so thought it'd be a good idea to speed tuck in behind the man in-front and save some energy. This was a fantastic idea, just a shame about the execution: he slipped past a stump on his right, but my front wheel was slightly to the right of his rear, and before I knew it i'd hit the stump and was lying on my face with the bike ontop of me, still clipped in. Wasn't sore, just a little offputting when you're trying to stick with the man infront but you're lying on the ground on your head! Got back on and caught him again and got by him and I was out on my own. Kind of couldn't believe it, was wondering if I'd completely screwed up my pacing and was going to blow up badly. Didn't blow up, probably actually went a bit faster over the end of the 2nd lap and into the 3rd lap. Passed some more S1s, but then coming out of a corner I went to pedal and nothing turned!! Disaster! Hopped off the bike and tried to see what was up. Rear derailleur cage had well and truly snapped, and the chain had jumped through the cage and was basically fooked.
http://www.windyheightsphotography.com/BICYCLES/XC-NPS-Round-3-Tracton-Woods/22976435_Hhw2qb#!i=1847046634&k=mb6KVvs
http://www.windyheightsphotography.com/BICYCLES/XC-NPS-Round-3-Tracton-Woods/22976435_Hhw2qb#!i=1847046634&k=mb6KVvs
Was able to bend some bits back together and get the chain re-routed and semi-working again. Unfortunately from here on I only had one gear, and when I applied any sort of force the chain was skipping. Due to the time it'd taken to get the bike going again, I'd slipped back into 3rd place, but only by a little bit. Got going as much as circumstances allowed , and got back into 1st, and made some ground on the rest of the field again. Then about 1/3rd of the way into my 4th and final lap, the derailleur blew up for good, and I was faced with 2 options. Run the rest of the lap and finish the race, I still had good time over the S2 and Junior field, or run the rest of the lap and finish the race. Quitting wasn't an option if you'd seen the amount of food i'd eaten over the weekend... I needed to burn the rest of it off.. haha.
I'll not even begin to explain the aftermath of the race, but basically running a lot of a mtb lap with a bike, up steep inclines, bent over to hold onto the bars, turns out isn't such a good idea for your back! Really struggling to stand afterwards, but then I couldn't even bend down to sit in a seat, not desirable! Lay against a car for a while, got some iBuprofen gel on and about half a can of deep freeze on, and then finally made it into a seat. Couldn't move for about the next 2 or 3hrs, meaning I missed getting up onto the podium to get me photy taken, gutted.
It's now 3 days later and I still can't really bend down, back is still mega sore, but I can walk again, and it's getting better, so it's all good!
Track was amazing, big up the MBCC for doing such a super job of organising the race. Team Kellett was amazing, huge thanks for the lift down and back again, and packing up my tent when I was paralysed, and everything else. Also thanks to team BCC - Simon and James Curry and Gar Mckee for providing the morning's craic and helping the tent-packing efforts of the evening.
Also thanks as always to Rynopower for providing all me race fuel, and Green-oil for keeping everything running smoothly (unfortunately they can't fool-proof your derailleurs though..)
Monty, out.
Monty, out.
csb
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