Irish National XCO Championships 2012 - Djouce Wood - Sunday

Breakfast time at 8am began with a bowl of fruit, it'd be rude not to. Following that was a bowl of cereal for the same reasons. Then we were presented with the real menu, and it was only politeness to order a ham, cheese and tomato omelette. Some toast was set on the table, probably about 6 slices of that were on my plate at one stage and then mysteriously disappeared. Before I knew it, a fairly sizeable slice of wheaten bread found its way onto my plate and everybody knows a plate cannot be left til it's clean. A good 30mins after we'd began, it was finally over, we'd conquered it. Job done. Many sighs of relief. Chilling out, chatting away, and next thing the B&B owner comes over to the table with a plate of peppers and carrot. The boys had been joking that I wanted some cabbage in my omelette as I usually have a good plate of spinach and beetroot juice with me breakfast. Inspired by this and my lettuce eating acts of the previous day when we had arrived in the car, the B&B owner had no cabbage, but had thrown together the best meal she could in the form of peppers and carrot. Much laughing was done, and then the reality struck that I was gonna have to eat this too. Life's hard at the top. Not one to back away from a food based challenge, I set about the 'icing on the cake' as it was. Solid preparation for a race not too many hours later on in the day, right? This is what Joe (friel) would want.

Wind things on a bit to 1.30pm, as I hopped on the turbo and got the legs spinning to prepare for the battle of epic proportions that loomed ahead like a tropical(e.g places such as Kinallen) storm. Tunes were a blasting on the iPod as I got to work. If I could go back in time right now I'd probably go there and turn the sun down and not have ended up with bib-short tan lines on my back: probably not the best look.

Gave my bottles to Lucy(thanks ever so much, you did an awesome job) and headed off to the start line. Line up behind the mighty Elite force of Irish XC MTB we did, and watch in awe as they tore the start field to bits, McKee's steak from the night before clearly not quite affecting him yet as he took the holeshot. A minute later, or so, "I'm gonna blow the whistle within the next 10seconds" announced the man with the whistle. I guess this meant we were meant to go then.

I think I missed this memo. Everybody took off, I tried to clip in while in the land of fluffy elephants and cows with trunks. Probably y-fronts. I was either in 2nd last or last place as we hit the first corner. Hmmm. Got out of the saddle and sprinted a bit to get a good line into the next corner, but to no avail. Awwwh fork. Tried again before the next corner came, this time I made some ground and got a good line through the corner, slipping into 3rd or 4th as we headed down the hill towards a rough and rooty bit of singletrack. Out of the whole course, I think this was one of the toughest bits, so hard to build or maintain any sort of rhythm over the random roots and holes, although the lads on 29'ers probably just thought they were riding on a bouncy castle as usual.

First real climb of the track was a steep one, attacked on this and didn't look back. Heard tyres behind me for far too long and worried a little bit, but thankfully by the first bit of singletrack I was all on my lonesome. 'Battled with my machine' as Phil Liggett would say, through the veins of the earth, managing to stay upon my bicycle relatively well. Then onto XTC's descent. So, so beautiful. Bump, bump, berm, berm, berm, bump, berm, jump... you get the picture. Probably still losing about 10 seconds a corner to Gareth, but the entire track had a devilish tendency to leave you absolutely kebabed for any of the 'fun' descents. A final berm and bump shot you out onto the fireroad at lightspeed, and it felt only right to try and maintain the pace to the next section of trail and make motorbike noises to yourself. 

A hugely technical but fairly short descent ensued, a proper bike killer: rough, rooty, twisty, slippy. In practice I could hit this sweet as you like, but come race time, on every lap I made some stupid mistakes after leaving all my energy behind on the fireroad to get there. As the gaps between the trees got smaller every lap, my shoulders got more and more battered as I pinballed my way down.

A fun off camber descent, some more bermy corners and a deadly steep climb(there were some shouty people here on my 3rd lap, spectators are awesome!) and then as your memory told you you should be ripping down a super fast straight line descent back to the fireroad, the trail turned up the hill. Here, it seemed no man had boldly stepped before, a small hill for Seymour and a large hill for mankind. I didn't even notice this climb on my first practice lap as I was so preoccupied with trying to stay in a straight line with 40psi in my tyres, but unfortunately, come race time, I had no such luxury. It was tough going, very steep, but also enough roots and technical bits to completely flummox you if you lost even half a degree of concentration.

 To prove this point, obviously just for your benefit, on my 3rd lap I lost my concentration for a second. It came back relatively quickly as my rear end slipped out on a root. Brain says dab left foot - foot follows suit - brain did not calculate the steepness of the hill we were riding on the side of and the fact that the ground below my left shoe was a good 30cm below where it should be - eject. So as I rolled down the hill mostly on my face I just hoped that there was nobody close behind me that I'd be stuck behind for the rest of the climb. More important was probably getting back to my bike, easier said than done when lying in the opposite direction you would like to be on the side of a huge hill. With an allmighty pressup I pushed the earth down and myself up, and slipped my way up the hill back to my bike. Getting started again was 'interesting', and once you'd lost your rhythm, it was extremely tough going on the climb that I hadn't noticed the day before.

Final lap, mostly having fun smashing turns out behind the people I was lapping, then back to the sufferfest once I got round them. It finally struck me that I had won as I hit the last bit of singletrack coming back into the start field, so I threw the best whip that my lack of energy could do, and stood up and got on the pedals to push it in to the line and clear a bit more room for post-race binging. Coming through the start field was awesome with all the tech/feed zone crew cheering and the finish flag just around the next corner. Popped an absolutely horrific wheelie as I crossed the line and that was it for another year. Irish Junior XC Champion. 

A huge sigh of relief as the entire year's being a bumder, missing loads of parties, not really leaving the house, spending every last penny on my bicycle, training all on my own, going to bed early etc. was completely worth it as I crossed the line with another 9 minutes passing before 2nd place came home.

Thanks to all the family members, friends, accomplices and sponsors behind the scenes that make it possible! As always, rocking Green Oil's fine products on my bike, and Rynopower in my belly.

Monty, over and out.

(Ps to anybody wondering how I can win an XC National Championships, but not ride a local road race, my knee is still giving me loads of trouble, and flares up really badly if I'm on the bike for more than 2hrs. Mtb races are 1h-1h30, while road races are 2/3/4h, I'd love to be racing them, but I physically can't at the minute)

Irish National XCO Championships 2012 - Saturday

Horrific, impossible, plain old fashioned crazy, would have been my response had you asked me what I thought of the course after my first lap on Saturday. I hit roots, I slid, I hit corners, I slid, I hit Willy, I fell. The most important race of my year, and I'd forgotten how to ride a bike. Meanwhile, Gareth danced off down the trail, taking everything in his stride. What was I missing here? To be fair, I'd come home from Davagh NPS, washed my mountain bike, bolted it to the turbo trainer and there it stayed til Saturday morning of race weekend. Making excuses already Dave, oh dear oh dear.


Myself, Vitus/CRC superstar Gareth Mckee, and chief driver/mechanic/organiser/Vets racer/all round nice guy William Mulligan set off from Banbridge at 10am sharp, t-28hrs. As the wheels got rolling and the craic flowing, plans to sleep on the drive down were scuppered as usual. After getting some severe slagging for tucking into a bag of lettuce leaves: the perfect roadtrip snack in my eyes, it was clear that deep down, Mckee was just jealous. Willy kindly pulled in to a filling station for him to try and squeeze a greasy sandwich into the lettuce shaped hole in his belly.


Shortly after, we bumped into the most beautiful start field in the country (minus the fresh sheep waste packages). I'm getting deadly at remembering to put my contact lenses in for races of late, it's so nice to be able to see, and what nicer than Powerscourt waterfall and many miles of lush countryside and pretty peaks to look at. Headed to the sign on tent, was greeted by some nice WORC men, and put pen to paper as best as I could remember how after not being near school for the last month. No turning back now, race number 301 became my lucky number for the weekend whether I liked it or not.

 
Setting out on our first practice lap was not a pretty sight. In fact, it was more a case of a similar word, that rhymes with sight. Thankfully we got back to the Mulligan Mobile after lap 1, and knowing there wasn't much potential of pinch flats, I stuck a Nobby Nic on the front in place of the Renegade, and let about 20psi out of the Racing Ralph on the rear. Screwed out the Terralogic thingy on my forks and slowed the rebound down a bit, and we were ready to roll, round 2. Immediately the Canyon felt like more of a John Deere: we were going nowhere fast, but the grip was almighty. The difference in the 1st and 2nd laps was like day and night, and a smile couldn't help but creep across my face as I rode over roots I could barely ride around half an hour ago. After Willy sacrificing himself on multiple occasions in the quest of finding the limit of his Racing Ralphs, we called it a day. Saturday it shall be known as from now on. Throttled the John Deere back to the car, well, what was left of the car under Djouce's thriving fly population, and headed down to our B&B. Coolakey House was the place, literally less than 5mins down the road, fine job. Was tucking into my bag of lettuce leaves as we pulled up, kind of oblivious to the fact that we'd stopped and the owner of the B&B was at the window of the car chatting to us. Guess I should've been looking at her, pretending to listen and smiling at various intervals, but I was too busy munching. "Are you hungry?" she asked. 'No, I'm David', I thought, as I was reluctantly drawn into the conversation. Soon after, we got the keys to our rooms and I headed out for a cooldown as Gareth took to the shower.


 
Got back just in time to see my boy Brad Wiggins finish the TT, all about 10 black and white pixels of him that spanned the TV screen, while some woman nattered away in the language that only those of TG4 understand. Stole some of Mckee's magic shower gel and got the hot and cold juices flowing. Fast forward through a good night's craic with the BCC men, Clive Caldwell, and his best lady, Lucy.. chilling out in the common room bit of the B&B. Got a bit bored and headed in to the breakfast room to see what I could find, came out with an orange, mug of what tasted like heated diluting juice, I think they call it herbal tea or something. McKee tells me you don't put milk in there with water, but you're probably not meant to put weetabix in either so that was the least of my worries/extravagances.

Bed time. I'm not going to lie. I've literally been fearing this every day for an entire year. I'll not even begin to go into explaining the noises Gar makes when he's blissfully riding his bike through the clouds in z'land, but if you're reading this MI5, and you've some boys you need a torturing, I'm sure Gareth wouldn't charge too much if you supplied him a bed and a teddy. After heading off to bed at about 10pm last year with what lay ahead still a mystery, I tucked myself in and snuggled up to my pillow. Little did I know I would spend the next 4 hours in every position imaginable, and some probably not, trying to find somewhere that I was hidden from the sound waves coming from McKee's airways. On the toilet, behind the curtains, between the bed and the wall, at the other end of the bed, in the far corner, with my bag ontop of my head, with the bed ontop of my head, nothing worked. Fortunately the mental and physical expenditure involved in the planning and testing of the various positions eventually led me to sleep, the last time I checked my watch it'd been 2.30am...

This year I was prepared. I'd been practicing all year, and not yet found a single pair of ear plugs that would stay in my ears. As thick a pair as I could find, and as big a roll of duct tape as I could find were going to have to do the trick. Earplugs in, duct tape wrapped round head and keeping the ear plugs in place, all I could hear was my heart beating in my head (If you've seen 4 Lions this may bring back good memories) and with those thoughts I drifted off to sleep. Job done. Praise be to God.



Tune in tomorrow for part 2, it'll probably mention the race thing I did on Sunday...