Lady Dixon - XC NPS 4

After round 3 back in Tracton, I was not in a good shape. It most definitely cut my life expectancy by far too many years. Me back was broke, I couldn't walk on my left calve, and then I got a throat infection. I'm not even just gurning for the sake of gurning, I had to get me mummy to put on my socks and shoes for I couldn't Ben Dover, thankfully her mind isn't logical enough to realise that there was no reaching my feet in the shower either...

Many hours spent sleeping(it's a tough life), painkillering, hobbling round the house, and the back was getting better, and I've just got used to my left calf being a selfish brat. But then came the throat. Oh baby. There's only so many Soothers a man can eat in one day! Yearly recommended sugar allowance within a week, not to mention whatever other crap is in there. Difflam spray is class at numbing your throat, but unfortunately every bite of food still went down like a fire breathing cross between a rock and a cactus. That combined with not being able to sleep for more than 3hrs at a time: negative craic. So much so I was tidying my room at 4am one morning.. Disclaimer before the mums and dads force-feed their kids Soothers and Difflam.

2 weeks, 2hrs of bicycle riding. (n-2hrs) of thinking. Very dangerous. Not recommended.

Throat started clearing up a bit on Thursday, so rested and then took the bike out on Friday, hoping to get a few taper intervals done and get the software reinstalled in the legs. All good, got myself a new Strava KOM and all, buzzin'. Then came Saturday morning, and Friday's heavy breathing and time spent in a Sauna far too close some hairy 'big boned' men, had me back on the ever-diminishing anti sore throat collection, wondering whether I could race at all on Sunday or not.

Mummy thought I was wise not racing. Father couldn't believe a cold was stopping me. After Saturday morning spent reading as many stories of people racing with deadly throats as I could and checking the corresponding obituaries when I'd time in between forcefeeding my throat remedies. Turns out not many people died from racing with no throat, so I thought I'd head up to Lady Dixon for a practice lap or two and decide after that.

I'd write about that, but I want to get to bed at some stage before sunrise, you probably do too.

T'was Sunday morning, all lubed up with Green-oil's dry wax, digestive system lubed up with Rynopower's carbs and a few electrolyte tablets - not sure whether they give you diarrhoea or take it away - the mighty Saab's engine was ignited and wheels got turning in the direction of Lady Dixon park. Well, beforehand, I'd forgot to close the lid on the protein shaker and most of it was over the floor, left half the toolkit at home, but I HAD remembered to put my contact lenses in for the first time in many centuries, so everybody was smiling.

Got cruising did I and Father, and rolled into the Park before long. Thanks to XMTB for trying to tell me I'd missed sign-on even though I was an hour early, and Martin Grimley reiterating this ;) Take me to your time machine.. Got some fancy waxy rope rather than cable ties to put on my number, so was already saving grams on all the early sign-er on-ers of S2, loving it.. until I was tying the bottom one nice and tight round the head-tube to be super dooper aero, and it ripped through the number. Saving more grams. Was good to see Matthew Adair showing his face, and huge thanks to his family for doing my bottles!
Also I love good weather. I love how suddenly it's deemed appropriate for everyone to walk around with no top on. Why isn't it like that all the time. Best not to stand chatting round the toilets to other men while sporting the topless look though..

Brought my turbo, but couldn't decide whether I wanted to use it or not, there was already little enough grip on my rear tyre let alone sticking her on the grindstone on a hot day! Jumped on anyway as I'd nothing better to do. Oh boy. If you've too little money for a mx bike, but too much to have any sense, buy a hardtail and stick a Specialized Renegade tyre on the rear, on a turbo, and get some mx videos on. Some major clutching and throttle was given, and I got the engine worn in. As tempted as I was to stay and race my imaginary mx friends, Martin Grimley was getting sweatier and sweatier over by the start line, so I thought I better head over and get gridded.

A nice gridding spot was had, 2nd man in on the 2nd row. After a bit of a laboured start, the effects of my super pro warmup wearing off, and beginning to need the toilet a little, we finally set off and all further humanely thoughts were ejected. Animal time. First corner was always gonna be interesting, sprint into 90 degrees right hander, luckily I got by a few boys and got a smooth enough line through it, not too many elbows brushed. First section was carnage, a fairly large tree in the middle of the track that didn't seem to want to move for anybody, as good as their game of chicken was. Riders going everywhere, roost going everywhere, lethal craic.

Held her steady for the first lap, probably started in about 10th, think I came across the line 2nd in the first lap, happy days. I'm not gonna lie, I've no idea what happened after that. Just know I managed my main goal of not falling off, and was cornering fairly smooth by the end, so fairly happy. Got into first in the 2nd lap I think, then held it steady, thinking it was plain sailing from here. Pass a few s1s, pass a few ladies, then realise there's someone hanging about my tail. Ahhh go away.

Think it was lap 3 as he got closer I realised it was the man himself Marc Potts. Started off in A4 cat. on the road this year and is almost an A1 now. Man is a machine. The race had just begun.

Coming across the line onto the final lap I said to him to go on by, being the tactical genius that I am(not), I thought he'd probably be quicker in the singletrack, and I could slipstream him a bit on the grass, so it would all be much more civilised with me behind him rather than the other way round. Inevitably he didn't pass, ah balls, smash the singletrack and see if he can hold me. By this stage I was loving the singletrack, on the 4th lap lines be dialled. Pulled a couple of seconds on him occasionally, but I don't know whether I was going fast or he couldn't be bothered being tight on my wheel, as he always seemed to be dangling around my rear like a dingleberry.

Sat on the limiter for the grass, trying to make the most of a passing a few backmarkers and having a man between us both, but there wasn't much loosing him. Drank all me juice in a tactically genius realisation that my bike would be lighter if the contents of my bottle were in me, and I'd go faster. Maybe this helped, maybe it didn't, but by the bottom of the last climb towards the finish line, Marc was still behind me. Meanwhile I think my quads were still somewhere halfway round the lap, I'd dropped them somewhere, for every time I stopped pedalling came on a deadly cramp, my legs were crying out for their fallen friends on the battlefield. 

Slacked off a bit, again thinking I can save some energy if I ride behind him up this last open climb, and then hopefully pip him just before the line if I make it. Turned out as he came past, there were 2 S1 riders on his wheel, or something that seemed a lot more complicated than i'd expected. Then coming into the corner before the climb there was a lady rider, and he got infront of her, but I was stuck behind her in the corner. Basically I rode my spherical bits off to catch him again, but such a ship had long sailed. Crossed the line a couple of seconds back, 2nd S2 and 1st Junior.

Fairly happy, bike stayed in one piece, I drank up well, and spent no time on the ground. Quite the opposite to Tracton.

Well done to Marc for winning S2, Barry for not being last in the sprint, Dan for riding round in 3 gears, Matt for being Matt, Gareth for 2nd in S1, Findhan for riding round in a cotton t-shirt in 25 degrees, Simon for coming 4th S2, and I haven't seen the results so I don't really know how anybody else did, but if you did well, well done. And a huge thanks to XMTB for an awesome event, and Martin Grimely for keeping things running. Big up the Green Oil and Rynopower. Oh and thanks to everybody who took photos. If I stole yours and you don't like that, let me know. I'm sure I've forgotten somebody, for that I apologise, but its inevitable.

Skinsuits rock. Monty, out.

I may or may not add some more photos when I find them.

Oh and my throat is sore again, thanks for asking. I have my recovery tights on though so hopefully it'll be ok.

NPS 3 - Tracton Woods - Saturday Night

  So this is kinda cool. Cool. Good choice of words Dave, for not only is it rad to the max, man, its also a bit chilly. Lit only by the 'light' (loosely termed) of my windy uppy torch, heated only by mother nature herself(well, a base layer, 2x t-shirt, jacket, fleece, coat, tights, 2x tracksuit bottoms and a buff are probably helping a little too) and with only my brain, or indeed lack of it, for tonight's entertainment, we're in for an adventure tonight. Not a b&b like all the young felines nearby, but like many's a great men gone before me, *insert famous explorer names* , I'm in a tent. And I've just dropped a bit of sweetcorn or a pea, it's kind of too dark to determine which. Balls. Princess and the Pea vol. 2 - Princess and the Sweetcorn. I joke, if the ground was flat enough to feel a bit of sweetcorn I would be more than happy. Rather, it's consistency right now is that of a lumpy protein shake, with added cow dung.

  It's 22:58, and I really intended to be in 'bed' by now, but with that shiny gleam of over-assurance, I told Barry and Brian that I had everything out of the car that I needed. Which I guess in a sense is true, as I have my dinner, clothes, bicycle and iPod. I guess I just overlooked one minor detail, my sleeping bag. Now normally this would be a simple case of popping over to Brian's tent(we've got an awesome 3 tent village set up here) and asking him for the car keys. Unfortunately the night before a race is never that simple, and Brian and Barry have decided to head off into the forest on a track walk* (yes, it's 11pm..) so although the car is about 10ft from me, the keys are probably about 2miles away at this stage. Bummer. Who needs sleeping bags anyway?

  Barry picked me up at around 2.30pm from my house, we met Brian in Navan, and many, many hours, a couple of scenic detours, 3 toilet stops, 2.5L of water, 4 rice cakes, 2 sandwiches and half a bag of leaves later, we rolled into one of Cork's very finest cattle fields, or for this weekend, the venue of XC NPS 3 - Tracton Woods. 3 tents were erected with only the finesse of 2 of Cork's hungriest men, and another one who wanted to go and ride his bike.
  Believing it was the smart option, I got into my tent asap, got naked(its a whole different experience in a tent, probably not worth putting one up and trying it though) and got into my cycling gear to go for a practise lap. Hopped on me bike and got going. This was awesome for about 5mins of cycling up am open fire-road when I could see where I was going. Once I turned into the trail, or the dark hole that seemed to vaguely resemble a trail entrance, not a thing could I see. By this stage it was after 9.30pm and the sun has long headed over to the other side of the planet. A 'practise' lap was done nonetheless, but literally by feel rather than sight. As I lie here, I have no idea what the track looks like, or where good lines are. Which leads me to question the purpose of that practise lap, ah well, it was fantastic fun!
  Thankfully the track is as dry as my throat will be by the time I've finished me race: grip is very plentiful, which was handy considering I couldn't see anything. I felt many roots. I therefore assume there are many roots. Most definitely a track for full suspension. All the same, it seemed absolutely fantastic; lots of fun bits between the bucking bronto style onslaughts of roots. Most definitely looking forward to another practise lap in the morning when I can see.. assuming I make it through to the morning. Nah, I joke, it's lovely in this tent, there's fudge all wind, dare I say it: no rain, not much noise, and its really not that cold.

  But if Brian and Barry could come back anytime soon now that would be nice. My wee toes are a bit chilly.

  Maybe sleeping bags are kind of useful.. or even just a mat like the dog below

That's all for now, til tomorrow, Monty, over and out.

 *Barry and Brian Kellett are brothers, not gayboys.

Here Goes..

Follow @DaveMont

It's been too long. I'm completely at fault, I know, and for that I apologise *insert excuse*.
I've found myself heading onto this Blog somedays when slightly bored*, to find no changes. Then it sort of strikes me that it couldn't be updated, because it's me that updates it.. Adur. So here I am, here's an update, ka-boom. Please feel free to pop round and personally give me a kick up the ass if my next update takes this long.

*but not properly bored because only boring people get bored..

I have many stories for you to be honest, so many that I'd need a proper book to fit them all in, I guess this is the problem with no posts within the last month! I'm sorry, ok! Here are some photos and short stories anyway -

This is a photo of Rob Deegan upon a boat. Good times. This was down at the Avon Ri Hotel down in Blessington at an U23/Junior development camp. Had a fairly good time at this, little run on the Saturday, followed by circuits, nutrition talk, ride over to hotel, dinner, training talk. Then came general tippin' the place with Matt Adair and Rob Deegan, general running about the grounds of the hotel place in pitch darkness, active recovery, yeh? Found a zipline, lake with a pier, yachts, canoes, a bar, a playpark etcc. Playpark was a fabulous idea until we bailed down the slides and ended up with soaking bottoms for the rest of the night. Sunday started with porridge for breakfast, this did nothing but reinforce my strong dislike of porridge and leave me feeling pretty dodgy for the rest of the morning, but thankfully the rest of the day was pretty easy going so I'd nothing to worry about... I wish. The next part of the day consisted of a 3hr road spin. Bare in mind at this stage I have not begun any training whatsoever as I'm trying to get these injuries out of the way first.'Fair enough', I thought, a 3hr zone 2 ride should just about leave me standing afterwards. About 20mins into the ride, we're going about 25mph and I realise this is going to be no easy spin. It only got worse, worse and worse after this. So I tried having a little fun. We were doing hill intervals on a hill with those big old 10ft long speedbumps, so coming back down the hill I was grabbing as much air as possible. Banter was being had, until about the 3rd time I came down the hill, you know how it is, you can't resist descending a little faster every time, trying to get as much air as possible.. fabulous idea this was, right up until I was cruising through the air, looking down and seeing the backside of the speedramp passing by under me. Then the nose starting dipping and I really started getting scared. Ended up overjumping one of the babies by a good couple of feet. Flat landing the road bike after being in the air for over 10ft, not good by any stretch of the imagination. Must practise road bike scrubbing. Or not trying to jump in the first place... there's an idea! But yes, on with the torture that was the 3hr spin. We were pedalling at 24mph into a headwind on an incline at one stage? Well, I say 'we', by this I mean everybody else, as I just had to sandbag for the last hour. Someday I shall post on the concept of sandbagging, as it really isn't as easy going as it appears! It was a strange experience for the last hour of the ride. My legs should have been absolutely screaming their little heart out at me, but it was raining heavily, about 1 degree centigrade(which is about -50 when riding at 20mph into a headwind) and pretty windy. So rather than being able to feel my legs burning, I couldn't feel them at all, and please believe me, that feeling was no more desirable. Overall a pretty terrible ride, but it was worth it to hear the training talks and general craic that was had in the hotel. Oh, and to see this class statue on the right. Please leave a comment with your ideas of what on earth the kid is doing..

As you can see, this is not a good situation to be in. For any of you non-bikers out there, the deelybopper sticking out from the handlebars is in fact my gear cable: it should not be there. Thankfully I've always wanted to own a singlespeed bike, so I wasn't really that annoyed, I just would've rather have had the choice of deciding to buy a singlespeed bike, than being landed with a snapped gear cable 10miles from home!! Luckily, I was about 3miles from a local hardware store at this stage so with the mech stuck in the heaviest gear and some major hills to get over, I gave her stacks. Got to the hardware store and borrowed a screwdriver and rammed the limiter screw on the mech in until the bike was fixed in 3rd gear. Then continued to do about 40miles in 3rd gear.
Suddenly I seem to have gone off the idea of a singlespeed..

Crusing along the road down to Scarva, thought I'd head out Portadown direction on the Towpath. Turns out the towpath was a river.. Even better!! Made a good 3 attempts at cycling through this, but it was just getting ridiculous, it just kept getting
deeper and deeper. Thankfully there was a bit of wind on my back, so when it got so deep that I couldn't pedal without getting a footful of water, I was able to just keep the pedals level and the wind blew me along. But then the water started creeping up to the shoes even when the pedals were level, mostly due to the waves that were forming because of the wind! So with the bike's best interests in mind, I wasn't fond on getting the bottom bracket submerged, we turned back. Turning was much easier said than done, the towpath is only about 6ft wide at the best of times, and there's proper river on either side, but when path is covered by river, you can't see where the edges of the path are, and trying to manoeuvre a road bike through 180 degrees without being able to turn the cranks because of the water, while being blown to bits by the wind, is really quite an experience. I see a new sport evolving? haha. Get the speedos out.


In this photo(apologies for the quality, or lack of it) you'll spot a Jaffa Cake in the most unusual of places. How it managed to end up there, I know not. The other day I was just about to start a turbo session, but was a little peckish. Headed up to the kitchen and there was a glorious box of Jaffa Cakes in the top drawer. Mmmm. I took two, ate one, and set the other one ontop of the headset while I put my shoes on. Absolutely psyched for Jaffa Cake no.2 after eating the first one, looking forward to jumping on the bike and getting it and getting stuck into a good turbo session.. Head over to the bike, could Jaffa Cake no.2 be seen? Defffinitely not. Spent the next 10mins looking for the little piece of Jaffa joy, looking in every corner of the room, under every box and various other junk scattered around the room, telling myself 'it couldn't have rolled this far', but not being one to give up, searching on anyway. Finally, I think, 'screw it, I'll make do with no Jaffa Cake'. Hop onto the bike, look down, and the very bugger itself is sitting pretty balancing between the gear cable and the frame. Can you believe that? Losing Jaffa Cakes #firstworldproblems..

Getting into the Christmas spirit with pro Vitus rider Gareth Mckee, good times. In poundland waiting for mother one day and spotted a load of Christmassy hats, normally I wouldn't be one to spend a penny, but for the sake of putting a few smiles on peoples faces out round the roads with a Santa hat on my helmet, I got myself the biggest looking hat I could find. A bit of insulating tape, some duck tape and a bit of Blue Peter magic and I had myself a new helmet..

I got a laptop for Christmas, cheers Mother and Father. Luckily for you brilliant readers, this, in theory means more updates(Ohhh goody, I know). Mum got a camera that takes HD Video too, so sooner or later I'll get a video up, once my legs begin to work again. Regarding the lack of legs situation, it was getting better, with 45 odd hours of rehab work ontop of a similar amount of swimming and zone 1 cycling I was really giving my legs no excuses to get back into working order. Unfortunately all my muscles are still stupendously tight, and my knees are still fairly banjaxed. But all is better, if only slightly, than October, progress is progress, and we like progress :)

This photo has nothing to do with bicycles, other than you've found it here, on a bicycle Blog. I was just waiting for me Ma the other day, and saw this guy bating it down the main street in this West Coast Customs special. Absolute boss beyond measure. Ridin' solo. Pretty sure that's not legal, but who's gonna catch him when he's upon a powerhouse of a steed like that!

For now, that's all. Phew, says you. If you come back tomorrow there'll be something new though, I promise. Monty, out.

UK School Games Day 1

You know the way you need the right kind of music to do certain things, well I began writing this about 2 hours ago, and then decided it would be good to stick some tooones on. That resulted on sticking Spotify on, realising that most of the songs I want to listen to 'have already been played 5 times' so can't play them again. Ever. Ah maybe someday I'll be able to afford a Premium account. Finally I think I've found something that'll do for now, got Nero's new album - Welcome Reality, so here goes naathin!

Sainsbury's UK School Games was probably the biggest event of the season for me.. so obviously with my luck everything began to go wrong just before-hand!

Left knee is still pretty goosed from January this year. Trying to get a physio who knows what's going on is like finding a haystack in a coal mine, only about 20 times as expensive. If anybody's reading this and rates themselves as a physio or sells legs, gimme an email at davidmmonteeATaolDOTcom (if you're selling viagra or offering me a saudi arabian bank account please don't). Right knee was grand, was getting through the season pretty decently with a leg and a half, but then I fell off in Dromore park of all places, a month and a bit ago, so it's now screwed too. Mad pain in behind the kneecap. I'm meant to be going to Plymouth for the final British NPS next Friday, so if you could get those legs to me ASAP that'd be great. Cheers.

Got the overnight boat on Wednesday evening, arriving in Sheffield in the party bus (Shelbourne Motors kindly donated a van to our cause) at about 9am Thursday morning. Just in time for a full fry! Knocked that back, then back to the van and down to Sheffield University, or the Athlete Village. Stood about there for roughly a lifetime, and then finally got some Lipsyl(the first freebee we got like, was wondering if we were at the right place at all..) and our passes and then headed to the rooms. Ohh baby. I'd love to tell you the rooms were amazing, lovely place etc etc. But I think I was too tired to really take in the surroundings by the time we got to our rooms on the FIFTH floor!! Looking back I really should have counted the stairs to make this seem legit. But there were 2 flights for each floor and there must have been a good 10 steps on each flight. First competition of the weekend was getting up them with food, clothes and water!

So yeh, coming into the UKSG with a cold and no knees. Brilliant. Had to lower my expectations of getting at least the 1 win and top 5ing everything else to settling for top 15 in everything, but mostly just making it through every race alive. This worked for all of about 10 minutes, before I was knocked off on the only fireroad part of the course, and subsequently ripped my whole left side to pieces. But more about that later. Back to the 2nd morning..

Left the Village and got on the bus to take us down to Wharncliffe and Wheata Woods. Feeling a bit sick, just the old dose of the nerves I thought. Well, nerves and the fact that I'd had some scrambled eggs and tomatoes thismorning, then some cereal, then some fruit, then a load of water, then some lockets to get my throat working again, then tried to take some painkillers. Lockets and scrambled eggs on their own I'm sure don't mix so good in retrospect, and with everything else packed in there too it didn't look promising. Knowing it wasn't gonna be a good start to the day, I just tried to get on with it, normally feel awful before a race anyway. But then I tried taking the painkillers without any water (for whatever reason like..). This resulted in a nice big gag as the first one didn't go down quite right. Sprinted to the other side of the field for a bit of privacy and I'll save you the detail on the rest. Chundering. Not good.

Sitting top 3 or top 5 in the first event, feeling confident, boom, 13th. Bad just got worse. On the positive at least I could wrap some bandages around it and people would know I'm injured and cut me some slack. Muscular pains are so selfish in that way, nobody else can see them. Haha. Got it sprayed with something and a couple of plasters over it and got back down to the pits to recover for the next heat. Don't even know how I did in it to be honest! Not so good anyway. Managed to end up in the C finals in which I took third. Dirt Crits were basically track racing on mountain-bikes on singletrack. We started at the back of the grid in almost every heat, and getting past 15 other boys on a track wide enough for 1 bike wasn't quite impossible, but pretty darn close. Lesson 1 of the weekend learnt: Starts are everything.

Next up that day was the Team Relay event. By now my good old pisspot had been noticed getting sideways by a couple of guys, mainly the commentator, so the weekend was looking like it wasn't gonna be terribly successful, but tremendously fun styling it up for the crowd. Think we were sitting 2nd last in the Team Relay by the time it came to me as last man, top teams must have been finishing very shortly after I left. Took off in the standard power-wheelie and drifted her round the first corner, commentator going wild. Hell yeh, buzzing. Luckily a lap was sub-10mins so I could just smash it out and not really worry about tiring. Gave it my best, sent the jumps for all they were worth and got my lines sorted for the rest of the races in the weekend.

Passed 2 or 3 people on my way round so we must have ended up at the top end of the bottom 5. Lol. After racing we weren't allowed to take our own transport back, we had to get the bus with all of the other teams. Fair enough for the teams that had 10 or whatever amount in them, but it was a bit of a nightmare for the 4 of us having to pack up super quick, take all the bags we wanted with us and then run up to the bus when the van was sitting about 2 metres outside the tent! On the way out to the Woods it was the same. Packed into the bus like sardines isn't at all desirable when you're feeling like Britney Spears after a night out (luckily I still had my hair though).Day 1 finished up with dinner back at the University, and bed. Only I couldn't get to sleep because I was stuck to the bed with my cuts. By 1.30am, knowing I had to be up in the morning by 5.45am, I was beginning to get slightly worried. Only thing I could think of was wrapping myself in toilet roll, so that's what I did. Seemed to do the trick, managed to get to sleep.

Unfortunately I overslept a little. Hadn't set the alarm as lads said they'd shout and knock for me. Clearly I was sleeping deep when they knocked and shouted, so I woke up and it was 6.15am and everybody was going down to breakfast. Que leaping out of bed shatting myself, realising I've toilet paper stuck to almost every bit of my body and it's on with insulating tape. Classic. Was like trying to pull a snake off myself, wrestled with it for a good 5mins before finally getting it off. Needless to say the floor was white, luckily there was no room service or they'd be wondering where on earth Santa's Grotto had come from.Day 2 shall be in the next post.