Here Goes..

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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.

Screw the 'only write about interesting things' idea, here's a true ramble if a ramble ever was rambled

Ok, so it's been a month or two since I last updated the blog. This is partly due to my internet taking a huff, and partly down to me doing nothing interesting in the last month or two, not gonna lie. I know I said that I'd only write things when I did something interesting, and not try and make glaringly uninteresting stuff interesting, but screw that, I've nothing better to do right at this point, and I guess you're already a couple of lines into this post, so you must be sort of interested in this bull excrement?

In my months of uninterestingness, the cyclocross sensation Jeremy Powers, has rekindled my flame for finding the ultimate beats: those mad remixes that you hear one time and your water breaks, but then never hear them again, and like a forgotten sandwich in your schoolbag, they become a distant memory until one day, while looking for something else, they knock you out. I've found a couple of those tunes, and they say to share is to care, so obviously imma show you all how much I care about you and share this toonage with you guysss: these will make your balls drop.
(These are all ravey beat type numbers, I do have a fairly extension of acoustic and metally songs if you're interested though? Leave a comment or g'is a shout through some sort of internet communication medium)(If they're pulled down by the powers that be before you get to see them, your bad, visit my blog more often and don't miss stuff)

Avicii - Levels (Flo-rida Remix)


Dune - Heiress Of Valentina (Alesso Remix)


Example - Kickstarts (Afrojack Remix) (Takes a while to start, skip her to 1:15 and you're sorted)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJHdbbkPLg

Labrith ft. Tinie Tempah - Earthquake


Nadia Ali, Starkillers & Alex Kenji - Pressure (Alesso Remix)


Rizzle Kicks - Down With The Trumpets (Star Slinger Remix)


Tara McDonald vs Sidney Samson - Dynamite (Nicky Romero Remix)


This one isn't a 'tune' as such, but they take a Maybach, stick the grille where the boot should be and the boot where the grille should be, give it wider wheelarches and stick a dragon inside the exhausts, so it suffices for a listen/watch in my humble opinion?
Kanye West ft. Jay-Z - Otis


In other news, I remembered about this blog today http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ . And what a blog it is.

Heading down to Dublin tomorrow with Ciara MacManus and Robby Deegdawg for some strength and conditioning day organised by Cycling Ireland, looking forward to that, has been much to long since I've chatted to the lads and had a solid training sesh with them!

Currently, bike-wise I'm not really upto much. Left knee is a little on the sore side so I've just been stretching the bit out and doing super gentle miles(not Myles..) most days on the mountain-bike to ensure it doesn't get any worse! 7.5mph average yehhh buddy. Hopefully the old patella shall be feeling fly like a g6 come November time; the Rynopower downed; chain Green-oiled up; and training will begin! BOOM. Hitting the gym once a week at the minute with Elite NPS no.1 hero Gareth Mckee, and had the pleasure of seeing Sir Simon Curry, James Curry, Matty Teggart, Gareth Hillen and Josh Daly all down pumping the 'ron the other night. Basically Banbridge Cycling Club took over the JIM. Ever done 100s?! The whole gym could probably hear me about to take a stroke, terrible craic. But then again it's so enjoyable? There must most certainly a couple of wires touching in my cranium.

Got onto the Irish Youth Talent Team 2020 - http://cyclingulster.com/?thenewsid=5122&newstable=news - so if all goes to plan you can see me at the Olympics in 2020! Stick it in your phone as a reminder. Be cool to look back and see the good old days right here, the times of yore and all that. Definitely buzzin' to get some real training done, can see 2012 being a very good year!

That's all for now. Got some www.rynopower.com in the post there today, but, delivery companies, do they not realise that most of us have jobs/school at mid-day? Don't think I've ever gotten a package on time. Instead of them coming at a reasonable time or leaving the package somewhere handy, I'm gonna have to ring ma boys DHL Express and inform them of my whereabouts over the next couple of days so I can sort a time to get my RYNOPOWER!! Going to tip the gym like, can't wait.

But for now I'm away to pack my bags for tomorrow coz' I'm an organised kid like that. Over and OUT. Thanks for reading!

"I think Joey's ok"

Got a link to this on Faceyb today, couldn't have you's missing out on it! You could honestly watch this 50 times and still laugh every time. Oh Joey you've made my day. Enjoy!

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.