Irish XC NPS 6, Davagh Forest

Today, some boys ran round a field, faffing around after a ball on tv, and falling over a bit. Closer to home, some boys sat on motorcross bikes, ploughed a field in Desertmartin and blew apart some old ladies' hearing aids. The real men, you'll have found in Davagh Forest, in a fearsome battle against every force mother nature could bring, armed only with some bottles of juice and a bicycle. Man vs. much mud and many midges. Heroes of war we should all be crowned, for just surviving.

As I finally scrape enough of Davagh Forest's finest mud out of what's left of my eyes to get two clear bits I can see through, I guess it's time to put some words down. I was told once that if you've a couple of sore bits, the body tends to pick up the worst pain most, and forget about the other ones. After punching my arm silly before going into the dentist's one day, coming out tail firmly between my legs: throbbing arm, some deadly painful holes were there used to be teeth, and an incredible vengeance at who-ever was winding me up, I was less than convinced. Only today did it strike me where I went wrong all those years ago: I needed a yellow bottle of 'midge repellent cream', that someone had used all up, then decided to keep their Hydrochloric Acid in. Who's was that? Boyyyy did it burn. Suddenly all the other niggles disappeared, my brain seemed much more concerned that the skin on my face was about to disappear too. I may stick to the Skin So Soft in future...

As I left the house, with only the directions on Carn Wheelers's website and my worse than awful sense of direction, I tapped 'Davagh Rd' into the Sat Nav... 'road not found'. Hmm. I'll try the next mentioned road. 'Sixtowns Rd'... 'road not found'. Technology, eh. This was looking good already!

We finally got up to Davagh late Saturday evening. Most of my family lives up around that end of the country, so I thought it'd be handier to get a lap in on Saturday, kip up at Granda's for the night, then scoot back over to Davagh in the morning for my day's bog snorkelling. At about 7.30pm, mother and myself pulled into an empty carpark in the furthest depths of nowhere's rear end, and Mum's expectations of a happy little camping village with lots of nice people on bikes milling about, fell faster than the Greek economy. Definitely a potential spot for a good scary movie. Didn't have contact lenses in, do have a box of 30 of them or something, but thought I'd save them to the big day, counting my pennies. While lying on my head in a bush in the first section, I decided it would've probably been better if I could see where I was going.

Looked at some fancy lines through the first section, tried riding them, fell off some more, and eventually just thought screw it, we'll probably still be congested by this stage so I'm not going to make or lose much time: ride the main line. Some technical climbs and descents round the rest of the track made for great fun, but it was a true hard-man's course, no let-up at all; pedal, pedal and pedal some more. Tyre choice was going to be a huge factor. Mud tyres seemed logical, for half the track was riding through bottomless bog, but then the other half of the track was smooth singletrack or fireroad. Oh what to do? Go with my worn out driest tyres obviously. Semi-slick Specialized Renegade on the front, kinda grippy Schwalbe Racing Ralph on the rear: it would be doing the steering.

Fast forward a bit to race day, woke up and the sky was still leaking; the track wasn't gonna be any drier anyway. Race was off at 2pm, so hopped on the turbo at about 1.45 and got some blood moving in the legs. Let out as much liquid weight as possible, and headed down to the line. Gridding got started for the mighty men of S2 and our Junior selves, and I was on the front row somehow, awesome. There was no pressure for a good start as the track had about a mile of fire road climbing before any singletrack suffering began. That said, I still did intend to put my foot into my pedal rather than the ground as the whistle went(or whatever they do to start the race, is it only me that honestly can't remember!?), but didn't quite get it in, so was about 20th before I knew it. 

Up the fireroad it was crazy as usual. People ducking and diving everywhere, one side of the road to the other, anywhere there was a gap, or they thought there was a gap, they'd jump into it. More times than not it was only in their imagination, resulting in the glorious tune of tyre buzzing and f'ing announcing our arrival. Men and mice separated, we hit the first bit of bog, through a puddle, or pond moreso, and then a slip and slide down til we hit the gravel singletrack. Would've loved to have been a spectator for that bit, boys everywhere and every shape. Thankfully there's not much else to do where I live than ride around fields, and most of the time it's raining, so I was well used to the terrain.

Got through the start loop and onto the main track, sitting in 5th or so at this stage. Unfortunately Moses was no-where to be seen as we neared the red sea, so we could do nothing but ride through it and hope for the best every lap. Pre-jumped into it and held on tight. Hit the thing so hard on my 3rd lap my front foot clipped out on the impact!

Still a couple of people infront of me, so put in a good effort to get by them to get to the trenches first in the hope I wouldn't lose too much time on my dry tyres. As promised, this bit was deadly. Was like nature's own turbo trainer, you could sit there and pedal as hard as you like and still make no ground. Only managed to clear the whole thing once in my 4 laps, but it was great fun just trying to keep the bike upright and moving in it. Back onto a fireroad descent, into 1st now.

After that I just held it steady and gave her the beans every time I caught a glance of an S1 rider on up the trail. Tried my best not to slack on the fireroads to ensure I was doing my dry tyres worthwhile. Many many slips and slides came and went, to be expected on that type of track. Brilliant fun had. All overshadowed by almost losing it on a super high speed but really tight little bit of gravel singletrack towards the end of the lap though. Must've been doing a solid 20mph as my front wheel caught the inside of the corner, front end started to fold, all my weight went over the front, rear end started to slide a lot, all the ingredients for the perfect face first smash. Thankfully my foot magically appeared and saved my life... and then got caught in the hedge and the whole thing started to happen again! Like there wasn't enough soil in my bib shorts already! Some great descents on the track though, most of them were fairly high speed slidey rooty bits, kept you on your toes.

One of the bridges in the boggy bit had no wire mesh on the first half of it. Front wheel popped on fine, this was going to be ok, back wheel on, go to pedal off it... ABORT! Feet were only starting to dry out a bit after the river crossing, then boom, both feet in half a foot of water and half a foot of muck below it. Need a better offroad diff installed! Eventually by the 4th lap I'd caught on that riding over them would be quicker than falling into them; eased off a bit and made it over. Just.

Caught me bud Matt Adair halfway round the last lap, so cruised with him in to the finish. Crossed the line for the last time, 1st S2 and 1st Junior, happy days. Matt was shouting at me to come for another lap, but as tempting as it was, I'm still carrying far too many injuries to be able to risk doing any more than required! Laughed at him having to drag his body round the battlefield for another lap, and took the much more inviting fire-road back to the car, to get some food.

Big thanks to Rynopower and the much needed Green Oil for the support. The bike cleaner was definitely of use! Thanks to Carn Wheelers for the class show they put on (lovely trophies too), Martin Grimley for keeping things running smoothly, all of the photographers, me mummy for taking me down, Brian Kellett for doing my bottles, everybody that moved over when I called 'rider up', all of S2 for leaving me alone, and Paddy and Stuart for a big hug on the podium. Oh and whoever supplied the box of bananas at the end can't be forgotten either, cheers!

Monty, out.

Green Oil Kit Has Arrived

It may have taken a while to get this length, but to be fair to Mr Green Oil he's been on BBC News with this stuff lately so I guess he had more important things on his mind than getting my kit in the post!

Today the Parcelfarce van rolled up the drive and a fairly shabby looking box landed in through the door. Looked a bit like they couldn't find a football for their tea-break and booted this around instead. Cheers boys.
Once I had completed the completely pointless exercise of trying to fit something that looks even remotely like your own signature into the handheld computer thing the postymen have, I got my hands on the box. I ended up sending the postman away with a scribble that not even a dyslexic one year old fish would be proud of, although I'd answered the door with only one holey(not holy..) sock on as I was in the middle of putting me socks on when the doorbell rang, so I'd imagine with the overall appearance I was going for, he wasn't terribly surprised with my attempt at a signature. Art, I shall call it...


Got the box opened and this was what was inside. Looks pretty sick it's gotta be said.



Huge thanks to Green Oil for supporting me this year, looking forward to working with them.
Take a look at their website - http://www.green-oil.net/

Monty.

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.

First Day Of Talent Team 2020

Had sort of been wondering whether to stick up a post about this or not as I haven't got much to say, but a short post'l probably do no harm!

What is the Talent Team 2020?

"Talent Team 2020 was recently launched with the aim of nurturing the young talented cyclists that we have in Ireland, and building a structure that will see the development of cyclists through to the 2020 Olympics. 16 of the best U16 riders in the country have been selected originally."

It kicked off on Saturday 29th October with a lovely drive down to Scott MacDonald's Winning Solutions in Dublin -

Session began with a rough introduction to all of the coaches and different important people there and then headed down to the CI van (you'll see she's no D-turbo) for some photos.



Then the sun came out and being Irish we had no idea what to do as we don't experience the rays too often: so everybody closed their eyes and looked generally retarded. Classic. Click on it there and you can see it bigger, fasten your seatbelts...



Then individual photos came, and things went from bad to worse, I'll save you the torture of having to look at a close up photo of me with a couple of hours sleep the night before.

After photos we jogged down to the local park for a bit of run. Probably shouldn't have done this due to my knee but thought I'd give it a go and see what happened. Wasn't too bad, sandbagged at the back for the duration of it to ensure I didn't push too hard. Hopefully can get this knee, or what's left of it, sorted for the season and not be sandbagging for the year! But, we look on injuries as a positive. Time to practise not looking like I've just fallen out the back of the yellow bus in photos.

Jogged back up and then Sam Bennett, pro Sean Kelly An Post rider, U23 Road Race Champion as far as I'm aware, got us stuck into some quality stretches to be doing.



After that it was time to get a bit of lunch down and chat about a bit with the lads. Then came a bike positioning talk from Paddy Doran and the distribution of a file with some goalsetting sheets and that sort of kit in it.


Overall a pretty good day, good to see the rest of the team and meet the various coaches we'll be working with, and get a bit of a chat with Sam Bennett, learnt a couple of new things I can put into practice.

That's it for now. Short one with plenty of photos. Over and out.

The Arrival Of Some Rynopower!

Yo! How's it going?

What is Rynopower?
I had a big quote from the website here (www.rynopower.com), but then decided you can click the link and go to the website if you like, not much point in me just copying it over here! Basically it's a supplement company over in the US of A, started up by Ryan Hughes, a pretty classy MX'er who used to be on top of it, and has learnt a lot from racing at such a high level for a long time. Rather than sit on his ass and become a commentator or something (Rob Warner ;) ), he's gone out and started up Rynopower, with the aim of providing us classy athletes with the right fuel for the fire! Aaron Gwin, Eli Tomac, Ken Block, Josh Grant, Jimmy Decotis, Robbie Madison, are all on it. What do they have in common? Champions. If you've never heard of them, get yourself a cup of Rynopower protein and decent internet connection prepare to be amazed by some of their videos on youtube!

As hard as I try, one of the most consistent things with my recovery is a lack of it! I can train, train and train again, but when it comes to rest? I'm a racer, I'm not meant to rest! Unfortunately this doesn't work. With overtraining/overexceeding comes injuries, sickness and de motivation, getting the balance of training and rest right is your maker or breaker!
So, can't get enough time to recover? Not able to eat 24/7 as you should when you're training? What’s the solution?
Going to bed at 8pm every night, removing all external stresses from your life, existing with your legs above your heart to keep the blood flowing, 24/7 eating, ice baths and not doing risky stuff to ensure you don't get injured? Yes, but realistically, you're not gonna go out and do any of that are you?
An easier alternative is to get some good supplementation going, and this is where Rynopower comes in. If you're looking to knock your nutrition on the head to help your recovery as much as possible, look no further!

Got some of the goods in the post this week, Rynopower's very bestest gold-package with an extra tub of protein and a couple of t-shirts/stickers/shaker bottle. Good stuff. Unfortunately I got dicked upon by postage from US to here that I wasn't aware of. Package was 14lbs, so ended up being $50 dollars to reach me over here in Northern Ireland! Not such good stuff! Not happy with that at all, but will hopefully get something sorted!

With regards to the actual products, can't really say too much yet, will give a proper review within the month, but so far I'm very impressed! Rynopower offers a wide range of task specific products: protein; carbs; recovery; electrolytes; endurance; motivation, in powder and tablet form which is a nice variety. Also, unlike a lot of the big industry sports nutrition companies, Rynopower has nothing to hide: all nutritional information and ingredients are available on the internet and most of them come on the packaging anyway, go onto the website and take a look for yourself!



So far I've used the 'French Vanilla Protein' and 'Recovery' capsules a lot. Protein has a bit of an interesting taste to begin with, didn't really know what to expect with 'French Protein', coz I know they eat worms and snails and stuff over there! A couple of sips and it's all good though, nice stuff, not too sweet! Looking forward to breaking into the swiss chocolate too! Nice concentration of it with 250mls of water, very drinkable compared to some other products from different companies I've tried. Also the powder dissolves evenly throughout the water! Easy to take this for granted but I've tasted too many shakes that the powder just piles up at the bottom of them even after the wildest shake you can manage!
On another note, the shaker is a super job too! If you don't have much money on ya but want to experience some of Rynopower's top quality kit try out the shaker for starters! Perfect for all occasions: gym, aerobic stuff, swimming, school, work, romantic dinners, hamsters, throwing over people, drinking, losing, dropping, forgetting to close etc. Although the lid on it is actually really good! Good firm click on it when you close, it'l bring back those beautiful memories of clipping into your pedals even when you're lying on the sofa injured like myself! ;) What's not to like about it?
Recovery tabs go down a treat, just throw a couple down the pipe before bed-time with a couple of hundred ml's water and you're sorted! Will try and do some tests over the next months and see if they're any use now.
(UPDATE: Just tried the chocolate flavoured protein thismorning: class. I don't even like chocolate flavoured drinks but this is spot on, goes down effortlessly. If you're going for some protein, which you'd be crazy not to, get the chocolate flavour ordered!)

I know to some, the products may seem expensive, but just bare in mind how much you spend on getting grams off the weight of your bike? You're getting something here not losing something! Grams of this kit is much better value for money for yourself, concentrate on upgrading yourself not your bike and you'll see much bigger improvements believe it or not! This stuff is legit!

This Saturday is my first day training with the 2020 Olympic Talent Team so will neck a couple of different things and get back to you on how they are, maybe get a photo of the broken gym equipment after I've ripped it apart! haha. Maybe even get to try the race-situation portaloo test if I'm lucky, will see how it goes down, literally!



That's all for now! Will keep you updated, for now, www.rynopower.com