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.

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.