Sunday, September 28, 2008

Back on the saddle again

Been a few weeks since the last entry - mainly because work and 2 weeks holiday. Brought the Giant and Cube on the holiday but only really used them for the first week. After that, drink and food became the priority! And I feel the better for it. OK, I'm a few pounds heavier, but its the off season now, so going to enjoy myself before the MAD training program kicks off in November.

That's not to say I'm going to be slouching around for the next 6 weeks. There will be the savage mtb or road spins at the weekend, along with a few mtb night spins up in Glending or 3 Rock. But it'll be a little less intense. I did consider cyclocross briefly, but decided, to keep the road bikes on the road :)

Today was National Trails day and MAD was hosting a mountian bike session for people new to the sport. There was a great turn out - approximately 60 riders along with 30 from MAD, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Hopefully we'll get a few of them out to our Autumn beginners course kicking off next weekend.

So the plan for the week is: Trail building Monday, Glending on Tuesday (with my Exposure Joystick MAXX - more on that later), and Thursday Glending.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Weekend catch up

Busy weekend biking wise, so with no further ado...

Friday - Got home from work and hopped on the Giant for a spin around Blessington lake. It was a good spin. I kept a 1:55 min/km for the spin even though I had to stop a couple of times to tighten up the saddle which kept coming loose. 50 km's under the belt and the weekend has only begun!


Saturday - Had planned on doing a long (50 kms) mtb spin but Cait had suggested a long road spin instead. I decided to go with the road spin as the mtb route was one I've done too often, and as they say about familiarity... the other reason was I still had my fill of off road cycling after the marathon champs. So Saturday morning I cycled up to the Yellow House in Rathfarnham and met up with Barry, Cait, Oisin F and Nigel. After a bit of a chat, we set of towards Tallaght and up the Bohernabreena road until we met up with the Blessington Road. After a quick stop in Blessington, we took the left for Valleymount and started to hit the hills. Myself and Oisin kept the pace high to the summit of the Wicklow gap and then the blast down to Laragh was a bit of fun. Another quick break in Laragh and I said goodbye to the guys who were going to head back via Roundwood. That would have been a bit too much for me, so I decided to take a left and climb up by Glenmacnass waterfall and then another left at the Sally Gap. I had a puncture on the way back, which provided an opportunity to try out my CO2 canisters. They work a treat, but at almost €2 a canister, you would not want to be getting too many punctures!


All told the spin was 144kms and took 6:05 with 49 mins of that stopped.

The spin was also used to try out my Torq energy drink and gels. I bought the natural orange flavour. Its tastes great and I had no stomach problems during the spin. I also took a Torq gel about half way through and again, very easy to swallow (much runnier than power gels) and easy on the stomach too.

Sunday - Woke up a bit sore, but not bad considering the length of the spin yesterday. So Sunday evening myself and Gene went up to Glending for a couple of hours. We've had a pretty dry week so the trails were totally different proposition to last Thursday. We tried the badger descent 4 times - and was great craic. Its such a technical section and you get a real sense of achievement for every turn you make! After that we just did some of the boulder run, fixing up the trail a little as we went. Just 8 km's, but a fun 8kms!