Almost race season!

So on top of the NPS and national champs, the plan this year is:

• Road races - 2 in March planned. The Dublin wheelers race in Dunboyne and the Newbridge GP. The plan is to try to keep up with the A3's. Will try to get 1 road race a month in if I can.
• The Bull Raid - going to do the 12 hour pairs with Oisin this year
• Bontrager 24/12 - to be confirmed, but the plan is to race the 12 hour pairs with Oisin.
• Also looking at a couple of 100km marathon races in the UK during the summer for the craic, but will play those by ear.
• There are also a couple of multi-stage mountain bike races I might attend also, but will see how that goes

I'm training!

Yes! Getting back into it now. Most of January was spent on the road bike just getting back the fitness I lost between October and December. I didn't even do the work commute during that time so the base miles had to be put in. I was happy with the amount of effort put in during January - it was the most I've ever put in at the start of a year and almost a record in terms of KM's traveled and hours in the saddle, so that's good. Mind you, all of it was slow and steady.

Then I went to the Biking Blitz last weekend... which was a painful reminder of (a) the anaerobic effort required for Xc racing and (b) technical skills needed (not that I ever had much on that front, but over 4 months off the mountain bike had them in a pretty shocking state).

I was late arriving and after a bit of pleading with the person at the registration tent, I got my number and legged it up to the start line. I got to near the front of of the starting grid, but I was sitting there wet and cold with no warm up. At that point I decided the first few Km's would be my warm up and go from there afterwards. The race started at 12 and a few of the savage boys pegged off up the hill. I tried keeping up, but at the same not trying to kill myself. Eventually I caught up with the lads on the climb and got ahead before the final piece of climbing singletrack. Things went pair shaped after that on the techie singletrack where I struggled to get any flow going at all. Oisin and Simon just cruised up behind me and passed, either on the singletrack or the next section of fireroad. After that I just did the best I could and finished the race about 12th. I was happy with that considering the lack of mountain biking I've been doing and no having any warm up. I went out and did another lap straight after and planned to do a final one, but the weather was so bad, I called it a day and went home.

Since then I've been doing some shorter road spins and some easy intervals - will start doing the hard ones next month. I've also to sort out a race bike for this year... but thats in hand and I'll have more info on it next week :)