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.
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 :)
1 comment:
race bike? Ya big tease!!
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