Raceing, Rice and Recovery

Its been a long long weekend. To be honest my weekend was due to start on Thursday as i was heading over to Manchester to race in the Hit the North 1.5 Winter Sprinter. The week leading up to the race was thankfully a rest week, i was totally jacked from the training of the few weeks before hand and it felt great to be able to chill out and relax for a while. Minimal training is nice every now and again :)

However the weather was to scupper all the prep work of the week leading up to the race. It snowed...heavily...and in Ireland where we fall over the second the white stuff starts to fall this was not going to be a good day. So long story short Dublin Airport shut for pretty much all of Thursday with only one or two flights leaving. Surprisingly enough not mine. Got the flights re-scheduled and the people at Ryanair were damn helpful! Thanks guys!

Finally flew out late on friday night, the airport was still frozen and i was delayed a further 2.5 hrs after i checked in. I went to the pub and did a bit of work for my Phd so no biggie. However most of what i typed was drivel....beer fueled drivel

Got in late and put the bike together, finally got to sleep about 1am and slept pretty damn poorly, which is odd for me, especially as i was tired and for a change not actually thinking about the race the next day. I had mentally more or less decided that it was now a training session and i'd just enjoy the trail.

7:30am...uugh...no wait hang on i'm awake....odd....ok skinsuit on....eat food...in car...20mins later at the race...WTF that was closer than we expected! Signed on and joined the field waiting for the sun to thaw out the frozen ground and inch thick ice....this was not to be.

Slick, crunchy, slippy, hard, slow, fast. That was what i remember of the course. Straight from the get go, i knew i was in with a chance to do well in the race. Most of the people around me looked liked Fred's bar the 40 or so people on XC and CX bikes. Right so a top quarter finish was on the cards. By the end of the first 200m i was up in the top 15 riders. Oh oh.... i may actually have to race now. Forks locked out....bring it.

The next hour and a half (3.5 laps) are a blur of cornering on ice, heavy breathing and pain. Utter pain. Sticking in a group of 8 of us with a mixture of CX and XC bikes made for some interesting racing. A crash on lap 4 took me out of a top 10 finish as i was dropped from the group i was riding in. Gutted i decided that minium i was going to get in as many laps as the lead rider, took lap 5 easy is so i could hold some back for the final lap. Made the cuttoff with 30 seconds to spare (planned it i swear), then took it home. Felt rotten for the entire of the last lap but still got 3 or 4 places back. However i didn't get my arch-nemisis (ehhhh apparently) Skellitor!!!



Overall happy. Finished 18th, 14th in my AG. Probably could have finished top 10 if i hadn't crashed...who knows. Overall 32km, at race pace, more so at Xterra distance and pace. Honest answer to the can i run off it question? Yes...but for how long...and what pace....i don't know.

Laps:

19|

38|

6

Greg May

Dublin City Uni Cc

00:23:15

00:22:43

00:23:23

00:24:55

00:25:43

00:28:22

02:28:21