hpatraininglog

Intro

It’s starting. The transition from smooth tyres to knobbly ones is happening, and September is getting closer. Which means one thing: cyclocross season is nearly here.

This week was supposed to be about getting some final preparation in before my first MTB race in four years.

Instead, I didn’t sleep properly, skipped training, tore my bib shorts, injured my elbow, broke a shoe and spent six hours questioning my life choices.

So…preparation went well.

Monday

Rest day. Or so I thought.

Got a terrible night’s sleep and I’m not even really sure why. Little did I know how much this would have a knock on effect for the rest of the week.

Monday also means a day in the office, doing…not a lot. But it does mean taking advantage of the gym at work. So that’s exactly what I did.

In the gym I worked on things like single leg RDL’s, Bulgarian split squats, core, front squat and some other bits then ending with a little core as usual. Doing this at the time didn’t feel out of the ordinary apart from the fatigue I’m carrying from the lack of a good nights sleep.

It has been advertised online that a local cycling club called Newport CC are running their first cyclocross training session at Lilleshall Sports Centre. This is also one of the rounds of the regional league I’ll be racing. So I wanted to turn up and see what it was all about.

So I got home after work, tried to nap, unsuccessfully for 30 mins. Got ready and left for Lilleshall.

The coaches made me feel very welcome, including the three young lads who were already there. Waited for parents to turn up with their kids, paid up and got the session started. Splitting us up in to two groups, little kids and the rest of us – I doubt they had any idea how old I was.

First part of the session we focused on defending lines and late braking. Unfortunate for me, I tore my bib shorts wide open on the side after catching them on a plastic post in the ground marking out the course.

Cue me having to ride around for the rest of the hour with my upper thigh just hanging out!

After playing around with tyre pressure, I found that getting the bike round corners quickly and using mostly rear brake I could slide the bike round.

So much fun.

The second half of the session was carrying momentum and flow through a tricky downhill, windy section with tight corners and turns in it. This was great fun as well.

To finish the session, the coaches linked both parts of the course together, and us ‘big kids’ had to do 4 quick laps of the circuit. I tasted blood. I forgot how hard cross was. But still, it was great fun.

Yeah, rest day. Whoops. Sorry coach.

Tuesday

I am shattered.

So tired in fact. I did not complete my training today.

Bummer.

Instead I did some jobs around the house, napped and snacked.

I was supposed to do a 1hr 38 min session with three pyramid efforts. I just could not bring myself to do it.

Instead, in the evening I went out for a super easy and chilled out spin for 40-45 mins. And I felt better for it.

Hoping for a better nights sleep…

Wednesday

Well I did not get the decent nights sleep I was hoping for.

This is one of my bad weeks of sleep. Which does happen from time to time. Coupled with the fact it’s also hotter than Satan’s butt crack this week, that’s probably not helping matters.

However, I got up and whilst feeling semi functional, I got out and completed my session.

It was 1hr and 40 mins with three blocks of intervals, each one getting shorter and harder as each block progresses. And before each block was a 5 min Z3 effort to preload the legs with fatigue.

Considering how rubbish I’d felt this week, the session went really well.

The rest of the day then, I spent eating, napping and not doing my active recovery session.

Biggest win of the day was travelling over to Wrexham to see my mate who runs a bike shop to drop off my poor Ridley x-night that needs completely rebuilding before the cross season starts. He had reassured me this would get sorted after dropping off all the bits a pieces. Thank goodness.

Then, because apparently I hadn’t had enough going on, I spent the evening arguing with Garmin’s chat support about my power pedals.

They finally admitted defeat so I could send them back and get a replacement.

An evening walk was my substitute for an active recovery spin.

Thursday

Semi okay night sleep last night, but still waking up feeling pretty tired.

The current heatwave has today at being the hottest day of the week. So again, got up, had a breakfast full of carbs, a coffee then got out and got the session done before the tarmac started melting.

The session was good, it did take the first 5 min Z3 effort to get my legs to actually do what they were supposed to and I felt a lot better by the end of it.

However, there were road works everywhere. The water company has come out in force today and closed all the little lanes. So there was a lot of out and back and going around road closures.

Tractors were also out in full force, but they’re feeding the country. Quite an important job that.

Friday

Another rest day! Hallelujah.

But today is spent packing for our mini trip away to Kielder Forest for a long weekend.

We are staying up there for a race at the weekend, the National Marathon XC Championships. An actual UCI mountain bike race. I’ve been gridded 25th out of 30 as it’s my first MTB race in about…4 years. And I only go and enter a national championship race….more about that later.

Today is packing, sorting gear, the van, getting supplies and travelling to the accommodation. Easier said than done on a Friday, with the M6 traffic.

Pray for us.

Keeping an eye on the traffic, ended up leaving home much much later than planned. Had dinner at home and was on the road by early evening. Ending up missing all or most of the traffic and getting to the accommodation pretty late, maybe past 22:30.

Thankfully, we didn’t need to get up early the next morning so it wasn’t too much of an issue.

Saturday

Day before the race. We had a bit of a slow start to the day.

Got up, coffee, breakfast and decided to go for a short walk just to get the legs moving and blood flowing before getting on the bikes.

We were undecided if we wanted to do a recce ride of the course. It was a half hour drive away, plus a lap of the course was huge. So we decided against it and rode the MTB trails at Kielder forest that are quite literally on our doorstep.

I initially felt like I was going to miss out on some valuable course knowledge. But as soon as we got out to the trails here, I forgot about that as I was having a good time riding my bike.

Decided to go up to the top of Deadwater fell, the highest peak in the area with some amazing views from the top. Technically a black route due the climb and the loose rocky decent from it, but it was worth the steady pedal up there.

On the way up though we found ourselves riding some technical red to the top as well , this was a little tricky, miss-timed one rock section so had to unclip and get going again. But on the whole it was pretty good.

After defending the black route from the top of Deadwater Fell, found ourselves at the top of a red to get back to the bottom half of the trail centre. I thought I was on to a good thing as I was getting on pretty well with the bike and how technical some little bits were.

I’d jynxed it then and there.

Not long after starting the decent on the red I had the smallest, slow motion get off ever. But to break my fall, I’d subconsciously stuck my left had out. As soon as my hand hit the ground, I felt a popping sensation in my elbow and a lot of pain.

GREAT. I’ve broken my elbow. Or so I thought.

The National Championship race I’ve entered after not racing MTB for 4 years could be in complete jeopardy.

Sitting there for a few minutes in pain, trying to compose myself and moving my arm around. I hadn’t broken anything, but I was in a lot of pain.

Trying to let the pain die down so I could carry on, I felt like I’d done some damage. Possibly enough that I wouldn’t be able to race tomorrow morning.

Getting back to the house, I rolled to the local garage, bought some ibuprofen. Took those as soon as I got in and iced it.

Not a great way to start race weekend.

Sunday

The weather was rubbish. It was raining. Perfect.

Although the only upside to this was the fact that the rain might help the ground be a bit more tacky in the gravel sections, allowing for some more grip.

Getting up early to get food in was…hard. Felt much harder than it should have been.

I made overnight oats to take some of the time faff away of making food before the race. A breakfast I’ve had loads, but it didn’t sit well and I couldn’t finish it.

I tried to get a croissant with jam in me too, but only managed to eat half of it. Maybe nerves before the race were getting to me more than I thought.

Anyway, food and coffee in. Hydrated as much as possible and all in the van to get to the venue.

Getting there and parked was fine, but there were no signs at all for anything. We parked next to a guy who also traveled up that morning. Got talking to him and went to sign on with him, chatting a long the way.

Getting to sign on felt like miles away and we had to climb up some rocky path to get there. Might as well be part of the warm up it was that steep.

Maybe just as well I didn’t do a recce ride the day before as I saw an A and B line on the course, both looked like descending a wall. I tried to put it to the back of my mind.

Getting to the desk, signed on, number on the bike, nervous wee and back to the van to get dressed.

The weather was getting better, it was grey and cool so perfect conditions to race without the worry of over heating.

This race is the first time using my new gravel skin suit from NoPinz too. Deep pockets, cargo pockets on the legs and hard wearing panels in case of a crash (too late).

Dousing ourselves with bug repellent, then off to the venue, warming up on the way and getting to the start line.

I am number 25. Getting called up in number order I was more or less at the back of the starting grid. Due to the fact that I haven’t raced any MTB for at least the last three years.

With 2 minutes to go, the nerves were kicking in.

Whilst blows and we are off.

I wasn’t in a mad rush to push past people or to try too hard at the start due to the fact that the race is so long.

Getting into the first section of the race, I’m not too far back. However, the women I was immediately next to, were all getting off and pushing bikes on bits I’m sure I could have ridden. This meant I had to dismount and also push my bike.

One section was particularly technical, I tried to ride it, but from memory a rider was off and running in front of me, which meant I had to put my brakes on. This caused me to come off. I got back on eventually after running the technical section.

After jumping back on I realised my shoe felt loose. I tried to tighten it, but it wasn’t getting tighter.

Looking down I realised why. My boa was broken. On the first lap, not even 10 minutes into the race.

Now I had to ride the entire race with a broken shoe.

This made things like running with the bike and tackling difficult terrain tricky. I could feel the shoe slipping around on my foot, especially when having to push the bike up anything steep. The shoe was almost being pushed off my foot.

As expected the race was hard as nails. The front went off, and I found myself with a group of women. The fire roads were my strength. Being able to power a long on these sections.

The fire roads were my strength. I could put the power down and make up time there. The technical sections were a completely different story. Rocky climbs, steep descents, roots, loose woodland and tight corners were costing me time every lap.

Single track sections were also okay, and the flowing berms. Although I did almost lose my front wheel on one section – I thought I was going to die.

My weakness were the particularly technical elements.

There were a few from memory;

• Going uphill on a blue meaning we had to ride up rocky features.
• Real steep downhill off piste sections.
• Going through really pronounced root sections.
• Mossy, loamy and rooted wooded section.
• A dry, hard very tight turning rooted/wooded section.

These areas are where I lost a lot of time, getting off the bike having to run with it.

On the first pass of the course I found myself in a relatively good position. Catching some women up, overtaking and staying in front of them.

One of the sections I’ve mentioned above, the rooty, soft loamy section with rotten wood and stumps screwed me. I was nearly at the end of it and tripped. Then looking at my bike I saw a massive rotten stick going from the rear spokes, straight past my brake calliper and wedging into my frame.

The wheel was jammed.

To get it out I had to get the rear axle out to create some more wiggle room in the rear of the bike. With a lot of pulling, twisting and wiggling it finally came free.

I lost about 4 places and about 5 minutes trying to sort this out.

Mentally I felt like this was my race done now. Any progress I had made in the bin.

I was just going to ride around on my own for the next 65-70km.

Starting the next lap I honestly wanted to give up. Some encouragement from the pits kept me going, as well as my boyfriend passing me to tell me to keep going.

The second lap I found some more morale. But my legs were screaming on every climb. I realised I wasn’t getting enough carbs in me so I upped my intake as much as I could. This felt like it did help in places. Thanks to the Torq gels and carb mix I was using.

Half way round the second lap I was catching a rider I recognised from the first lap. A Hup competition team rider. Her name is Megan. We got to talking when coming round to the third lap. Both discussing the course and whether or not to carry on for the third lap. “If you do it, then I will too.”

Both thinking, we will be riding for at least 6 hours if we do the last lap.

Getting to the feed zone again, I found out that my boyfriend was still going, so I had no choice but to continue. I found Megan and said, it looks like I’m carrying on! So we headed off for the final lap.

Both heading off to finish this thing, just taking it as it comes as we take on the final lap. Chatting and keeping each other’s morale up as much as possible.

We both agreed going around that if we didn’t have each other, then this last lap would be absolutely miserable and would more than likely take much longer.

We were thanking the volunteer marshals at each marshal point. They have been giving us cheers and encouragement as we passed on each lap, so we were thanking them for staying out for so long to make sure we were safe. One of them was even playing a trumpet on each lap as we passed!

On the 2nd to last time we passed the trumpet player, her was playing some Mexican song I recognised, but couldn’t think of the name. As I passed him I just shouted the Bart Simpson quote “Ay, caramba!” and he laughed.

We finally made it back to the finishing arena and came over the finish line hand in hand, celebrating we survived the race together!

All said and done I’d ridden almost 60 miles with over 2000m elevation. I was cooked.

I finished in 18th position overall and 8th in the senior field. For a national championship race, I’m happy with that result.

Getting back to the van and dressed was alright but as soon as my body realised I had stopped and no longer racing I was just on the downwards slope.

Went to a cafe to get a hot coffee and a slice of cake, I sat down not knowing if I’d be able to get back up again. Fully on the struggle bus.

I had to ask my boyfriend to drive us back, I was not safe to do so!

The rest of the day was getting hydrated and eating, then to bed. That was literally it.

And also questioning my life choices.

Things I’ve learned

Endurance. I’m a lot more capable than I realised when it comes to endurance. 6 hours of nonstop MTB racing, with fuelling and I didn’t bonk or crack. I was able to just keep going.

Technical skill. All of the technical skill. I need a coach and I need to rectify this. There is a woman called Katy Curd who does sessions in the Forest of Dean and Womens only coaching so I am tempted to go and do that.

• desending
• roots
• loose surfaces
• technical climbs
• line choice
• carrying speed
• confidence

I feel like I’m winging all of these things, riding and hoping for the best.

Sleep. Do not underestimate the power of sleep for recovery.

Race preparation. I entered a national championship MTB event after not racing any MTB for 4 years. I hadn’t recced the course. I hurt my elbow. These are things I need to improve on. Although I lacked in all of these areas. I still finished 18th overall. I’m happy with that.

I also need to think more carefully about recovery nutrition for really long events. After six hours of racing, I was so cooked that having easy-to-consume recovery food and protein ready to go would have been useful.

This week in stats;

Duration; 11 hours 56 minutes

Distance; 132.5 miles

TSS; 630