Howdi all,
Its been a while since I updated this, ive been out here in Morzine (french alps) for the last few weeks and have had much better things to do than waste time on the interweb!!!!
The DH NPS in the Glen of Imal was my first time back on a bike since breaking my collar bone in the 2nd round, after a very conservative day of practice on saturday i began to feel a little more confident on the bike, however i was still holing back that little bit. I was surprised at the mental impact that the injury had on me.
Sunday rolled around and i got my normal 2 practice runs in, felt alright on the bike and then waited for race time. As the last of the juniors began their race run it began to rain, really heavy......thins made things tricky, there were a lot of roots down the track, and we all knew it was going to be tough. I made a last minute decision to be ultra cautious and get down the track cleanly..... a gamble that paid off.....a few riders crashed on the super slippy roots and it left me in 5th after the first race run. Between the race runs the heavens opened, there was a mad dash to fit spike tyres, but the chances of going faster in the second race run got slimmer with every minute of rain. in the end noone managed to improve there time and i managed to come 5th.
After not riding for 2 months i was really happy with a 5th place, I suppose the track suited me a little, but i did a lot for my confidence!
Im out here in france at the moment training in Morzine. we have ski lift access to about ten diferent mountains with some of the best riding in the world right at our doorsttep. The big focus is now the Irish national championships which are to be held in rostrevor on the 14/15 august, Check out all the details
here. Im out here for another 3 weeks to train and come back to ireland as fast as possible......im pretty keen to see what i can do at the champs!!!!
I made a small video of some of the trails out here last year, you can get a taste of them
here. Unfortunately i havent managed to get to any races out here yet, we went to a maxxis cup round in spain, but because the race was doubling up as a national championship, we were not allowed to race (that came after a 15 hour drive to get there). we were also meant to be racing this weekend, but one of the lads hurt himself a few days ago, and we had much more to be worrying about than racing. The good news is that he is ok, although it will be 3 or 4 months before hes back on a bike!! there is a video or the accident in the pipeline, ill post it up here as soon as we have it sorted.
Thats all for now though folks, Adios!!!!