Downhilling

A couple of months ago I picked up a longer travel (i.e. More suspension) mountain bike so that I could take it down rougher trails and possibly do a bit of downhill racing. After buying some body armor and a full face helmet, I entered my first downhill race two weeks ago. The race was close to Newry so it wasn't too bad to get to. I went up on Saturday with some of the guys from EPIC (who also turned out to be my tutors) for some practice runs. After the first couple of runs I got the hang of the slimely course and started to really enjoy it. The course is about 2 minutes (for the fast people) long without anything knarly. I arrived up on Sunday for the race having seen it rain for the previous 12 hours. The course that was slimey on Saturday was now truly a mudfest! I got a couple of decent practice runs in but mostly blew my two race runs. (Crashing on one of them!) I would have rathered a drier course for my first race – but it was still a great introduction! I think I'll take part in a couple of the NPS races that don't conflict with the cross country racing this year.

A new addition to the family

Last Tuesday Nicola and Shane had their third child. Jack and Alex now have another brother, Max, who was 7 pounds and 9 ounces at birth. All are doing well - with a little less sleep!

I only had my camera phone with me at the weekend when I was up, but here are a few pictures!

Max is SO small! You forget how tiny a baby is.

Testing blogging from my phone

Test.

Dublin By Night...

Mel and I were walking through the city center on Sunday and I took this picture. I have been trying to get a nice night photo of Dublin for ages.

Cold Weather

I did the Kilmashogue hill climb this morning. It was a beautiful crisp morning and the least muddy I've seen in a while (everything was frozen :))