Best of 2010 - Massage

Mel and I are always trying to optimize our equipment, nutrition, training, racing and recovery. In 2010 a new thing popped along for us to take advantage of that we had not used in the past. Namely, one of the main reasons we all shave our legs – massage (well, other than vanity and it being a hell of a lot easier to clean up...).


PRO cycling has long had the connection to pre and post massage to aid warmup and then recovery after hard training and racing. Indeed, I "enjoyed" my first long stretch of post race massage during the FBD RAS – Eamon Brady from Dungannon was our team's masseur and his deep massages (ouch!) had our whole team's legs flying every day (we won the county team award, amongst other things). While this was excellent when you were doing an arduous 8 day stage race, the biggest advantage we got over the year was the weekly massage via Stewart Carr.

When putting your body through as much hard racing and training as we do, over time small niggles can arise – maybe the cleat was 2mm out or your legs seized up after the 4 hour cramped car journey after the race (both of these happened to me this year). The weekly massage quickly found any such niggles and worked them out before they became serious. We have both been fortunate in that neither of us had to miss a days training due to these niggles growing into injuries – in a large part I put it down to regular massage and checkup. On the other hand, those massages were great just for relaxation too :)

We would like to thank Stewart for all the support during the year (and about 100 other things you helped out with) – I would also like to mention that he runs his own studio for sports massage out of Sprocket Cycles in Bray – their number is 01-272 3010 to setup an appointment. He is an all-round good guy and a fountain of knowledge with all things biking.

Having a weekly or fortnightly massage I believe to be much more beneficial then buying those bling set of carbon wheels.