MTB and the Dublin Mountains on TV

Last night, RTE 1 (Ireland's main TV Station) showed a program about the use of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains by various groups: walkers, artists, scouts and most importantly, Mountain Bikers.

My club and I were involved in the mountain biking segment from about 7 minutes in. I think it worked pretty well.

Click on the image below to watch the video until May 27th


Cycling, road, MTB, track, commuting, fixie etc... have been on our National TV channels almost weekly now for months. It's great to see and hopefully secures in peoples minds that Ireland really is a great country for riding in - no matter what your discipline or level.

2009 Supercross Cup Round 4

Sunday was the final round of the this years SuperCross Cup. Roger Aiken had already claimed 1st place overall but 2nd through to 5th was still up in the air with myself, Joe McCall, Lewis Ferguson and Evan Ryan vying for position.

My club, MAD MTB, were the host club running the event in Corcaigh Park. My duties were putting together sandwiches for afterwards (7 loaves of bread!) and putting together a video of the race (which can be seen in this post).

Race winner - Connor McConvey

At 1pm we lined up and started – immediately Roger went to the front and attacked. A few groups formed from the start and I was silly not to be in the lead group (I was following wheels that I should not have been). Towards the end of the first lap I left my group moving after the lead group – a lap or two later, Roger fell off the lead group and we started riding together. We rode well together sharing the workload on a very windy course until with 3 laps to go he had a little trouble in one of the very muddy sections and a gap formed – at this point, I moved off in hunt for third position. On the final lap, with about 600 meters to go I passed Joe on the tarmac section but then things went horribly wrong – my bike skidded to a halt. Looking down, I found my rear derailleur (a beautiful 2010 Force one with about 14 hours of use) mangeled into my wheel. Nothing was moving. With Roger still behind me (somewhere), I picked up the bike, threw it over my shoulder and began to run – oh, I hated the running. I made it around the course to nip in just ahead of Roger with only a couple of seconds to spare.



With my 4th place result, I ended up finishing 2nd overall in the series – my first cyclocross series. I really enjoyed the racing – there was always 6-7 people that could make it onto the podium and that created a great race atmosphere, everything was up for grabs.

The damage

Thanks again to MAD for running the race and K-Capital Source and Cycleways for supporting the events.

More pictures from Ollie.

2009 MAD Club Championships

My club had its club championships yesterday on a beautiful (but windy) day. I took up photo duty for the day and snapped these shots. It has been a while since I have been taking pictures with my nice camera and I'm totally out of practise, but I still captured a few good ones.

2009 MAD Champs

2009 MAD XC-TRAVAGANZA

My club, MAD, is celebrating it's 20th anniversary this year. One of things we are holding is an XC event in Dublin's mountainous back garden, Three Rock mountain. The event is one loop of mostly singletrack and is aimed at everyone from the Elite rider to the person who has only been out on a mountain bike a few times. It promises to be a fun day and a great way to see the trails around Three Rock (believe me, you will not know them all) and hang out with other MTB crazed loonies.


Online signon is available here.

K-Capital Cup Round 4 - Castlewellan

Last Sunday saw the final round of the K-Capital Cup series taking place in Castlewellan. It's a course and a location that I really like. I raced there twice last year (the first race, in April, was my first race in Ireland and second race ever) and the weather had been perfect each time. As it turned out, the weather was again perfect with the race with the course running even faster then last year! (About 1.5 minutes was cut from a 19 minute lap time with extra single track added!)

My knee had been feeling a bit better over the last few days before the race (2 of the last 3 weeks were mostly off the bike :( ) and I felt that it would hold up okay for the race. The thing that I worried about was that it had been a while since I had gone hard on the bike – I didn't know if my legs and lungs would hold up to the fast pace I expected. Shortly after 1:30 the Elite race started at a very fast pace. Adrian Lansley was pushing the pace hard and unlike the last two races I felt myself slip off the back from the start. My legs just did not have the power to keep up – it basically felt that I was carrying an extra 10kilo back pack up the hill. By the top of the first climb (100m vertical over 1.3km with a few flat sections and bits of single track) the leaders had opened up about 20 seconds on me and I already felt spent – damn my knee! The next two laps or so I spent trying to hang on as best I could. I know when I'm pushing hard when I question why I'm putting myself through this... For the first 2-3 laps I felt like selling everything I have and giving up cycling completely! I guess I know I was pushing myself :) The remaining laps felt a good bit better (the first lap was my fastest with the following 6 all being around the same time - around the 19 minute mark) but I was still loosing time on the climbs. My descending and single track navigation actually felt really good. At the start of the season, before I started riding Elites, that is where I thought I would have had most problems – I guess 100mm of travel front and rear and nice wheels and tyres (Got SLRs and Huthinson Pythons recently – more on that later) can help! All the single track was very fast with the only breaking needed when you approached a tight switchback. I finished feeling I could continue for a while more, cooled down well and joined the MAD crew... (Thanks to Shane for helping me out with the bottles and mechainically throughout the series! I really appreciate it!)

The Expert race starts off - Yvain (215) wins the race and series

I should really try not to unzip the jersey! (Pic from here)

Robin finished out winning the race, and the series with Niall Davis coming in second. Results and report available here. I'm still annoyed about having to deal with my knee injury (I know, injuries happen) as I would have loved to have been able to push hard in Castlewellan.

The series overall was an amazing experience – the races were supper well organised and every course was magnificent. I really can't fault anything about it. I really hope that the series will be run again next year as I think the people organizing it all learnt a lot and the Irish XC scene gained a lot from it.

4 races down, lots more to go... Racing Elites has been great so far – the commitment to it all has been huge and there was a great speed boost over Expert but it has been such a rewarding experience so far.

K-Capital Cup Round 2 – Rostrevor

Sunday seen me take part in the second round of the K-Capital Cup in Rostrevor. I headed up to the course on Saturday in beautiful sunshine for a pre ride of the course. Afterwards, I decided to spend some of the weekend at home in Monaghan with my folks. Paul, Ellen (plus one more soon!) and Eva where there so it was nice to catch up with them. In fact, most of my family (Mum, Dad, Paul, Ellen, Eva, Gary, Pauline, Cara and Chloe!) decided to come along to the race the next day to support me! I really appreciated them all coming along, it was really cool to have them cheering as I went around each lap. It definitely helped ease my burning legs and lungs each time around! They stayed around the start finish which was probably a little unfortunate as I think they would have enjoyed watching us fly down the technical terrain! Maybe next time :)

The course for the race was amazing, if a little short. The first kilometre of the course climbed one hundred meters with parts that hit an eighteen percent gradient! An amazing fast downhill section followed that with a bit of flat single track in the middle. Then it was another climb, around fifty meters vertical this time, then a very fast descent with a huge berm and more rolling single track back to the start. As it was such a short lap we were going to be doing it 8 times to total a little over two hours of riding.

Saturday evening was nice and relaxing. I ended up watching United 93 before I went to bed. It freaked me out a little – I was in Manhattan on 9/11 and was actually supposed to be up the towers when the planes hit except that, lucky me, I went out partying the night before until 5am and then slept in a bit. I woke up the next morning to the sound of fire trucks...

Shorly after arriving at the course on Sunday, Sean and I headed around the course for a practice/warm-up lap. The course was still really nice, slightly looser in the corners (the sports race had just gone over the course) but still rode really well. It didn't look like the course would get cut up much with all our racing. (Although, by my last lap there was a lot more roots about to pull a wheel in the wrong direction)

Our race started shortly after 2pm and I was glad to see that the pace was not too hectic up the first climb – it would have been evil if someone really tried to push the pace up that thing. All of us entered the first stretch of singletrack roughly at the same time (I was about 8th wheel, which made a great difference from two weeks ago - this in itself I was happy with). A few spills in front of me seen our group get separated a bit but it mostly bunched together again for the second climb. From there on there was a bit of position changing. A funny moment when I flew off the trail when a root caught my wheel with Peter Buggle telling me that happened to him on the last lap... I hopped back on and continued to descend and seen Peter do exactly the same thing in front of me! It was funny at the time...

Descending on the first lap

The whole race was pretty hard with those big (steep) climbs every lap but the amazing single track really kept me positive about them each time. I really started to ride the single track well from the fourth lap on and was happy with how I raced overall. I felt a lot better then I did two weeks ago, I don't feel fast yet but I feel stronger and better equipped to race now.

Fourth lap following along some amazing singletrack

The other thing about the race was that my bike really blew me away with how well it handles that type of course. The brain (rear suspension lockout) and weight of the bike was great for climbing but the bike really paid off when I turned onto single track. There were sections of the course that were riddled with roots but I really didn't notice them much (apart form one time when I had a bit of a spill...) - it simply floated over them. I really can't give the Epic a good enough review.

Some photos can be found here and here as well as a report here. Photos from the race on the blog came from here. Full results can be found here.

Next week it will be the third round of the K-Capital Cup so I'll be taking it easy enough training wise to get ready for it...