Beating the January blues

Despite getting in some good miles through the snow and ice over the festive period, the conditions did eventually take their toll with a cracked rib (work), bruised heel (running) and swollen knee (riding) combining with an 80km 'field edge bridleway' ride in the new year to get to some decent singletrack only to find it ripped to pieces and my stubborn resolve to ride through the pain finally cracked.

Time for a bit of down time and R.I.C.E (of the Chinese Takeaway kind) - at the same time as seemingly every 'athlete'worth their salt was blogging and tweeting about yet another 8hr training ride completed or dead lifting twice their body weight before breakfast...

After several weeks of false starts - 10 minutes of positivity and hope swiftly followed by "FFS when will I heal!" it was a mid-week afternoon getting schooled by Alex Langley (Leisure Lakes Bikes) in Eastridge Woods when faith in the future was restored. I knew I'd taken a knife to a gunfight when he turned up on a Santa Cruz Nomad with spiky downhill tyres and a gravity dropper seatpost, but returning to the car in darkness, caked in mud and reeking of damp merino with nary a twinge from my broken body and I knew I was on the mend. Hallelujah!

Two weekends of riding in South Wales with old Uni friends followed... in glorious sunshine! In January! And thanks to the cold temperatures all on hardpacked trails! I fully accept that at some future point there will be payback for this amazing weather (or maybe my team mates at the first Welsh XC last the weekend took the punishment for me?), not that we cared sat on the beach on the Gower Peninsula and at the top of the Gap in the Brecon Beacons without the need for arctic survival suits.

So now it's time to put the pedal to the metal and start looking forward to the season and get some miles in the chicken legs. Metric Century Challenge? Pah. Imperial Century Challenge more like :-)

Advertise your business/event here »