Angry Face

I have to admit that my good intentions to get some training in last week and try and get a bit fitter before the race didn't really materialise. We did manage to have a turbo-training party at Lettie's and Richards which I think became quickly rebranded as a sweating competition (Geoff won hands down! ) I largely managed to avoid my time on the turbo-trainer by leading a small pilates session in the kitchen and by the time the neighbour came up to complain there was about 5 minutes left for me to have a shot, which suited me quite nicely!

We made it up the road to Gav's house on Friday night, tandem strapped securely to the roof and bedded down for the night. With some road tyres installed we set off on the Jason McIntryre memorial ride, and after a pretty grizzly start care of the Scottish weather it turned out to be a lovely ride through the highland countryside and a really good warm-up for our race ahead. (also my first experience of wearing the padded cycling shorts,which although I still think look pretty grim, weren't too uncomfortable at all!!)

Lettie and Richard arrived at the croft that afternoon and after a good feed and quite a lot of time spent shooting at aliens on the PlayStation we all bedded down in Gavin's room. Waking up on Sunday morning and looking out the window, the first thing to notice was the snow!!
That wasn't to deter us though, the padded shorts went back on and we set off to Inverroy and although I strongly doubted anyone would actually turn up, I was wrong, the hardened mountain bikers were out in force!!

The race started and after first coordinating getting on the bike, we were off, and away. On the first hill we overtook about half the field and I was feeling pretty strong, our first downhill section and all good so far, then came the tricky part - a gate!! Thinking we could get through it still on the bike, Geoff went ahead, but no such luck, a bit of uncoordinated dismounting and I was off and rolling down the hill in the snow, at least it was a soft landing!!

On again and we were doing well, I was pretty much dead going up what seemed like a never ending hill, but we got there! But then the mud began and it just kept going, mud, mud, mud and a small paddle through a river! My calves muscles were so tight I could hardly walk, and all I wanted was to get back on the bike!!

After the muddy section, the rest of the race went well, the gears weren't working too well with all the mud, so the hills were a bit tricky but we got round to the end and finished a respectable 14th out of 24 cyclists!! I was pretty cold, but I felt elated to have completed my first ever mountain bike race and the cake when we finished has to be some of the best I've ever had, so there are definitely some perks to this mountain bike malarky! Bring on valentines day, our next race is on the 15th of February!

C x

Pictures to follow