I’m only messing with you. Nick Craig is the only person to have cleaned it (and this isn’t absolutely proven to have happened). Totally impossible with riders in front of you and while tired.

If it’s any consolation, walking screws me over too. I got dropped from the front group on that trudge, and only made it back up by taking a few too many chances on the descent. I don’t really mind having unrideable bits though, it’s all part of a proper day out in the hills in my eyes.

Finished in 3:44 elapsed time (just off the back of the front group, lost them on the steep climb to the beast), 3:36 moving, as we took in the feed zones somewhat. I had my gopro on and got some pretty good footage. I’ll put the raw, full video up overnight (1hr long!), then an edited one later.

Mostly me is the issue, but I hated the walking up Jacobs ladder and other climbs . That’s not bike riding IMO .

Ride it then 🙂

It sounds like it’s the shoulder/back issues that swing it. Have you had them properly assessed by a physio? Are they something you can fix, or are you going to suffer with them whenever you do long races?

At the end of the day it’s all about fun at our level (not meaning you can’t take it seriously, winning is bloody fun). And it’s no enjoyable day out suffering for 5 hours with chronic pain.

On the flipside, I reckon marathons on the whole are much better events, with more fun trails and a nicer atmosphere (especially in europe, seeing as we hardly have any proper marathons in the UK).

If it helps your decision, I’ve found myself getting my best national XC results this year despite training for 6hr marathons. Lots of training and riding slow doesn’t make you slow; not riding fast does.

I read the story during lunch, then the next thing that came into the workshop was a wee kids bike for a puncture repair. Both grips had slipped inwards, and the cheap steel bars had been badly scuffed up on the end, leaving a deadly sharp, literally serrated edge 😳

Safe to say I put bar plugs in, then reminded all other staff to keep an eye out for similar. The worst thing is parents just not noticing or realising that it’s an issue.

Thread resurrection time.

We’ve got a bit of a problem with hornets around our house at the moment, and they tend to come out once it gets dark (they then follow lights, so if any windows are open, we get a fun evening of herding angry hornets out of the house).
A few times coming in from work I’ve smacked straight into one, but haven’t been stung yet, my frenzied thrashing has been effective so far.

A stag beetle latched onto my jersey a few weeks ago, and stayed put for a long time, swinging like a little brooch.

A well cooked bit of broccoli in a really good curry (thai, indian, whatever), that’s soaked up the sauce.

Oof. It’s not a proper trip (or ride) without a crash though. Hope no damage done though.

For light comic relief, at the end of the video below you can watch me crash like a complete idiot the alps a week ago, and get momentarily pinned down by my bike.

https://youtu.be/CPmTtebp89E

Just posting what I put on instagram (minus the photos as I can’t for the life of me work out how to put them on here).

This weekend I went down to Bristol to ride bikes in circles for 6 hours.
Ashton Court has always been a favourite of mine for the amount of singletrack, so when the Bristol BikeFest returned for 2018 I was one of the first entries.
Me and Tim managed to coordinate the running start enough to arrive at the bikes at the same time, then promptly set off smashing ourselves up the lengthy first climb.
After one lap of friendly team rivalry, I blew up somewhat, and left Tim to get on with beating everyone. It took 3 hours to recover from the first lap before the marathon legs kicked in, then I could start to enjoy it again. I was so thankful to be on the full suspension Top Fuel – the rocky course left me beaten up as it was.
After 5:35 of sweaty racing (got through 8 bottles, and 6 packets of Clif shot blocks) I finished as first open solo rider, and 3rd overall (behind Tim and another master).
I’ve started a new metric to sum up race success: finishing position + crash count (a lower number being better). This weekend’s number comes to one, so I’d count that as a success (that’s just a long winded way of saying I didn’t crash).

Leaving for France on wednesday for the MB race, and I’m genuinely bricking it. The thought of doing that 6hr race, then having at least 5 more hours up massive hills, is messing with my head somewhat. That’s not even considering whether my wrist and knee will last the distance. Send help!

Regarding the HR and power, I do look quite a lot during marathons, although I don’t take much note of HR by itself, it’s way too variable to ride to. I watch power like a hawk on long climbs (20 min+) during marathons, possibly too much, and take note of where my HR is at a given wattage.

For XCO though just give it the beans as much as your legs will let you.

It might not have looked good from the sidelines, but in elite the course made for fantastic racing. Proper cut and thrust, high speed tactics and battering each other.

Now I’m all for long climbs and descents, mostly because that’s what I’m good (*less bad) at, but variety really is the spice of life. The french word for our sport, velo-tout-terrain, is much better as far as I’m concerned, as it’s not really mountain biking, for most of us, most of the time anyway. It’s much more about covering a huge variety of different terrains at pace, which includes grassy turns and man-made jumps.

The other issue is that of parking, spectating, facilities etc. Even if you didn’t think much of the course, the eastern team nailed it in all other aspects, which is why the national series keeps coming back to them in spite of the terrain.

And a final note, don’t dismiss Suffolk as somewhere to never return to. I grew up and am still based there and do alright. Yes it’s (fairly) flat, but that builds strength as you have to sprint about the place rather than coast downhill (see Tunstall forest).

Bloody hell that was hard!

Not because of the injuries as such, looks like it was a brutal day out for everyone. That being said, it got very exasperating losing time every lap on the second drop, and I came very close to deciding to go for it in the race, but I’m under doctors orders to not crash again!

Elite start was a bit manic, one of the french lads in front of me flipped over after a few pedal strokes, then Chris Rothwell snapped his chain (again right in front of me). I gave myself a really bad stitch trying to chase down the elite group, so had to sit up after the second lap, which probably did me well, as I most likely would have dropped right off at the end.

I didn’t really notice my lip while racing, apart from it cracking open at one point bleeding a bit. The wrist brace got a bit annoying when all  my fingers went numb, so had to do a bit of mid-race fiddling.

Owing to the small field, I actually managed my best national result in elite with 14th. Not really a massive achievement from just 27 riders, but I’ll take it.

I reckon our little team must take the title for most successful at the race: winners in grand vet male and elite women, 6th vet for ernie, 9th and 14th elite for Rich and me.

I saw you there too Kryton (I think)! I was parked just across from you, in a (one of about 10,000 there) VW T5, I didn’t want to distract you by starting a weird IRL forum conversation right before your race!

I’ll be racing tomorrow, albeit slightly tentatively. Last night I managed to plant my face into the ground rather firmly, tearing a cut in the bit between my top lip and nose. Luckily I didn’t land on my already-fractured wrist or nose, but my lip looks like it’s stuffed with grapes, and I’ve got ten stitches in. Went around the course ok today, although I’m avoiding the second drop. I know I’d be fine on it, I’m just really not into risking crashing again. The only real problem for the race is drinking without dribbling, apart from that is should be the usual arse kicking I get in elite.

I think I used 40×18 for my SSCX expeditions earlier in the year. I ended up being a tiny bit overgeared through the Koksijde sand dunes, but it was about right for the typical UK course.

Is there not still a blue that goes back into the town? I only remember the very last little bit being shared with the red.

The only campsite I remember seeing while there was the one at Xixeralla, and it looked quite fancy. Andorra doesn’t really seem like a camping-friendly sort of place if I’m honest.

I’d really recommend going to the top of the Port de Cabus (2nd highest road in the Pyrenees I think) on the Spanish border, absolutely stunning up there. It’s an long road climb, but you can use the bike park lifts to get 90% of the way up.

Quick report from the regional champs on Sunday.

http://paddyatkinson.wordpress.com/2018/05/29/becoming-the-mtb-champion-of-the-flattest-part-of-the-uk/

TL;DR: Came second, but first eastern rider so regional champion. Wrist hurty.

The only rider who uses a Lauf for any pro level XC is Soren Nissen, and he really tends to lose time on the descents (this is in marathon racing too, not balls out XCO). Even he occasionally uses a normal fork for more techy courses, despite being sponsored by Lauf.

I’d never dare take Laufs to an XC race, they’re just too noodly and uncontrolled. Not just the descents either, they feel horrible while sprinting, like you’ve left the front axle ondone.

4,296.1km

194<abbr class=”unit” title=”hour”>h</abbr> 17<abbr class=”unit” title=”minute”>m</abbr>

65,006 m

Bit of an update on my own exploits/mishaps:

I had vaguely planned to race Battle in the Bowl, at least until I found out that MTBs aren’t allowed in the elite race (fair enough for a CX event I suppose). Bit of a get down on Saturday put a stop to any plans though.

4 hours into a cracking MTB ride, and I’d just been thinking about how pleased I am with my skills progression of late, having finally reached the point where I’m doing things without a dropper that I wouldn’t have done last year with. Coming into a fairly hefty gap jump (bottom of Eric on Pitch if anyone knows it), and I think I must have have been focusing on the jump too much, forgetting about the preceding steep corners.
I ended up having one of those slightly scary crashes where it just comes out of nowhere. No warning, no “oh shit” moment. Just riding one millisecond, face on the ground the next. I rode the 10km ish home fine, then went to A&E to get my head and nose checked. Nose is slightly broken (deviated septum), but not badly enough to do anything about. Head is fine too (as weird as ever).

That night I woke up at about 2am with pretty bad wrist pain and the sort of sick feeling that goes with broken things. I couldn’t get back to sleep so walked to the hospital, where they reckon it’s a fractured metacarpal and another of the little hand/wrist bones (forgotten the name). Riding on the road seems ok with a brace, managed 4hrs yesterday, but might have to give the regional champs a miss. BIt of a shame as defending champ, but don’t want to make the damage worse.

I would recommend having nothing but water for 90 minutes before a race and then doing a caffeine gel just 5 minutes before the whistle blows. 45 minutes gives your body time to have a massive insulin hit

While not wrong, this doesn’t take into account a warm up, and the associated glycogen demands of this (if you’re doing it properly, warm ups are not easy).

I also must admit I scoffed slightly at Kryton’s theory of not going well with caffeine. I’m a very stereotypical cyclist in this regard, the more espressos the better while I’m riding.

The study below however would suggest a lot of weight to the fact that caffeine isn’t everyone’s friend. I can only hope that I’m of the genotype that reacts positively, I can’t imagine life without it!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29509641

Totally demoralised. After half a lap I was just in a solo time trial, by half way through my hr was dropping and the last lap was firmly in z3.

This sounds familiar. I had it explained to me (by Oli Beck no less) as when you’re mentally and emotionally exhausted, you can’t tap into that fight-or-flight instinct. Might be physically fresh, but just totally unable to get the sympathetic nervous system going.

I’ve been there. and it’s passed with a bit of time and recovery.

Yes

I’m so conflicted about this. Really want to apply, and it’s exactly the sort of job I’d be after once I’ve graduated. But I really should finish my degree… Any chance of putting it on hold for 2 years?

One that happened, but I ended up inexplicably uninjured.

Coming down a lovely road dropping towards Lake Garda (on a road bike) and overcooked it a bit, lost control and somehow ended up on the left side of the road, coming up to a left hairpin. I’d somehow regained control, but it was too late and too fast to go back to the right of the road, so I had to carry on around the left and hope nothing was coming…

Hit a Nissan Qashqai at a combined speed of about 35mph, completely square on. From what I can remember I stopped dead (not thrown over the top), and sort of flopped onto the front of the car. There was a neatly hemispherical head-sized dent right in the middle of the bonnet, and the bumper was wrecked.
I must have got up quickly because the first bit I remember is limping around trying to walk it off. Somehow I’d gotten away with a concussion and a broken finger, absurdly lucky.

Then got to experience the joy of exchanging insurance details with an angry Italian family who didn’t speak any English (and I don’t really do Italian), before scraping the many pieces of bike off the road and into the boot, then a very awkward car journey into town. I gather from their conversation I ruined their Sunday lunch, and if they ever read this I’m eternally sorry.

And if anyone ever finds a Cube Litening seatstay next to the road above Garda, that’ll be mine.

So who is up at Glentress this weekend for round 3 of the Nationals?

I’m entered, but a bit of a mess up by silverfish has left me shock-less 😭

Probably for the best, I’ve got way too much to do this weekend anyway.

First run in absolutely ages on Friday. I fancied doing some exercise that wasn’t sitting down, as I’m getting slightly worried about my posture (spend the day sitting in lectures, then all the exercise I do is hunched over a bike).

Steady (34 min) 5k, with the only goal to focus on being fluid and not get hip pain, which I managed. Felt fine that evening, went out for a few hours on the bike too, but woke up the next day with proper muscle soreness (hobbling around type deal), the sort I haven’t felt in years of bike racing. I suspect a bit more regular running will lessen this, or is it something you lot just put up with?

The most I’ve done was a 12hr pairs, and we did single laps the whole way, which is the fastest method, but unrelentingly grim. Doing it in longer shifts is so much nicer.

Worst job I’ve done is rebuilding shifters when someone else has taken it apart. Customer comes in with a jar full of tiny springs and complains that they can’t figure out how to put it back together. That’ll be 3 hours labour fees please.

I’ll be very interested to see what the people who know the actual answer say

Give me a couple of years until I finish my degree and I might have some kind of idea.

https://imgur.com/gallery/wKYz8LU

I am now at the mercy of the power data tree.

How much do you weigh if you don’t mind me asking?  W/kg?  Just wondering what kind of figures it takes to make Elite.

About 74-75kg at the moment. I’m hoping to lose a kilo or two by July. I think I’m definitely at the lower end of the elite field as far as w/kg goes, I try to make up for it by going round corners quickly, which is probably why I crash so much!

EDIT:  w/kg wise:

4.86 FTP

5.12 20 min

6.01 5 min

8.76 1 min

Bit of an update on my own results too.

I missed Dalby (shame as it seemed they actually used the techy bits this time) for the European marathon champs in Eastern Italy. It was a particularly savage course, 104km with some 3000m climbing, most of which was in one sodding great mountain in the middle.
Unfortunately I really seemed to suffer in the heat, got a bit heatstroke-y I think. It was only 26 degrees, but really strong sun, and climbing very steep gradients without any shade. I dropped well down the rankings, before properly popping and having to sit down. Even in the shade and stationary I was uncontrollably panting like some fat labrador for a good half an hour, really quite scary, and not anything I’ve experienced before. The 20km back to the car after I pulled out was all downhilll or flat, but still took me 2 odd hours. 288w NP for the 3 hours of racing I managed.

The weekend just gone I came over all weird and did a road race: the BUCS university champs on the Bulmer course. I knew I was a but ill, but after one lap (of 7) I realised it was worse than I thought, so I limped back to the car (again). 8 hour round trip for 45 minutes of racing!

That Annika Langvad blog up there is brilliant, and pretty much lines up with what I’ve found the last season. Incidentally, Annika is one of my favourite athletes at the moment, just really strong without being ‘showy’, and doing a full time dental degree alongside it. Bloody awesome.

The past 6 months or so I’ve definitely been approaching things from a marathon perspective, and have gotten stronger in just about everything except CX. I’ve not actually increased the average hours on the bike that much, but gotten a lot more consistent load in than previous years, which seems to have been the main difference. A friend of mine who’s been training with power for years now said the only reliable  correlating metric to race performance he’s found is consistency, not training stress, fitness, form, whatever.

It’s easy to forget that XCO is a firmly aerobic sport. I’ve often found  myself caught up in worrying about the sprint off the line or jostling for position, when the proper meat of the race is flogging yourself along and having the aerobic capacity to maintain it.
Also, usually to my dismay, it turns out high level marathon races take off just as quickly as XCO, they just go on a bit longer!

To put a bit of evidence to it, I’m not quite hitting the same peak wattages for >5 minute efforts as 2 years ago (when I was fully XCO focused), but the repeatability of what I can do has jumped up massively.
E.g. somewhere like Hopton with a hefty 5 minute climb in it, in my junior days I would have shot off and done 450w up it the first lap, then crawled along for the rest of the race, losing far many more places than I ever gained on the first climb. These days I might average 400w up it each lap, probably getting dropped by the skinny chaps, but having a much better race overall.

Kryton: have you got any measures of how repeatable your peak power is, or what kind of numbers you’re hitting towards the end of a race or hard ride? I suspect that like me, you might have gained in consistent repeatability what you’ve lost in the peaks.

I’m trying to collect some ideas and studies about this sort of thing together for a blog post sometime. although I’d best finish all this sodding coursework first.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhyQGfrl5mk/?hl=en

Bet there will still be people on pinkbike complaining about it not being technical.

They’re just a rebranding of CTL (cumulative training load) and TSB (training stress balance), which have used the same calculations for years. So unless strava have gone off and made their own I wouldn’t have thought they’d change.

It’s more likely that your threshold has changed in the athlete settings somehow, have a look there first.

There’s camping at the venue, but last year they were coming round asking for £5 to stay in a field with no drinking water supply! If I was going this year I’d probably tell them to sod off and camp in the car park.

I was just going to post a link to my blog, but I can’t be arsed to finish it so I’ll put a wee update on here.

Last Sunday I was in the middle of France (no joke, it’s really in the middle of nowhere), for the first UCI marathon series race of the year: Roc Laissagais. Being the first one means all the pros show up to make it absolutely brutal – the podium in the end was made up of 3 ex-world champs and the current euro champ!

The course wasn’t too different from what you could get in the UK, 90km with 3500m ascent, and flowing, sometimes rocky descents with the odd bit of mud. It all kicked off pretty quickly on the first climb, and I settled into a decent group, and felt fairly strong for the first 2 hours. As always, I was getting frustrated with the euro riders’ descending – kamikaze on the fast fireroads, and sedately awkward on the singletrack. I’ve come up with strategies to handle this though, basically letting myself get dropped before any significant descents, and coming back to the group on the easy bit!

At the halfway mark it began to dawn on me that I’d mistaken poor pacing for strength, and was really starting to suffer. At one point I dropped a clif blok (gummy energy sweet thing) on the floor and very nearly went back to get it! My team-mate Tim came past at about the 3.5 hour mark, demonstrating the proper pacing that his experience in these things gives, fully showing me up as a hot-headed millennial fool. Coming into the last climb I thought it’d be relatively smooth sailing, but it ended up being one of the 20 minutes of my life, as the organisers had chosen to send us up a near vertical grassy wall into a 80km/h headwind. When I got Sram Eagle I never thought I’d use the 32×50, but this had me pawing at the bars for a lower gear the whole climb.

Luckily it seemed like everyone else was suffering just as badly (except Tim of course, who made up about 10 positions in the last 45 minutes, including one bloke who allegedly threw his bike across the field, while exhausting his vocabulary of French swear words), so I was able to maintain position.

I came across the line in 57th overall from a field of 178, and 4th under 23. I’m fairly happy with that, although it was far from my best performance, but at least I’ve learnt some valuable lessons before the european champs next weekend.

Stats:
5:19:55 race time
3225m recorded climbing
272w normalized power
156bpm av. HR
342 TSS
367 HRTSS
22148 crank revolutions
72 minutes spent climbing gradients of 10% and above
969 VAM average ascent speed
1 crash

Poor guy on the Cannondale…. How many times had he lost the chain?!

I bet he won’t use that chain ring again! Can’t make it what brand it <span class=”skimlinks-unlinked”>is.Lol</span>

That’s Ollie Lowthorpe, and a cannondale hollowgram chainring, narrow wide I think. Pretty sure he’s been on that setup (with XTR Di2, not eagle as the commentators said) for ages, and this is the first time I’ve seen him with a dropped chain. Worst time for it to happen!

I’ve managed to squeeze my XL 29er FS (albeit a skinny XC machine) into a Bike Box Alan, which is among the smaller of the ones on the market. So long as the frame can fit, dropout to headtube, diagonally across, and the box is wide enough to fit hub width+frame (worked with mine on boost and fat carbon tubes), it should be possible to cram it in. I had to take the forks out, crankset off, bars off, mech off, seatpost out and let the shock down to compress the frame up a bit.

Kind of depends on how much faff and swearing you want to do though, If I had a bigger box to hand I’d definitely use it!

any feel for if the scales that do body fat are in anyway good

Could be useful in the long run for comparing against past results, but they return vastly different values based on hydration and inflammation.

Calipers are better, but their accuracy is reliant on the experience and consistency of the person wielding them. They tend to give 5(ish) percent lower body fat than a DEXA scan (the ‘gold standard’, as out lecturers always put it).

Interestingly, I had a DEXA scan a few weeks ago as part of a study (alongside VO2 max and various other tests), and it came out at 22% body fat! It seems everyone in the study got a really high value though, so I’m taking it with a pinch of salt. Definitely some mass to be lost though.

Go <span class=”skimlinks-unlinked”>vegan.haha</span>.

Genuinely works. I lost a bit of weight from not grating cheese over everything. Put it back on now though, turns out dairy free dark chocolate is still pretty calorific.