An early season escape with some mates to the sunny Canary Islands for some mountainous miles was well in need after the usual barrage of winter doom and gloom. Joined by local pinners, Rich Long and Harry Birchil we finished up with 15,000m of vertical elevation and 700km of riding a week later, and sadly time to leave our little sunny oasis. A great winter warmer, and chance to build some form and moral for the season ahead.
Harry and myself also took our "Heath Robinson" bike packing setups out for a random weekend to South Wales to ride some new roads and enjoy some long miles. Navigating a laden bike around the valleys took some doing, but with big miles come big rewards in the form of stunning countryside. Bike packing is something completely new to both of us, but certainly not the last trip, a proper quality weekend was had with over 21hrs of riding in three days!
For the beginning part of this season I have been dabbling a bit with XCO racing again and with the entire UK XCO being seemingly forward biased in the first seven months of the year, its been pretty busy so far! It's now the beginning of June, and with around 10 races in the legs so far it has shaped up to be pretty fun smashing around the National XC Series races and catching up with familiar faces.
Its great to enjoy the social side of race weekends again.
So far the XC legs have delivered with numerous South West Series wins and a splattering of National top 10 finishes. There may be life in the old dog yet!
Racing the full South West XC series has been great fun this year with some awesome venues making up the calendar. The series is going from strength to strength and every race has new faces appear on the start line. It's awesome to see a really healthy growing XC scene locally, especially in the kids and younger race classes!
So whats next? With mid summers day just around the corner, and the XC season not fully done and dusted with quite yet, I've got one eye on my endurance calendar with the first race being the usual TwentyFour 12 in Plymouth. It must be the 7th year there for me this year but its still an awesome weekend. With a few 12hr solos on the cards next, and Relentless 24hr in Fort William in October being my biggest focus to attempt to defend my British Champ jersey! I'm seriously looking forward to finally getting my teeth into the long races!
As ever, thank you to my sponsors for the continued support through 2019: Hotpursuit Cycles, Fabric Cycling, Specialized UK, MTB Strapon, and the man with the plan Craig at BigHeart Coaching.
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