Why You Must Ride The Barrow 100k!!!!!!

Look,lets be honest. Life is short. We can sit around waiting for the thermometer to go north of single figures, or the barometer to quit falling as oddly-named storms batter the rock we live on. But you might have to wait a long time. Instead, your conscience is telling you that you need to gather yourself for the Barrow Sportif in a little over a week. Listen to the voice of reason in your head. YOU NEED TO GET GOING! But theres a long list of reasons why. First of all, you need to get over the grit-driven season of base training, open up your system to big gulps of air and remind your body why you got off the couch and started cycling in the first place. A heart-rate of 60 whilst on said couch, feet resting on a slab o' Dutch isn't our natural state! The sooner we get up and at it the better the year will be, the longer the season too. Secondly, its time to prep your bike! Your bike is a reliable horse that needs care. It needs to be event-ready! Get the thing overhauled! Treat it to the equivalent of a facial or colonic, get the cables done, chain replaced, check those bloody tyres that probably have enough cumulative tiny shards of glass on board to make up a bottle in total. We are all up to ninety about the names of who'll be flying at season's start and from where, when really, the only names on your mind should be your local bike mechanic's. Haul your ass down to George or Johnny or David or Paul and don't show up to your first event with a fit body on a failing machine. Rust is not a sign you've been training in the rain. Squeeks don't mean you have to put out more watts. Worn tyres don't prove your mileage. Pitted headsets do not 'liven up' cornering. Buckled wheels may be bothersome to fix but that beats rubbing the paint off your ten grand bespoke frame. And brake blocks. The 'wear-line' is on the blocks, its not the line worn in your wheel rim! Sludge in your derailleur cannot be used as bottom bracket grease later. A smooth running bike is a joy to behold. Thirdly, its too easy to be anti-social, big ourselves up on social media such as grouptexts or turn ourselves into kakoa-nuts and live in a cocoon all winter. Its good to get out,hear live conversation, see real people, not some graphics on a screen. Some people don't see outside their pain cave until Paddy's Day and by then they have scabbed knuckles and can't hold a conversation that doesn't contain numbers. The Sportif prevents this early-onset-troglodyte-syndrome. Fourthly, starting the Barrow Wheelers event will save on razors/lady-shaves/trips to A+E. Why? Look, if we don't bare the legs until Spring has truly sprung, you'll be harvesting instead of shaving. Why use up a Taiwanese factory's output of cheap blades on each leg in April when you can get started in January and prevent that moment when you fall over at pedestrian lights because your leg hair is between the 53 ring and chain. An early sportif can also prevent that awkward conversation with your partner about burning out the ladyshave and the subsequent acrid smell of burnt plastic in the en suite. Or, horror of horrors, the call of shame from A+E regarding the profuse bleeding as you slit your knee open with the switch-blade in the steam-filled shower. Silky smooth legs in January also saves on rain or dirt or snot forming attachments to your legs. Flailing snots from fellow cyclists can dangle off hairy pins until you think a miniature Bear Grylls is absailing from them. Trust me, the Barrow 100 will solve all these problems. And fifthly; What about the economy? Haven't said partners bought all that you wanted for Christmas? The silk tubs, the custom Garmins, plush shorts, sexy eyewear...the list is endless and bordering on pornographic. All that jewellery needs an airing. The carbon has to come out, the shiney, un-dirtied kit needs to impress. Similarly, to help the economy, you must pay your bikeshop for the aforementioned work, buy enough gels to slow a Sherman tank, buy tubs of High-5 too, and of course, you have to sit in your local coffee shop discussing the event before and after, quaffing flat-whites and once again... boosting the economy! So, while you him and haw over the start of your season, really, there's a lot more to it than unhooking the bike and setting off. Come on! Think it over! You know you want to! See you on Sunday 31st!

the squeeze

Sweaty men, disco lights, gulping drinks, grunts, no women, smiles. Must be spin class! Its that time of the year. Upping the game. Spin class with pursuits and sprints. Outside its time for longer and harder weekend spins, harder intervals, less time for recovery. I love it! I can smell the new season less than a month away, the calendar is up on the Cycling Ireland website, I have the licence confirmation e-mail from the Feds. Good to go! It must be the time to nail my colours to the mast and state my objectives for the year. This may seem strange but they are quite diverse. First off, I want to get into the season. What I mean is that everyone, EVERYONE fears those first races, hopes their standard is acceptable, prays not to be dropped. Anyone tells you otherwise they've been already doing training races in secret. Theres the crazy relief of being back where you belong or the instant panic and sleepless nights that follow. "But I was beating him last year!"/"Things have got a lot faster"/"I should have done more intervals" etc. So to glide in with the bunch is my first goal. I want to enjoy this season and I'm in no hurry to get up the road.My main objectives are to win a league, win a race in May and to enjoy cycling in Spain on my holidays before having a shot at some end of season stuff too. Thats the guts of it. Of course I know it ain't that simple but it is the way I've been heading in training. By the time I get on either of those start lines in May it could all have gone to pot. But by beginning training last September I hope to emulate five years ago when I Wintered similarly and had a whole season of fitness. Out in the snow and ice all the time. Worst case scenario is as follows; Rock up to the first open race,somewhere in Meath with superlight everything,perfectly smooth legs, espresso-laden and laughing on the grid. Up the road, back to bunch, back to rear, back to cavalcade, back to carpark, back to basics. Pack bike quick and leave before you have to do a post mortem on your sh**e performance.@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Best case scenario; Ease into carpark early, get a decent warm-up for my 47-year-old diesel legs,pay attention to the movers and shakers, Hover in top twenty, play the waiting game as the grommits burn all their matches before the last kilometres, then go for the sprint easy, only turning on the lamps within spitting distance of the line. Straight up.@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@. Well thats it,isn't it? Dream races only come together occasionally but that would be my dream scenario. What did Lance call it? No chain? Of course, how anyone wants their season to go is simple. We all want to get to the end of it with as little stress as possible. We don't want some fool to wreck our time on the bike, we want everyone to ride steady, as if we actually don't want to be in hospital the next day. Don't stand up,move around or corner without being aware of your fellow competitors. Simple rules. Nothing worse than spending hundreds of hours in training through the worst of weather, on the worst of roads,battling frost, black-ice,sleet and now snow, only for a club-racer to be the one that does the damage. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@'. I'm looking forward to a few sportives too. Some are becoming chariot races,yet the ones I like have hills and a naturally selective course. and a tea-stop! A 90 mile sportif in May bolsters your endurance too, having forsaken long steady spins once the race season starts. And you actually get to TALK to people. Racing is a bubble, we really only get to talk to a few. Sportifs are catch-ups that often revert to races but initially the banter is great. Catch you for a chat soon?

Over indulgence

I may have overdone it. Its just, well, chocolate goes really well with red wine. And turkey is so moreish. And Roses. And ice cream is a really good digestivo. But I trained hard over the holiday. It wasn't 'til the New Year that I could smell bacon when I sweated, with a hint of berries and tannins from the Rioja. And then Christmas day's turkey crown had to leave my system but it was breach. Diet pills, laxatives. They aren't worth a s**t. The best way to stop your swerve and get back onto the straight and narrow is to train harder and jettison the bad stuff. We are all nice people. We fill our houses with more temptations than a harem for friends and families and wayward visitors. But when half of the stuff is still left because your Aunty Nuala is lactose intolerant, Uncle Ignatious is diabetic, in fact it seems as if Christ in the crib will grow to be coeliac, we are all in trouble. And we don't like waste, do we? All that nasty stuff in January can't be given away, so it wends it's way through our alimentary canals and barges it's way out in time for the tough stuff training of January. I have no intention of racing in 2017, and judging by the calories I consumed over this Christmas, I'll be Elvis, dead on a toilet seat by this time next year. In the meantime, I have to work on the cellulite that's on my cellulite. *************************************************************************************************************************************** Training is going well and the reps are coming good when you can taste the iron tang of blood in the back of your throat. But It has been followed by the bilious after taste of quality street. Some work still to go. However, I have saved a fortune on chamois cream now that I'm secreting turkey fat at such a level that the harder I train the more comfortable my ass gets. Bonus! My pores are working overtime, letting out the produce of a small corner of Bordeaux. A lot has come out. Mer-lot. Coffee is good. Ups the heart-rate, promotes the burn. Along with snatched flat whites when the wife ain't watching, my sister bought me some Nespresso pods that were obviously roasted in Chernobyl. Campag may go to eleven, as the amps in Spinal Tap did, but these pods go to strength guide 12! Twelve for god's sake! So I have the shakes. And I don't sleep much. And if I wake in the early hours I go through endless crazy crap in my head. And Tabata sessions. And then I drift into the arms of Morpheus just before the alarm buzzes and I think I'm Richard Virenque waking to get my heart-rate up after another fleche of EPO. But really I'm just Joe Rossiter and I haven't slept coz I'm strung out on Caffeine and stress.****************************************************************************************************************************** And I hit the fruit and salads. Love bananas. But beetroot juice feels like the taste you get when you have crashed in the opening kilometre of the Des Hanlon [circa 2001] because a junior slipped his gears in front of you and you cop a mouthful of earth from the verge. It may raise your Nitric Oxide levels but it takes some getting used to. The fact that it looks like bottled blood in your fridge DOES give it an uber-cool factor though! Lettuce is not for human consumption. Onions empty a room. Eight kilos of salad is the equivalent in filling you up as two dry crackers. And how can you avoid cheese? Cheese is proof even to atheists that god loves us! A lock on the fridge {with a picture of David Gest to make it tamper proof} is the only answer. Awe hell, lets just get out there and leave the trans-fat trail for others to follow.