It’s been a while since I’ve written a race report. Having decided to take a year away from MTBO to refresh mentally, I’ve not done many races. Throughout the Winter and Spring I was ticking over with training, doing what I wanted rather than having any focus. It was fine for a couple of months to have no pressure or stress but then I started to feel aimless.
In May, a day before the selection deadline, I announced to the selectors I wished to ride at WOC. I’ve always enjoyed MTBO in Hungary, and the World Championships were being held in and around Veszprem where I competed on one area in 2009.
I started training with a goal. A top ten finish in Sprint and/or Middle. In June I moved to Norway for a couple of months to travel around with my boyfriend, train hard and make a map. My first MTBO races came about 3 weeks after I started training properly in the form of the Swedish MTBO Champs in Stockholm. A few bike/leg/brain problems and I knew I was performing poorly in all 3 races. But in the middle there was a glimmer of race focus.
For two months I trained hard. A camp in Finland with some mind blowing maps. Some training in Mora. I was doing more training than ever before - but I’m not going to give the secret away!
Finally things felt like they were clicking into place.
I went home and then coached at Lagganlia/Kincraig for 2 weeks. It was tough finding the balance of training, enough biking and intervals to keep ticking over, usually early in the morning, and not so much shadowing that I did too much training. Fortunately an ankle injury saw me take a few days out which helped keep down the running hours. I managed to stick to the plan. I don’t know what the other coaches thought, but possibly “crazy” and “obsessed” came into it!
Straight after tour I flew out to Budapest for an organised camp with some other teams. The organiser had done a brilliant job of planning one session per day, but with the possibility of more training which was self planned. Again I didn’t give in to temptation and stuck to my training plan, and stayed out of the sun.
Finally we drove to Veszprem and sorted out everything for the arrival of the rest of the team later that evening. With another day of training it was simply a matter of staying calm (being team leader means life is never calm) and out of the sun.
