Matt Page Blog: Snow Fun!

No prizes for guessing what has dominated my training over the past week and a bit!

The heavy snowfall meant I had to rearrange all my plans for last week, which I had hoped would be a high volume week. We had a big dump of snow on Monday and Tuesday which closed lots of roads around us, even the main roads were too risky.
So instead of heading out on the Kiron I used the turbo trainer and ventured off-road on the Focus First into the snowy trails. The bad weather held out all the way through the week, although I did manage to do one long road ride as the road conditions improved.

Riding in the snow is quite fun, but its impossible to do any structured training, so rather than try I just relaxed and tried to enjoy it. The snow we had was surprisingly grippy going uphill and down, despite there being 5-6” in places. Although there was plenty of grip while coming downhill its still quite tricky as you really don’t know what is under the wheel, so its quite a good workout for the core muscles as you are constantly moving the bike about beneath you trying to stay on line.

Last Sunday I headed to Glyncorrwg, in the Afan Valley for another snow packed ride. Starting on Whites level the snow was seriously deep by the time I reached the top of the climb. Luckily plenty of people had ridden there over the week before me, so there was a nice compacted line around the whole trail, but veer off line a bit and riding was impossible. Heading down the valley I did The Wall, which had much less snow, especially in the forested sections. Finally on to Penhydd, which was in the worst condition of them all, plenty of snow which was slushy, slippery, slow and hard work. Overall a good 4hr ride in tough conditions. By the time I got back to the car park the weather had turned for the worse and it started snowing heavily, it was only 2pm but there was virtually no one there and everything was starting to shut.

I’ve also started to really enjoy my running, although I’m only doing one run a week I am seeing a good improvement. I’ve recently got a pair of Salomon XA Pro 3D Ultra GTX so I can head into the local hills and forests. I’m only running 5-6km at the moment, but hope to get towards 10k eventually. The main reasons for me to run are because some of the 12/24hr races start with a Le-Mans style 800-1000m run to the bikes, but also because when conditions turn nasty on some courses there is a need to walk/run certain sections so I try and keep the muscles strong and active.

Overall it was good week, although I didn’t manage to do everything I had planned I still did over 20hrs of training. This week is an easier week, with training roughly cut in half as I allow my body to recover and adapt from a tough 4 week block of training.