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Missing 5 out of the 7 World Cups and not reaching one of my season’s goals of cracking into the top 60 in 2011, why do I feel that this year is going to be any different…?

Going into the first round of the 2011 World Cup season (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa), I feel there were a number of different factors that contributed to a poor performance, hence not getting the result I was hoping for.

Going back deep into winters training, December to be precise, was the start of my poor luck and from the 6th of December 2010 to January 4th 2011 I only managed 6hrs of training due to catching swine flu (over 300 cases in the South Wales area at the time). This was nothing short of a poor approach to the 2011 season as you can fit quite a lot of quality work into 4 weeks training… yet I missed what was supposed to be my last hard block before Christmas.

Recovered and back into full training, I managed to get everything back on track and as the season approached fast I started to slowly find some speed in my legs the week before the first round of the BMBS (Sherwood Pines). Unfortunately I was hit by a car the week leading into the race, resulting in a month or so battle to fight off a groin strain. By BMBS round 2 (Dalby Forrest), still not quite feeling 100% recovered from the bump, I managed to find pretty reasonable legs for the race. However, a collision with a wooden post and coming down hard resulted in more bruising and again causing the groin to flare up. With this being the week before the South Africa World Cup I wasn’t exactly going down the smoothest route into the start of what was one of my main goals of the season…

Yet again luck hadn’t changed and after a long haul flight (reaching our accommodation slightly stressed that my race bike hadn’t arrived) I ended up going light-headed falling over and giving myself concussion from colliding with the toilet cistern on the way down cracking it in two! Now with only two days until the race I felt beat up and more like I was recovering from crashes as opposed to getting ready for one of the biggest races of the season. So despite working my way from 120th on the grid up to 72nd (at my highest point in the race) still hadn’t reached my target of top 60.

After that the season went from illness to injury, back to illness and then back to injury. Apart from Dalby World Cup where I was expecting a half decent ride and it didn’t happen, the rest of the season was spent mostly trying to get enough weeks together in training to show some form in the races.

What’s changed…?

Since the end of the 2011 mtb season I’ve been part of ‘Sport Wales’ and with that have come specialist coaching, medical backup, and top facilities to train at as part of Team Wales on the build-up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games. I have no doubt in my mind that this help will allow me to make big improvements over the next few seasons and apart from the odd small cold and little niggles, training has been consistent this winter and with no bumps/crashes as of yet, I expect to see them results starting this season.

With the first World Cup of 2012 being at the same venue as last year, I’m better prepared for the course. Last season I wasn’t aware of just how much climbing per lap I would have to endure and therefore my weight could be much better than last year. To put it in perspective, during a 16 minute lap there was no less than 350m of climbing per lap which is similar to the old school Margam Park courses of the late 90’s where lap times were around 35mins!

All in all I will be a better athlete going into the 2012 season and I do expect to reach my goals for this season. Here is a short video from last year’s SA World Cup with a post-race interview on how I felt preparation and the race went so hope fully come March 17th I expect my 2012 World Cup bid to be a different story…