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For the first time in years I had decided not to do any winter racing this season. This is for several reasons, one being to limit costs of traveling but mostly so that I can train consistently through the dark months. Or at least that was the plan!

My whole training so far has been rather turbulent, with problems with my left foot not allowing me to train at higher powers, around FTP and beyond and more recently I have picked up a chest infection that refuses to disappear. My chest has been bad for 3 weeks now, keeping me off the bike for several days when it was at its worst. Thankfully it is improving and after 2 weeks of antibiotics I am able to ride, albeit with a bad cough!

February might still be winter to many, but considering that my first major event, the Andalucia Bike Race is at the end of the month I wanted to get a couple of races in before heading out, so I’m not really counting it as winter myself. I planned a weekend of 2 races, first “Hit the North” which is a 2hr lapped race and then the Dyfi Winter Warmup near Machynlleth the following day.

On the way up to Manchester for Hit the North I managed to fit a ride in at Cannock, which is a pretty fun trail, although it is full of braking bumps! It served as a good warm up, to get the legs moving before the race. Waking up early and being one of the first on-site it was certainly going to be a cold race, with temperatures hovering around freezing and the threat of snow later in the day. I practiced the first section of the lap and decided to stick with my decision to run cyclocross tyres on the mountain bike. I’d heard that when muddy cyclocross bikes/tyres are faster around the course and even though I hadn’t tested it previously and the course was frozen and hard I stuck with it.

There were several quick racers here and also Guy Martin, the TT racer who was just in front of me on the start line. The start itself was a little chaotic as it happened all of a sudden and I was still chatting to people, so had to sort myself out pretty quickly. Going up the first climb I felt OK and made up ground and got into the top 10 or so. The first singletrack sections were a bit of a procession, so I just held my place in line. Going up the second climb, which had a bit of pushing/running I lost a couple of places and when I jumped back on the bike and pedalled the remainder put started to have massive pains in my problem left foot. It worsened quickly to a point where I couldn’t put any weight on it or pedal with any force. Not long after, going over a small wooden bridge my rear tyre popped off the rim, my untested setup wasn’t a great idea after all. In pain and with a tyre that would have taken at least 5 minutes to fix I decided to stop. I wasn’t happy, as my first race of the season was over within 10 minutes.

Lots of sulking and bad thoughts followed, I was starting to wonder if my foot would become a major problem and force me to stop racing. I was ready to head home and forget about the Dyfi the following day. I called my physio, Anne Dickins who gave me some great advice and I decided to give the Dyfi a shot after all, using it as an experiment to try and find a solution to my foot problems.

The next day, I had a good warm up and hoped that I wouldn’t have a re-run of the problems at Hit the North. Another cold day and a good field of riders, including Phil Morris and Huw Thomas it was going to be a tough race. A downhill road lead out went into the first and longest climb of the day, which I know quite well. As soon as the gradient started to increase I made my way to the front and didn’t look back for some time. When I did I realised I had a good gap, even without pushing 100% and thankfully without any pain in my foot. I eased off slightly, keeping the gap the same to the top and was the first rider into the iced over singletrack. It was a little dicey to say the least, but I got down first time OK and increased my lead. The race was over three 8 mile loops, so I tried to pace myself well over the distance.

Lap 2 was mostly good, I was gaining a few minutes each lap, but disaster happened on the bottom of the final descent, where I slipped on an icy fireroad and hit the ground hard, face first. I knew I was bleeding but couldn’t see the damage. The bike and legs were fine, so I just kept riding and onto lap 3. I had a few funny looks from other riders, so I knew I must have a few cuts on my face or something.

The final lap wasn’t as quick as the previous laps, the legs were starting to tire a little and it was hard to push a big gear up the long mid-lap climb, thankfully my face was totally numb. Reaching the top and heading back down I was a little slower than last time and especially near the bottom where I crashed but made it out fine and crossed the finish line in first, around 10 minutes ahead of second place Phil Morris and a few more ahead of Huw Thomas in third.

Two planned races in two days. I didn’t exactly go to plan, but to come away with a win at the Dyfi was great and even better to do it without having too much pain in my left foot which hampered me so much during Hit the North.

I had planned to enter the Welsh XC Rd1, but that was cancelled last minute so I’ll be heading out to Spain with just 2 races completed. I have a rough idea of where I am at and although things haven’t exactly gone to plan this season I think it could be much worse. I have a training camp first with Fitness 12 at La Manga, Feb 15-19th and then I head to Cordoba for a few days training before the Andalucia Bike Race, a 5-day UCI listed stage race which I am racing with 2011 IronBike winner Milton Ramos. He is VERY fast, I hope I don’t hold him up too much!