Xc NPS RD 2 Killarney

So it was back to Killarney again for the Second round of the NPS last weekend. The weekend started off a bit earlier for me this weekend as I was down on Thursday to climb Carrauntoohil with the school. On Saturday morning we woke up to lovely morning, sun shining after climbing Carrauntoohil in the snow the day before. At 9 o'clock Jon arrived and 2 or 3 of the other guys on the team were already there so we went and set up the team Team tents up at the start/finish area of the track. At around 12 o'clock the rest of the team arrived at the hostel. We had a meeting to begin the weekend with the team. After that we had a talk from Ed Niland on Nutrition, Hydration and giving us some training tips to get the most out of our training. I found this pretty interesting and got some good information from it. We then headed out to the front of the hostel were we were giving some new Clothing from Dare2B Clothing. We got a Race jacket, Gilet and some nice hats. The stuff looks really good and really stands out. We got a few team photos with some of the new gear on us before we went and got changed for our practise laps of the course.

So after getting change into our gear for practise we headed out onto the track. James Hanrahan and I did our practise laps together. We stopped and sessioned a few sections. I manage to get sun burnt as well during the day. We came back to the hostel and got showered and changed out of our riding gear. We then had a lovely dinner cooked by some of the team members Mums and Dads. After dinner we had a game of football and then watched some T.V. I was in bed at 10 as I was pretty tired from the days before.


Sunday Morning came around and again I was up early. The team met for breakfast around 8/8:30. After breakfast I put on my gear for racing and put on some warm cloths and my Dare2B race Jacket  I headed up to sign on in the field. I then went and had a chat with some of the guys from MADMTB. I then went and hung around the pit area talking to some of the guys and making sure my bike and others were ready to race.

At 12am the U16 and U14 races kicked off. Alex and I watched and cheered on the team members racing. Some great results for some of the Guys and Girls in the Youth Races with Paddy"GaGa"Michel winning U16 and the rest of the Top 8 being Team riders. And also well done to Leah Maunsell and Shannon Buller winning their respective category's as well. 



At 1 o'clock I started my warm up. I did Half a lap of the course with James following me. After that I did some sprints on the start line before lining up on the Start line. 3.2.1 Go. I sprinted of the line going into the First corner in 3rd place. I got paced near the end of the Field  and ended up in 5th place going into the first section of singletrack. From there I stuck behind Chris Oakley for half the lap before I got passed him. I stayed ahead of him for the rest of the lap and we came into the finish area. At he start of the second lap Chris passed me again and started to pull away. For the 2nd time in a Nps I spent the rest of the race by myself fighting to catch up. I tried to get all of my lines and be as consistent as possible with my legs being tired from climbing. At the ends of the race I came into the finish area and finished in 5th place. I'm happy with my result as it was a full on couple of days and I was tired. Well done to David Montgomery, Max Van Der Lee and Dan Brickenden on the podium. Thanks to James Hanrahan for doing my bottles during the race.


I had a great weekend racing and I'd like to thank Jon Hynes for organising it. A big thank you to Dare2B Clothing and Cycling Ireland for the brilliant gear and support, To Killarney Cycling Club for holding a great race on a unreal course and finally to Dave Wilson who provided the team with a great bike rack to be used at the rest of our races and Bike Addiction for helping everybody get there bikes sorted. Looking forward to NPS Rd 3 in my back garden 3Rock in 2 weeks time.

Scott