Less than 3 weeks to go until the Welsh 2 day enduro now, I've been training hard on the mountain bike in the last few weeks to try to make up for my lack of time on the motorbike. As you may already know, the Wales Air Ambulance EXC is poorly at the moment and needs an engine rebuild, so riding it is out of the question.
During the winter I trained relentlessly in all weathers and at night on the mountain bike, trying to keep my fitness up. When the season started, I took a week off leading up to the first event, then a week off afterwards to recover, then I failed to get back into my routine! I did a few races but until May I'd pretty much been off training for 2 months. I wasn't happy and motivated myself to get out on the bike again and went straight to the hardest training loop to see if I could still do it. It turned out I could, so that was all the encouragement I needed - back to it!
Since then I've been out riding twice a week. They're mostly road/track loops but they have some huge hill climbs in them (22%) and a distance between 16 and 18 miles, the harder ones have an elevation gain of 1700ft. I tried out a new loop last night, despite battling with an ear infection and completed the on/off road 21 miles (1850ft elevation gain) in just under 2 hours and not feeling too bad.
Hopefully this fitness training will give me the endurance I need to maintain my technical skills throughout the days during the Welsh, I'm really looking forward to it now, but I'll feel a lot happier about it once I get my bike back and run it in. More on that in a couple of weeks' time when it's ready.
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