Final preparation for this weekend

The Brechfa Rally is on Sunday and I've finished my pre-race physical training having ridden around 100 miles on my mountain bike in the last week. I feel good and I'll be resting this week so that I'll be fully recovered by the weekend for what is round 1 of the 2014 All Terrain Rally Challenge.

The weather looked promising early on Saturday morning so I decided on Friday night to set the alarm for 5am. WHY?! I hear you ask...Well, recently I've been riding to the top of Caerphilly mountain and into Rudry and the surrounding area quite a bit and have stumbled across a few stunning views, one of which offers a panoramic view of Cardiff. So, what I thought I'd do is get up early, ride up and watch the sunrise.

It's tough to get out of bed at that time in the morning, but once I got going it was just like any other ride (other than the fact that it was very cold - icy in fact). Let me be clear though, the trip to the top was well worth it, here was my reward at about 7am:

Luckily, one thing I do well is motivate myself as far as training is concerned. It isn't easy when you have no-one with you to test your limits, but I always push myself and I try to reinforce the "enduro rider's mentality" as I like to call it. That is, never give up. When you haven't got an ounce of energy left in your body, keep going, when you have a problem, fix it and keep going, when things aren't going your way, keep going. I'm well aware that there's no substitute for time on the bike, but I have to do the best I can in the situation I'm in.

Anyway, that's enough of the clichéd rambling, and back to the matter at hand. The only preparation I have left to do as far as the bike is concerned is: check the air filter, check the chain tension and get my race fuel.

While I'm waiting for the weekend to arrive, I'll spend some of my free time during the week watching my videos from last year's race and some DirtWise training DVDs from Aussie legend Shane Watts. You can buy them in the UK from Trial Enduro Direct:

Wattsy's a great character and the videos are useful, sometimes very funny too! "Unless you like wearing your bum-hole for an eye patch" - shame I can't remember what came before that...

Keep your eyes peeled next week, I'll have videos, photos and a ride report from the 2014 Brechfa Rally.

New JustGiving page

I've just set up a new JustGiving page justgiving.com/ioanwhittick so that anyone who wants to do so can donate. There's a texting service available too, to use it text IOAN87 £5 to 70070.

Thank you in advance to everybody who is kind enough to support me and Wales Air Ambulance by making a donation!

A weekend of training

With my first race of the year only a couple of weeks away and only about 5 hours clocked up on my new (to me) bike, I decided I needed a full weekend of solid training.

I started on Saturday morning with some drills to practice technical skills, some of which I got from a DirtWise DVD (good ol' Wattsy):

• Full lock figure 8's
• Rear brake slides
• Slow wheelies
• Nose wheelies
• Power slides
• Weaving around obstacles at speed

During the rest of the weekend I rode a combination of sticky mud, tree roots, ruts, climbs, cambers and insanely slippery grass track! I also managed to squeeze in a nice relaxing road ride into the countryside to cool off and take in the scenery.

When I got back from my ride on Sunday, I set to work preparing the bike for the up-coming Brechfa Rally. I cleaned it well, then greased everything like I normally do. Then I moved onto my "race-prep" as I like to call it, which is basically just doing my own scrutineering.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, scrutineering is the inspection of your bike, which is performed by the club running the event, before you start. It's carried out for safety reasons and if you don't pass, you don't race.

I found a couple of things; a couple of bolts that needed tightening, a missing cable tie on one of the plastics and more importantly, worn front wheel bearings. Off came the wheel and half an hour later it was back on again and sitting snug with no play.

Spot on and ready to race!

BikePark Wales

I went for the first time the other day. In case you haven't heard of it, BikePark Wales is a new-ish mountain bike trail centre near Merthyr Tydfil and let me tell you, it is brilliant! Great practice as it happens because the trails had high speed berms, jumps, tight technical sections and steep descents.
Not only that but we unexpectedly had perfect weather, what a day out for only £5!

We got there by 9am and rode up to the top 3 times before zipping down the mountain on a mixture of blue and red trails. The uplift service is £30, I might consider that next time, it would be nice to be able to ride all the trails in one day.

Anyway, we were all a bit spent by about 2pm so off we went, but I'd recommend it to anyone. There are trails to suit all levels of ability, the blues are great fun because they're fast and flowing, the reds are much more technical. I fancy having a go at one of the technical black runs next time.

A walk around my Wales Air Ambulance EXC

I'm so happy with how the bike's turned out, it's a real head turner (which is exactly the point)! For those of you who may not get a chance to see it up close, here's a short video to showcase the custom graphics I had made at Fusion MX.

YouTube video popularity

I'm very pleased that the race videos I've uploaded to YouTube over the last year have had over 5,000 views in total! If I can repeat that this year, that'll be brilliant exposure for Wales Air Ambulance. The most popular video from 2013 is "Welsh 2 day enduro 2013 - Day 1 - Rhayader Special Test".

Crash bang wallop, what a video

No, I'm not supposed to fall off, but things don't always go according to plan. Here are some of the best crashes captured on my helmet camera in races and practice in 2013 for you to enjoy. CUT!