Katy Winton

So last week had quite a bit of this:

Oh yes, the first British XC round at Sherwood Forest brought plenty of changes... It was a new year, a new race and a completely new category as I'd be racing elite for the very first time. I stood on the start line with only one expectation and that was to: expect the unexpected. When the gun went the red mist came down. I was time to make my mark as an Elite racer.

Sunday morning:

5.30 (well so we thought…) Lucy says to me: "KATY! Why aren't you up??

"Eh… cus it's half five and the clocks have changed so I don't need to eat till 6.30." I groaned.

"uh right…"

6.30 (or so we thought…) ring…ring…ring… Alarm goes off and we are all up getting porridge ready. BOOM, bang on time! On it like a car bonnet we weren't getting caught out this year nuh-uh (or so we thought…)

7.15 (or so we - yeah, you get the drift..) Knock, knock on the dad's door, Iain (Lucy's Dad) answers "aww no, have we slept in??"

"yes!!! Lets go!!!" we replied. So Lucy and I get the van keys and head to the van. Yay, we'd eaten, we were packed and all set to be leaving on time :)

"Girls, girls" Iain say's as he comes out into the car park. "your an hour early… It's 6.30 now"

Yes folks, Lucy and I had been awake from 3.30 (old time) and up since 4.30. Since the Dad's were up in plenty of time we went to this place:

yeah… really didn't think I'd find myself here never mind find myself here at 7am (real time). (Don't worry coach Paul, I DID NOT EAT ANYTHING!!)

So, after and eventful morning we arrived on race sight in plenty of time. The sun was creeping over the tops of the trees and it was looking like we were in for a gorgeous day! A quick change of kit before the Kinesis Maxlight Pro3 and it's smexy Reynolds wheels and I headed out to do a bit of a lap:

 Oh no wait... that's not my bike! BUT, these ARE pretty cool!! This is my bike:

This was before we headed down to Robin Hood land - HOW CLEAN IS THAT!? Looking mega!! :)

Sherwood is one of the flatter non-scary courses that is included in the British rounds. This year was no different and was a standard Sherwood-esque course with short sharp fire road transitions between bumpy, twisty turn single track with the random one (blue) stand alone root here and there. Oh yeah and the occasional log just to spice things up…

Standing in the sun on the start line, after a good warm up, I was looking forward to racing my own race. So many things had changed for this race which meant, for me, it finally became: 'just a bike race'. When you have the British Champs jersey on, when you've done well in the past, when that expectation hangs over your head like a heavy cumulonimbus there is so much more going on in your head. Today, as always, I knew what I had to do but this time there was no pressure from anyone and not even from myself. I am only 18 years old and racing with the best women in British XC (one of which is top 10 in the world) a long with some other foreign riders. I was a puppy in with the big dogs. 

I had no idea where I was going to end up, in fact no one did, there was no messing - it was time to to race my little heart out, learn from the experience and show everyone what I got.

I had a good start and was still feeling good in 8th with 2 laps to and Gabby Day chasing me down. Going into the first bit of single track she was right on my wheel so I kept squeezing on the pedals keeping the pace just that wee bit too hard for her to sprint past. Through the trees I got a bit of a gap but she was back on me on the straighter single track. Into the slightly sloping downwards piece of track (wouldn't quite qualify it as a descent) I pushed on trying to keep my speed through all the fast corners and got a gap. The next flat straight bit she was back on me. Not panicking I kept her behind me and controlled the pace. Getting another gap through the first part of single track then quite a significant gap as I took all the A lines (faster harder routes) while Gabby took the B lines (longer easier routes) I knew I had to up the pace if I wanted to stay away. Coming into the start finish with one lap to go I still had a good gap. I knew if I could do exactly the same for the next lap there was no chance she would catch me; I just had to live up to my nickname and be on it like a 'car bonnet'.

Over the final random log that allowed you a sneaky looked back up the track she was no where to be seen! However, it's not over until you cross the finish line so I sprinted on finding every last piece of energy to leave it on the track. Through the final twisty turny trees and I was home bound and crossed the line in 8th!!! I was delighted but so tired! 

I was so broken! Living up to the name of my nice Movelo Kickback hoody and Kicking back! 

I was so pleased to FINALLY get a good start to the season! I felt consistently strong so long may that feeling continue!

Big thanks to Papa Winton and second dad Iain Grant for driving us down and feeding and always sorting us out! My BBB helmet and glasses got their first race test and they pass, 10 out of 10!! I never ever race with glasses but these were awesome! check out a pic, plus there is another Kinesis frame too! Pic here.

Well done to everyone who raced, even the dad's who did the open race on the Saturday!! You did GID!

I have more good news: I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST!! And I now have insurance on (Sheldon) our old wee Suzuki Swift! So, this weekend is the first round of the Scottish XC Series and I am going to drive there!! ROAD TRIP! Excited!!

Also, I haven't done a post on this so, if you haven't seen it already, this is the funny video from SPANISHLAND!! :D gives you an idea of the awesome riding out there and that, eh yeah, we are right weirdo's!!

I'm off for a night ride now in this LOVELY weather! Hope you've been getting out in it!!

Tarra for now!

Win tin ton

Something I learned at the weekend: downhill is NOT an easy discipline! Nope, if it was easy I would have woken up on Monday morning feeling fresh and ready to face the world. Instead I've spent most of this week feeling like this:

Monday morning especially, I could feel my whole body groaning as I woke up begging me to stay in bed and rest my rattled bones. The weekend had been far from easy...

The last round of the Alpine Bikes Winter Series at Inners was a Downhill race and, since my return from hard training in Spain, I couldn't wait for some riding fun on my Pivot! I was not disappointed as Steve Deas of Icycles put together a, too be expected, fricken awesome track!! It was completely mental but it was awesome!! The top section was REALLY steep, rough and loose with random drops; I found this section really hard to ride on the wee Pivot but it still managed to get me down, just! Then it was into a fast pedaly middle section down some muddy rooty bits and to the finish. I knew this track was going to test the Pivot to the max and also my ability to stay on the track holding on to the bike for dear life!

Unfortunately, things did not start well... I wouldn't recommend turning up to a practise/race/ride etc. WITH NO SHOES. We've all been there and had that feeling where all your insides sink in disappointment only to rise straight back up again boiling with frustration at your stupidity. However, it was time to suck it up and vow NEVER to make that mistake again. So, I waited for my Dad who later arrived for a coaching session with my shoes - thanks Dad! And, at 2pm, I was on the bike opting for pedalling up the hill checking out the track as I rode past. I made it to the top and was greeted by a red flag (this means course is closed as someone has had a really bad crash) so I just did the top steep section a couple of times. Red flag down and two runs later that was practise over.... To say I was feeling unprepared was quite an understatement. What was worse is that I knew fine well that this was not a course you could get away with 'winging it' - especially if you wanted to do well and as ever, I did.

The next day Bex and I arrived in the car park to this..

Mother Nature was on form and had sent us some snow which was coating the tops of the hills. 

However, I REMEMBERED my shoes this time so Sunday was already looking better. I managed a good first run before the snow started to melt... This melting changed the whole feel of the course - a particular change that, on the second run, saw me more on the floor than on the bike due to the mud party that was happening the whole way down the hill... I was not feeling ready for racing at all!

Heading up for race run no. 1 I was fretting because I hadn't had enough time swap my tyres to some that would grip. Surprisingly though once off on my run I managed to somehow get down the first section clean!! Maybe I could get away with winging it... This was a stupid thought. Crossing the line at the bottom with a broken visor I was not a happy chappy as I'd just spent more time on the ground than on my bike during that run. The thing is, it wasn't even fun! It was a disaster, which was sad because I love flying down hills ON my bike but, in that run, I was just flying off my bike. 

Race run no. 2, heading up the hill this time with mega grippy tyres thanks to Dad and a fixed visor thanks to Nick at the Alpine Bikes stand! Reaching the top I was ready to give this run all I had to see if I could at least make it onto the podium. About 20seconds into the run I full on head butted a tree. It hurt a lot. But, I had a job to do so I jumped on my bike which turned out not so successful as I slid down the hill flying off my bike and into the midst of tape. Quickly jumping up I grabbed my bike and ran to the fire road. Not exactly the way I was hoping this run to go... Fortunately though, something clicked and the rest of the run my tyres gripped and I started to ride properly and felt like myself again!! YAY. All it took was a jolly good smack over the head and things started to come together. By the bottom I was happy, that was actually fun!! My time took me into third behind Bex in second (getting revenge after our last race together, one all now!!) and Angela Coats in 1st!

Here is a link to a sweet picture by Ian Linton of me in the lovely KMP downhill jersey on roots and rain, check it out here. This was before my broken visor!!

Just want to say a massive thanks to Innerleithen MTB racing and Alpine bikes for putting on another great series and to all the marshals who braved the weather and stood in the FREEZING cold all weekend! I salute you! Thanks to everyone who looked after me and helped me be a bit more of a 'down hiller' and less of and XC'er! And to my Dad for all his help at the weekend! 

Now I look ahead to the first XC race of the season where I'll be visiting Robin Hood at Sherwood Forest on the 25th of March! Training time!!

Thanks for reading, remember your shoes!!

Win tin tin

ALSO, my facebook page has a NEW LOOK!!

Check it out here at: facebook.com/KatyWinton

If you like then give it a 'like' and be the first to know all the latest shenanigans! 

Thank you!! :)

Now, before I went to Spain I was on a training camp and, before that training camp some exciting things happened!! One of them being Bex's face when she saw this:

 

To be honest the week didn't start off well - when we arrived all our expectations of this 'warm weather' training camp were crushed with a mallet as we landed in a cold, wet Spain. Our transport into the mountains wasn't quite what we expected either - a rickety old van that smelt rather strongly of cat piss with a dude that spoke no English... the mallet hit again that night when we found ourselves all huddled up on the sofa wrapped in blankets counting down the days until we could go home because it was SO cold. Where the hell was the real Spain?? Luckily, things got better...

Tom 'Ivan Drago' Evans, Iain 'CNP' Paton, Stuart 'Scott Boy' Wilcox and Ben 'No gloves' Miller were the Scottish Juniors boys that were joining me - Dangerous Katy and Scottish Coach Paul 'Rocky Balboa wannabe' Newnham on the Rocky Balbowa Training Camp (you know the rocky films? Yeah? Well, Paul was trying to giving us a film education this camp...). 

First here are some pictures - my wee bike getting ready to fly out Spain:

LOOK!!!! Mountains:

So, after our first freezing night in 'Spain' things had changed (thankfully) by morning time:

THE SUN CAME OUT! Perfect timing for our 4hour road ride! The 1.5hr climb to start off broke us in nicely to the first days training on the Rocky Balboa Camp. The veiws were lovely and we got to ride with bare arms and legs (been a long time since that had happened) which meant that the tan lines were already starting to make an appearance. Once back we cleaned out the fire which made for a pleasant evening - no blankets required - watching Rocky 1. Boom!

Day two and it was time to hit the trails. Oh yeah, after a 40min hill climb effort! A total of 2.5hrs of climbing we made it to the top before we got to go off road! This is the view from the top:

Yes, yes that is snow, and it was real snow I saw a snowman on the way up and everything!

It was now time to descend, we'd earned our fun after the savage hill climb effort so we could really enjoy the rest of the day! We had a long way to come down! These trails were, AMAZING! So rocky and fast every time we regrouped at the road transitions we were all buzzing! I'd ridden these tracks a couple of years previous when out with my family and struggled to get down but my wee Kinesis Pro3 and I are quite a team now! It was great to ride the bike on different terrain too - it was pretty extreme for the wee Kinesis but it took it all in it's stride keeping the riding super fun as always!

We dropped down to a little village called Capileira to have a sandwich! Check the wee Kinesis, smexy wee bike don't you think? Check those wheels, so nice:

Eh, yeah, it does say 'Katy Winto' on my bike... it's my foreign name for when I'm in foreign land ;)

We then descended further down through Capileira, Bubión and Pampaneira with a short stint on the road before more and more descending! It was amazing!! From here we descended down then climbed up and over that ridge - you can see the path in the middle, and Órgiva, where we were staying, is just behind that wee hill.

This is on the ridge and, apparently, Steve Peat rode down this! It looked pretty much like riding down a wall! Nutter...

After this, on the final track of the day, I had a near death moment - I'd let my brakes off to go passed Ian who had fallen off. From that moment on, unable to brake, I had no control of the rapidly increasing speed I was picking up due to the marble like ground underneath my wheels. I had two options: Jump off, and probably break a bone landing in all the rocks at this speed - yeah, that quickly changed to 'not and option! So I was left with: just hold on. And hold on I did... screaming down the hill I SOMEHOW managed to hold it making it (an alternative route right enough but I made it all the same) to the fire road. In one piece. Paul, however, was NOT happy that I'd just taken 5 years off his life as he pooed his pants because it looked like I was about to end myself... So that was and eventful end to the day and so I was named 'Dangerous Katy'.

The rest of the week, consisted of an easy ride (quite difficult when you have to climb everywhere), a split day including 4x4min steep hill efforts (I was a broken woman this day) 4hours on the road, another mountain bike ride and a whole lot of salad eating! Paul forced salad upon us and BEETROOT which none of us liked. We all moaned about it but knew that actually it was doing us good; it just tasted dreadful.

On the final road ride we cycled to the highest village called Trevélez, it was freezing! The descent on the road however, was amazing! It just went on and on and on, corner after corner as it weaved us down the mountain with not a car insight! It was a great ride!! 

The final day we climbed up on the opposite side of the valley for our final ride of the week. This was the view from the top:

You can see Órgiva where we stayed it's the big populated bit at the bottom then over at the very top right hand side is Pampaneira up to Bubión then Capileira at the top! 

And here is a picture of me at the top with my wee bike, 

Oh look it says Katy Winton on this side, just to confuse you... Also modelling my nice new BBB helmet and Glasses on! :)

The saying from Paul to me at the top was "Now, Katy, If in doubt, miss it out. Okay? no more near death moments please" my reply.. "nah nah Paul, If in doubt, ride it out" ooh, if looks could kill I would have died! Luckily this was a great descent with billions of switch backs I had a wee tumble at one point but nothing major and everyone got back safe and sound from our last ride of the week! 

After our expectations being crushed at the start of the week, it was all made up for because we never saw a drop of rain the rest of the trip, the roads were better than we could have imagined and the trails were just something else!! We all want to say a massive thank you to Scottish Cycling for helping with some funding for the trip, Paul for putting up with us and force feeding us salad and Dave, our guide, for showing us the trails and keeping things exciting! Shout to Steve, Howel and Andrew who all came out on the off road rides with us too!

I'd also like to say thank you to Windwave for sorting me out with my sweet BBB kit! I'll pop up another blog this week with all the pictures, there is more!! And to the boys for excellent banter and keeping positive when we were all so very broken!

We have lots of video's from the week so I am editing them all together into a wee video which will hopefully be up sooooon!

For now, it's back to reality, I've got a nice week of light training to recover from the overload and a bit of fun this weekend before the next 3 week build for the first race of the season: Sherwood Pines British Round 1 on the 25th of March!! Exciting times!

Keep riding folks, and thanks for reading :)

Win tin ton

p.s. look what I bought just hours after landing back in Scotland...

...believe me, after sprinting (well, trying to) through a ridiculously sloggy boggy mudfest, getting overly friendly with a tree and JUST managing to hold on to the handle bars to make it to the bottom of this CRAZY descent being able to wing it comes in very handy! 

The Innerleithen 'XC' enduro. What. A. Weekend!! Though, I must say, I think they need to change the name to 'Xtreme' Enduro rather than XC... It was MENTAL! This 'XC' enduro consisted of 3 stages of timed sections of descents, each of which were separated by climbs back to the top to start the following stage (these were not timed thus being the beauty of enduro racing - chilled climbing).

After Saturday practice I was buzzing! Newly aquanted with an XS Pivot Mach 5.7 the vedict was: AMAZING!! If you've not seen it already check out the wee video I put together of it's first ride:

I've ridden similar crazy descents on my hardtail and had fun but, your on the limit the whole way down and it feels like at any given moment you may die! The extra travel and perfect tiny size of the Pivot eliminated this feeling and I was left hurtling down the hill knowing that the only reason I wasn't going faster was because of me and not the limitations of the bike. I was no longer on the verge of death... this, was going to make for a VERY exciting weekend!!

Sunday came and we headed up the hill. After a great nights sleep I was feeling ready to hit the descents full pelt. My dibber dibbed and I was off on stage one. This trail was natural, steep in places and slippy. It was, by far, my favourite of them all! On my hardtail I would have been on the edge of survival, loving it but on edge! Instead I was experiencing the solid ride of the pivot as we flew down the hill! By the bottom I was hungry for stage two, this was SO much fun!!

Stage two required mental preparation. Mainly for the bog. That energy sapping, strength killing, bike sinking bog. Oh my, it was hard!! I made a couple of mistakes before I hit the middle section and by then I was pooped! This high intensity, seat down sprinting business was really hard work! Then Iain Paton, who was on an XC hardtrail nipped past me making things look so easy! Where was my hardtail?? Once on to the steep section I was NOT longing for my hardtail and was LOVING the pivot as it took me flying down the hill over taking Iain again then into a tree... brilliant! Scrambling back up to grab my bike I found a suitable place to mount my bike without rolling down the hill again. However my back break was pointing to the ground which meant no slowing down for the rest of the stage. Jeez oh, winging it to the max! I was buzzing by the end of that stage to: 1. still be alive and 2. be having such a ridiculous amount of fun!!

Before stage three we foze our butts off waiting for poor Stuart who's chain had got completely stuck in his chain gard... We then had to face the HUGE climb back up to the top. The Pivot excelled in stage 3: it took ever dip, bump, jump and corner in it's stride and I was absolutely loving it!! Even though by this point my arms, legs, and whole body were pretty tired I managed to hold on!Seeing stars at the top of the sneaky climb in the middle of this stage I carfully descended until my brain and body reengaged and pushed on until my dibber was dibbed for the finally time. 

By the bottom I was dead but so happy! Usually after a race I am happy if I win and not so happy if I don't. But, at this point I had no idea how I'd done and, to be fair, wasn't too fussed! I had had such an insane amount of fun that over ruled everything :D 

It was an amazing weekend of riding!!! Chilling on the climbs then smashing it as fast as you could down the hills! That's just a dream format of racing, I loved it!

Here is the bit of paper I got given at the bottom with my times:

That time saw me win the women's race! That was the icing on the cake to a fantastic weekend! Big shout to everyone who raced here is a link to a great wee round up on Descent World click here and a nice wee picture of me on the Pivot! Also massive thanks to Innerleithen mtb racing, alpine bikes and all the marshals for a great event!!

Now, back to training! Keep riding people,

Win tin tin

So a full bouncing Pivot mach 5.7 bike arrived at the weekend and I got out on my first ride yesterday! Papa Winton did some filming so I popped together a wee edit check it out: