Time waits for no one....

As I am sure you have all noticed I missed a write up in March, my apologies (especially to Primal).... But there was good reasoning.... I am currently lacking this thing called time... if anyone knows where I can get more please get in touch. I have the two most beautiful daughters, Aurelia (2 1/2) and Bodhi (9 months) they are my favourite time bandits of all... And as I'm sure a lot of you know, fitting 'Life' in with the little kids is tough, but it can be done...

We as a family have had some great trips over the past 2 months visiting relatives around Europe and conveniently with my wife Sally being Scottish they are mainly based in hilly/mountainous areas, so the bike has been packed up a lot recently.

First up was Aviemore in the Highlands... a great week of Scottish weather included 4 inches of snow, 4 inches of rain and then 2 days of glorious sunshine... Luckily I had all the layers needed for said snow with my onyx thermal bib tights and Mesh base layer... Unfortunately, it actually got too hot for them when the sun came out... But I still had some awesome Primal Socks to keep me company in the sunshine....

A quick blast back home for 2 weeks with the first of the local race series kicking off in typical British style, wet, wet and wet.... I couldn't make the morning practice session as we had a close friend christening to attend... So, I was suited and booted in the morning, then did my best clark Kent clothes change and got to the race just in time for the Elite riders start... It was a wild race, especially racing blind (no practice), I was really happy to come away with 6th overall with a couple of top 3 stage results...

I could barely get my bike clean before I was packing it up again to head out to the Mother in laws place in the French alps for the last week of the ski season... And what a week it was.... 27 degrees every day, ski/snowboard in the morning then MTB in the afternoon/evening down the valley. It doesn't get much better.

Aurelia learnt to ski and could snow plough by the end of the week and I got a good load of vertical in on the bike getting ready for the first big race of the year  the following week... I had forgotten how crazy the alpine riding is, rock strewn steep hairpins on a cliff face leaving no room for error certainly get the heart rate up!

After an amazing week in the alps we flew home, unpacked.... then re packed to head to Peebles in Scotland for the first round of the UK Gravity Enduro series, the biggest series in the UK. The competition was super tough with a stacked elite field of World cup racers, it was going to be a wild race. 

After doing a practice loop on Saturday which consisted of 50 km off road with 1500m of vertical and 5 timed downhill stages, I got up on Sunday to do it all again but at race pace.... and boy was it some pace.... The tracks were all super technical and fast, there was no room for error. 

I had one of the best days on the bike in a long time with one crash over the day, I ended up 23rd in Elite which I’m super happy with considering the depth of talent in the field.

A quick 450-mile blast home on Sunday night after racing then up for work on Monday morning and were kind of back into our normal routine.... Until the next trip....