Beth McCluskey's Race Reports

K-Capital Cup 1 - Kilruddery, Bray, Co. Wicklow - 1st place - Elite Womens

The mountain bike cross country season began on the 9th March with the opening round of the K-Capital Cup International MTB series.
Racing in March in Ireland has the potential to be pretty miserable but nonetheless I was keen to get out and test my fitness (or lack of) and my new LOOK 986 mountain bike.
Practise on Saturday in a bracing northerly gale was a chilling experience and the course was wet, muddy and very slippy in places. There were several attempts made to practise tight turns, muddy descents, steep rocky kickers and to generally to try and find faster lines wherever possible. Of course if it rained over night the lap would be completely different in the race thus negating any advantage of the practise. The rain stayed away, the gale force winds died down and the race day weather was marginally less cold. The course had dried out overnight and some of the trickier muddier sections were now easier.
I was using Continental Mountain King UST 2.2 tyres which were grippy on the rocky sections as well as the muddy sections. They didn’t clog with mud, and rolled pretty well on the fire roads. The race started in a wet field, and followed a pretty long climb to the top of the legendary rock descent. In previous years the course had descended over the infamous rock slab, and thankfully this year that particular section was avoided. The steep rocky descent that followed had numerous steep, tight turns which were impossible to do at speed. I found it quicker to run this section. The rest of the course consisted of some shorter climbs and some very enjoyable flowing single track, a steep bomb hole and a very sloggy grassy loop.
The elite women had 3 laps and I finished 1st in 1hour 41 mins. The LOOK 986 handled the climbs and the single track beautifully. The bike is really responsive through tight singletrack and climbs really well (if only I was fitter!!). The LOOK 986 is a beautiful looking bike and got lots of admiring glances throughout the weekend, I’d like to imagine that I was actually getting the admiring glances but sadly no, it was all about the bike and the Fulcrum Red Metal Zero Wheels  I won the elite womens race and was delighted to get the leaders jersey for the next round.

K-Capital Cup 2 - Moneyscalp, Co Down - injured

Unfortunately I had to pull out of the 2nd round of the K capital Cup with a hamstring injury.
The K-Capital Cup was one of my season aims for this year, and not finishing a race wasn’t really in the plan. However in hindsight I shouldn’t have started the race as I have probably compromised the healing process a little. The plan for the race was to get through 1 lap and see how it felt, but the course was a ‘power’ course with lots of short climbs requiring high force on the pedals, and despite being overdosed with anti inflammatories, the pain after 1 lap was enough to convince me that even if I managed another lap, I certainly wasn’t going to manage another 4 without some considerable damage being done. So I stopped despite having a small lead.
However, I hope to be able to start (and finish) the 3rd round of the K-Capital Cup this Sunday in Djouce. However I will decide nearer the day and figure it will be better to miss a couple of races at this early stage in the season and recover completely and race well in the months to come. The overall aim of my season is the World Masters MTB Championships in France at the end of August and that’s 5 months away!