Last year I watched the Mountain Bike Australia Nationals with a broken hand. This, and the announcement that it is to be held in Bright has given me no shortage of motivation for this edition.
To get firing for Bright I made the decision to go back to MTB basics. After spending the majority of last season on the road bike or injured, I found myself stuck in diesel mode. This is by no means a bad thing, but for pure 1.5hr XCO racing you’ve got to have the punch and repeat sprint ability in the legs. I had also lost a lot of trail speed and efficiency, which was only really noticed after doing training efforts with brother Russ Nankervis.
So, my plan post Otway Odyssey was to put a ‘turbo’ onto the diesel and find trail speed again. By doing this it meant dropping the training volume and increasing the intensity, focusing on my shorter powers. I am fortunate to have a fast sibling like Russ, by using both my power meter and him for feedback I aimed to make the shift to ‘Sprinter Tasman’ (this is a figure of speech, I’m no sprinter).
Overall I have had around five weeks of prep and now less than a week from the event I am happy with my developments. Through this different style of training I’ve hit new power PB’s and enjoyed refocusing on the mountain bike again. Last year I took a break from racing in the MTB World Cups and for the first time focused on road riding, competing in the US Criterium Series. It was a great learning experience and I enjoyed the new challenges, I am a big fan of mixing things up and this gave me a new lease on MTB.
My race preparation for the Nationals has been pretty chilled out. I competed in the Bike Buller Festival, which included two XC events and a Super D timed decent. Russ and I traded wins in the XC and then decided to call a truce in the Super D. I have also been getting out for a couple of the local Bendigo Summer Series Events which has been a great tune up for the legs.
Wish me luck for Nationals, I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the outcome!
Tasman