Rider Diary: Tracy Moseley 
Interview with Tracy Moseley - September 2009
Britain's most established female downhiller, Tracy Moseley has been racing at the highest level for 15 years and is one of the only gravity racers to have won a round of both the downhill and fourcross World Cup, alongside multiple national titles and the prestigeous UCI Downhill Mountain Bike World Cup in 2006. With only the rainbow stripes elluding the Malvern-based rider, 2010 and Mont St. Anne would be an apt counterpoint to Steve Peat's astonishing World Championship title in 2009. Read Tracy's feature-length interview here, before catching the latest in her rider diary.
January 2 2010
Three Months In The Making...
Here is my first New Year's resolution ticked off - to start my rider diary for British Cycling! It's only taken me since September to get it done, so I thought I would do a quick little round up of my time since the end of the season before we get started on the New Year's activities.
The final world cup seems so long ago now as much has happened since finishing the season on a high with a win at the final world cup. I pretty much went straight from Schladming up to the Lake District to celebrate my 30th Birthday with a few friends.
My birthday was actually in April but with the season of racing this was the first opportunity we had to all get together and do a 5 day mountain bike tour of the Lake District! I got together a few friends that would be up for an epic and I also invited my mechanic from the Trek team over to say thanks for all the hard work he had done for me this season. I think he wondered what he had done wrong as his treat turned into more like punishment with the gruelling days of riding, unforgiving Lakeland weather and a few crashes later I think he went back to Holland thinking we were all pretty mad in the UK, riding our bikes in the places and in the weather that we do! It was an awesome trip and hopefully a trip that will become and annual feature in our diaries!
I then carried on my supposed rest month of staying off the bike, with yet more xc action. It's really the only time of the year I get to just ride for fun with no training or reason in mind for doing it, so it's often my favourite time of the year and we had such a great October of dry weather it was great. I went to Afan for the annual girls weekend, I think now in its seventh year it's just a get together of a whole variety of friends and we all go riding for the weekend on mass terrorizing the trails with 24 girls all shredding the downhills!! Great fun.
The final episode of the crazy travels and riding was a day out in Mid Wales at the Yamaha Offroad Centre where we spent the day on two wheels again, but this time with an engine. Absolutely brilliant day. There were nine of us, all mates we had invited for a great day just tearing around the trails in Wales. It's such a great work out, lugging a big heavy 250 moto about, I really want to do some more of this as it's great upper body training.
My reason for cramming all this stuff in by the end of October was that I was booked to go into hospital for an operation on my hip to repair some damage I sustained about 18 months ago. It was only a small amount of damage as I was still able to ride normally, but the doctor at British Cycling found it when giving me a medical and felt that there was a possibility that it could get worse and impair my performance in the future so decided to get it fixed during the off season when I have time to recover.
So that was the end of the fun for as few months. I was back on the exercise bike the same day as the op! Five minutes, twice a day spinning on an exercise bike! So I never really had any time off, I just wasn't allowed outside on the road bike for 6-8 weeks and my training turned into some gruelling rehab exercises twice a day!
However it was good for the rest of my body to have a break and I have now had chance to master riding on rollers and have had time to work on my pedalling cadence and efficiency so it's been some well spent rehab time.
I also had time to do a few things for some local schools in the area, I opened a new bike shed for a school in Ross on Wye and I was the guest speaker at my old School for their annual prize giving afternoon. It was so exciting to see the enthusiasm for cycling in both the schools I went to and I hope that in both schools there are more and more opportunities to promote and encourage the sport.
That has brought me up to Christmas and I am hoping that my next visit to the physio at British Cycling in the New Year will allow me to ditch the boring road bike in place for some knobbly tyres and some offroad action!!
Till next time, happy New Year and good luck cycling off all those mince pies and Christmas pud over the next few weeks!
Tracy
