mountainmorgy

 2026 certainly began with a better vibe than it's predecessors! After a pretty consistent winter of training (barring the usual cold and a bit of a tweaked back) - I decided to try out some Zwift Racing.  I'd somewhat ignorantly turned my nose up at this a bit in the past, but I can see why this sport is so popular in Nordic countries now. This winter has been harsh , especially the latter stages now over the first two months of the year. While I have a gravel bike, with ice tires, I'm not skilled on uneven ground and due to my eye issue I don't have the best depth of field to be able to navigate snowy and icy surfaces particularly well. So how do I get sharp over the coldest winter months without the additional volume of commuting? Enter, the Swedish Cycling E-Cycling Cup.  I missed the first race so the rest of the cup (10 races in total over 6 "events") was a race to grab as much points as I could before the end. The races were a mix of first over the line...

 Well, at least once a year is consistent enough, right?  Indoor setup is too fancy now. 2025 was an absolutely wild year for all kinds of reasons, and honestly from a bicycle perspective perhaps not all that interesting for the unassuming reader. But hey, let's get into it anyway and maybe I'll kid myself into doing this a bit more often again anyway.  The start of last year was really hard, and I think I documented that, but after returning from my travels and settling back into the routine of things everything really was on the up. Personally, and professionally, 2025 was sometimes challenging (moved house amongst other things) but also super rewarding - for reasons I'll not go in to now but lets just say I feel very lucky!  From the fitness perspective, while I may not have a laundry list of medals or achievements under my belt (which is not particularly something I am chasing heavily anyway), I am very happy with how consistent I have been.  With lifting, a...

After a little early-year pause I'm back again!  First of all, 2025 has been a pretty intense start for me. I welcomed the new year with a huge flu which really took me out for a while. Simultaneously, one of my parents got very unwell which meant I had to spend a few weeks travelling back to my home country of Ireland to be there and support the fam. All in all it's led to a bit of disruption but mostly learning opportunities about how to best manage my energy levels and fitness. So for that I'm super thankful.  Now we're at the end of March and said parent is doing great, I'm not sick and I've started working with Pain Free Power here in Stockholm to start getting my legs & bikes somewhat ready for the season ahead. I guess I'll take this season pretty lightly, 2024 was intense on many levels and I'm conscious to balance out my interests, work and fitness sustainably so that I don't end up having to wrestle with burnout or more autoimmunity is...

I'm not kidding when I say this year has been a bit of a bag of shite. It's certainly not been the worst  year, but it's been a small bag of shite in some ways. With that being said, there are  things I am very grateful for....and this is where I tell you that I am editing this post.  I'd already published it days ago but I was clearly in a grouchy mood when I did... let's try again, with a more positive outlook!  Things I'm Proud Of Quitting nicotine! While I've not smoked for many, many years - I have been using Snus, a very popular tobacco product here in Sweden. As of today I'm about 2.5 months nicotine free. I took on a new role at my job which has been a little stressful, but it's a domain I love and I've been having a lot of fun!  Staying consistent with my strength training, I've added 10kg to my deadlift this year and I'm totally hyped about it. Working with Sam has been an absolute privilege.  Got my green card in climbing so I...

I mentioned in my post in October that I'd been struggling for a few years with an autoimmune condition. Thanks to social media I see more and more that "hidden" and chronic illnesses are something that a lot of us suffer from, especially folks born with an innie. I'm not going to go into the overall debate about certain demographics are more affected by autoimmunity, but I am going to go into what that means for me - a cyclist and someone who has a lot of active hobbies in general.  I call it the goldilocks problem (there's already a few of those ). Since late summer I've been trying to ramp into a more consistent training model on the bike, focusing on rebuilding my engine. Along side that, I also strength train 3 times a week working with my very excellent strength coach, Sam at Pursue Performance .  That's all fine and dandy, right? Despite being a bit older now I seem to still recover quite well under stresses, aerobic endurance isn't exactly some...

I've been pondering over what to write about this issue for about two weeks now. At first, I thought I might talk a little bit about time trials and how much I miss the culture of open time trials back in Britain. That led me down a bit of a rabbit hole around cycling culture in general, and what I've come to learn about cycling in Sweden (of course there's a lot more to learn ahead of me, given my short stint so far back on two wheels..). For the purposes of this issue, I'm going to focus mostly on bicycle racing (road & track) - else this will become very long indeed... The Awesome If you're a road cyclist (or, landsväg in Swedish) and a fan of long, straight, sweeping routes this place is fantastic. I was never much of a climber, I'm not really built that way (certainly not now!). Here it's like I have a second chance . This may be a controversial statement but there basically aren't any what I would call "hills" here. There's rises,...

I did promise I would catch you all up on what on earth I've been up to this last 8 years, given I simply disappeared so let's get to that shall we;  As you well know I moved to Stockholm, Sweden in the summer of 2016 to pursue a new role - I work in the tech industry and moving here has given me a much broader set of career opportunities for which I am truly thankful. That's not the reason I've been off the bike, mind you..  In early 2017 I began to develop some concerning health symptoms, diplopia, fatigue and extremely painful headaches for the most part. After a rigorous period of tests and pokes and prods I had finally been given the somewhat unhelpful diagnosis of Idiopathic Orbital Myositis. On top of my pre-existing conditions (mild epilepsy, alopecia and IBD) - this threw a spanner in my training and athletic routines. Top that off with several years of high dose steroid & biologic treatments it also led to me putting a lot of the weight I'd previously ...

An 8 year hiatus, that’s pretty unreasonable isn’t it?  I’m resurrecting this blog from the shadows. Oh so much has happened over the last 8 years and very little has had anything to do with cycling - for better and for worse. I’ve a lot of stories to tell you all, which we will get to in the next couple of posts but for now…. Hello, I’m sorry it’s been so long and I can’t wait to tell you all about the last 8 years.  It’s good to be back, and it’s even better to be back on the bike with new goals in mind.  I’ll be back very very soon with a “real” post ❤️ Laura x

Alright, I've got a bit of explaining to do, haven't I? Firstly - apologies for having posted no update since winter! Since my last post, I've had a couple of trips to try track cycling (and subsequently fallen in love with it!), and have actually stopped racing temporarily. "WHY!?" I hear you scream! Well there are two reasons for this, the first being that after last year I felt I'd put a lot of pressure on myself, I'd decided in January to stop my programmed witch coach Mike Doyle for a while and train myself in my own way - so I could then include other sports such as weight lifting and running. My mind needed some temporary alternatives. The second reason being that I have actually made some pretty big life decisions and, as of a few weeks ago, am currently packing to move to Sweden - where I will be starting a new, dream job with Spotify. (OMG, I KNOW RIGHT!?). As I've been wanting to move, and do different things, and enjoy life a lit...

Off-season is now well and truly in full swing. Following the Mountain Time Trial I actually had two solid weeks off everything. It was weird, I normally have about a week or so, but two forced weeks of being completely sedentary left me wondering how I coped before cycling. I completely lost my appetite, lost some weight through what I can only assume was wastage and ended up trying to learn conversational Norwegian out of a sheer need to engage my brain. Thankfully, after a meeting with my new coach, I'm now back on it and enjoying a really mixed regime (including several different sports). I've also taken to training before work in the mornings which is leaving me with tons of energy and evenings to myself. It's great. I'm feeling quite good and looking forward to the winter ahead. A few people have asked me what my team plans are for next year. If I'm honest I've not been as focused on forward planning as I have been previously. My reason for this is I...

The season has FINALLY ended! I haven't posted because I've been so busy, life has not stopped at all. So I'll squeeze in a quick post of my results. There's loads to talk about, loads of ups and downs and loads of extra things I've been involved with over the course of the season - the biggest news I have is the launch of www.iomwomenscycling.com - which I've launched off the back of a group I created earlier in the year on Facebook. This warrants a whole extra blog post in itself really so I won't go into detail on that yet! I had a great season this year. I went, quite quickly, to a confident position within myself - where I found I was happy to put in and chase attacks, moving up where I wanted, sticking with the wheels of national elites and enjoying another step in my endurance capabilities.  Unfortunately while I had a great time, and gathered points throughout, I didn't make enough to move my license up for another year. I am pretty...

Apologies, the gap between posts this time has been fairly significant! There was a reason for this! I was waiting until the VCUK PH-Mas Charity Air Ambulance Stage Race had happened. It now has, and this is my report! The event was based near Selby in Yorkshire, as VCUK PH-Mas are a Yorkshire based team, and so I traveled down to the 'shire the day before the race to meet up with team management, Neil & Nicky, and team mate Sinead. It's always nice to head to theirs as it's such a lovely part of the world - perfect, relaxing pre-race preparation! (c) Neil Hendry - what a wonderful bunch of women to race with! On the day of the race we got down to Selby nice and early to set up, including putting up plenty of banners in aid of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance - who our team support and who this event was in aid of. The YAA provide an invaluable service, if you have the time please do check out their site and donate if you can! The weather blessed us, with the tem...

..and yes, I am living on a prayer! The season's half done and compared to this time last year I'm much more settled in to racing. Thankfully my form has started to creep in a little earlier and I've been getting some OK (nothing drastic) results so far. I'll be targeting races mid August now as this is when my next batch of solid RR's comes about, as well as some season finales in September. (C) the eternally talented Ellen Isherwood - check her out on Flikr! The half-way marker came this weekend when I returned to Pimbo this weekend. A large field (over 60 apparently on the original start sheet!) with some top quality riders in there meant it was always going to be one where I'd have to keep all of my wits about me to stay in a comfortable place in the pack. Some amazing leadership from our team mate Alison and some all round great sportsmanship from everyone in the team meant it was a satisfying race. I didn't feel quite as fresh as I have done o...

This time last year you might remember my topical post on Gender Gaps in Women's Motorsport . Well it's TT week again - and I've been blessed with the amazing opportunity of working with the team who do timing for the event. It's literally been the best two weeks in my working life by far, broken up in the middle by a quick stage race (more on that soon!). Anyway, I thought I'd follow up with a post on the subject this year following some conversations and observations made throughout the 2015 event. For those of you who haven't seen last years post, or just don't know what the TT is - it's a motorcycle road racing event, one of the largest in the world, which has been held for over 100 years comprising of several categories - where riders are set off in intervals to ride a "time trial" (yes, just the same as ours in cycling) around the famous Isle of Man TT circuit. Interestingly later in the year we'll be doing a similar event on our p...

Before I've even had a chance to reflect, a 3rd of the racing season is already done and dusted! So this is probably a good time to have a quick catch up and cover some of my results. All the time is going! So here's an update! April/May has been a bit timetrially - with March & April early season covering some much needed leg openers (arse kickings). I've made a few silly mistakes in the road races but thankfully they're mistakes I'm not all that gutted about. I can compare my strength now with last year and despite having another slightly desperate sickly late winter I'm actually in quite a really good place with  my fitness. I'm a bit weird with training too, when I'm working towards racing season doing lots of intervals and things I always seem to get sick very easily. But as soon as that training time decreases and time racing increases my legs seem to find some sort of magic. It takes a while, thankfully this year it's started to com...

I was going to write this weeks post on yet more race results. More "how is training going?" responses. More of the same old same old. It reads well, doesn't it? Everyone wants to hear about that. Team Time Trial - pic (c) Kevin Kissack Then I thought...I've done two races since my last report. One of them a hilly women's road race in the North West, another a 3-up team time trial with some local lads. The former didn't go so well..... I have no explanation for that other than I'm really not a great climber and on the day...my legs really just couldn't be arsed. The latter much better, we smashed my 25 mile PB by over 5 minutes, I got to ride with two fantastic guys both of whom are exceptionally talented, and nice to boot. We were the first mixed team in at 1.02.41 - a very commendable time for a cold, early season time trial on a Manx course. So there's my report. I've been training for around 10 hard  hours a week (it's always a...