Henry Fitzgerald has been on the High Performance Downhill Mountain Bike team for three years now, and will be starting his second year as a Junior in 2016. In 2015, he raced the World Cup circuit with the Steve Peat Syndicate development team, and represented Canada at Downhill World Championships. This year, he’s hoping to go to as many World Cups as possible, and to do the whole IXC circuit in Europe.
Since MTB World Champs in Andorra, and after the Whistler bike park closing, I’ve been spending my time trail building and trail bike riding. The trail work I did last winter ended up being really valuable for training on later in the year. My goal with building is to create something that is steep, fast, and as close to World Cup courses as possible. With the shorter days, we’ve gotten into building into the evening with lights. Aside from creating a great training track, the building is plain old good, physical work.
I’m also hard at work planning out the 2016 World Cup season with my Dad and others. The plan is to get to all the World Cups in 2016, which will be a little more complicated and exciting with a visit to the southern hemisphere. Last season, one of my lessons was that my base fitness started to fade near the end of the season with races back to back, week after week. I’m working on a more detailed plan for next year that should help me maintain my early season fitness deeper in the season. Aside from the World Cup season, I also intend to ride Crankworx, iXS Cup races, and a few enduros.
When I think of what has helped my riding the most it’s that I’ve managed to keep it really fun, all season. Even at the World Champs, after a really long season in Europe, I was stoked to get back on my bike right after my race run and get on the lift for some laps with my friends. The minute riding loses that fun, I think racing performance will go down. So keep it fun, find ways to make time to ride with friends and make sure you’re hitting up your favourite trails.
