World Mountain Bike Championships - Liam Killeen Interview

 

Saturday 8 September

Report & Images: Joolze Dymond

Link: Fort William Reports & Results Home

 

Liam Killeen did an amazing ride, starting in such unfamiliar territory on the back of the grid and pretty unsure of his form after returning to racing after an enforced layoff, he came home in a comfortable 44th place. Looking at his lap times it was clear he was winding them up lap by lap, getting faster and faster and clearly enjoying the whole experience.

I caught up Liam later to find out a bit more about his 'mystery' virus and what his plans were now for the future:

"Obviously I'm disappointed to have missed most of the season but I wasn't in a fit state to do any strenuous exercise, so I had a break from my racing and started to feel a bit better, well pretty good actually at the beginning of August. The first weekend of August I started to get back on the road bike and about half way through August I asked if I could be put on the start list for Fort William just because I thought I had nothing to lose. It gave me the option to be able to race here, yeah, so for a couple of weeks now I've been looking forward to this day.

I haven't being doing any crazy training, I've been listening to my body, I did a local race last weekend which was fun. I started today at the back so, all I wanted today was to be here, enjoy the race. I knew top 10 was out of the question; it was just impossible, starting at the back like that. I just focused on enjoying the home support and doing the World Championship in my home country.

Hearing the crowd's cheer was good. I've experienced a little bit of that before with racing the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, and obviously here and it does give you a boost. Everyone suffers on those last few laps and the crowds just give you that little bit extra. To hear your name being called is a real boost. It's been nice to heae so many express that they're glad to see me back. I had a more or less complete lay off my bike, since I became unwell. I did bits here and there in June and July, but nothing serious. I'd just go out and ride. If I felt tired I wouldn't try and train I'd just go and enjoy the sun for a bit.

All the symptoms I had seemed to tie up to Glandular fever but I had blood tests and nothing came back positive. I obviously hadn't been giving my body as much rest as it needed during the winter when I started to feel all things weren't right. Everybody's been ill before and you give it a few days to blow over and you feel all right again, but I tried that but never seemed to get that good feeling back that I had.

It was as much as my body could do today. The course was pretty technical, those rocks were pretty slick, I haven't done any wet racing for a long time so, I felt challenged by the course, it was good. The worst scenario for me was if I got lapped, I didn't know how I'd do, I've never started at the back of the grid before, it was a new experience for me. Being on the very last row was certainly different, there were a few come togethers on the start straight, a few downs and there were sections that were a bit slow due to the number of riders piling in, but that's just part of the course. You've got fast singletrack that people can hold you up in, you either stop or run around them, it wasn't frustrating.
Nick (Craig) was with me on the first lap it was nice to have a chat with him; yeah it was just a pleasant day.

I'm not going to jump back into a crazy race schedule now, with week in week out racing now. Obviously I have a bit of a plan between now to the middle of October. I'm going to give myself a few days off after today, see how things feel, that was a long hard effort.
My focus now is on Beijing, that goal never went out of my mind when I was off, but if I want to get Beijing, I needed a bit of a rest the season before and that's happened now more by accident.

I'm looking forward to getting back into it all next year; I'm still enjoying it. It's too hard a sport if you have no enjoyment in it. I've been lucky in my career that I've not had any illnesses or injuries up until now, I've had a good career so far, I'm still fairly young and I'm not planning on retiring just yet, I have a mortgage to pay!"