life is either a daring adventure or nothing

Helen Keller

I'm back home now, well back on this side of the Atlantic anyway and enjoying a bit of R&R in Dublin. I got back from Philadelphia just over a week ago, and promptly got ill as soon as I got back, I'm not sure if it was low immune system defenses on the transatlantic flight, or if my body was just keeping going while I needed it to through the races, but either way I needed a few days break at some point soon anyway, so it seemed like my body was taking charge and I took a few days off the bike (and sort of off the computer too) only riding for a total of 10 minutes in 5 days to get to the start of a race Adrian was riding so I could watch.

I'm now pretty much recovered and looking forward to a couple of weeks of good training before the National RR Championships in Yorkshire the weekend after next.

Other than that there isn't really much to write about, yes I know I haven't said much about the last few races, but in honesty there isn't much I feel like writing about! The Montreal WC definitely wasn't my favourite edition of that event (not my worst result in it, but a fair way from my best) so I can confirm that I much prefer riding that particular race (well actually pretty much any race) in the dry rather than in the pouring rain. The Montreal Tour came and went, I did enjoy it more than I expected to (I much preferred the race when it still had all the hilly stages in, rather than the flat circuits that now make up the whole race) and the evening criterium in Little Italy is always fun.

Liberty Classic in Philadelphia was a great race for the team with Brooke winning the bunch sprint for 2nd behind the solo winner Chantal Beltman of Team High Road. We decided going into the race that we wanted to really race our bikes, not just sit back and let it come down to a big bunch sprint, so my job, along with Helen, was to string things out before the Manayunk wall so that the others could hit the wall near the front and cause a separation in the bunch. The plan worked and it was a small group contesting the finish, but it did mean that having done a 1km all out effort leading into the climb on lap 2 it took most of my remaining energy to get up the wall without grinding to a complete halt and toppling over, but its a very satisfying type of exhaustion when you know you've done your job and it worked!!

Having done the overhaul, or at least partial overhaul I thought it was time for a new blog. I did try to write this 3 days ago but as I didn't have a good enough internet connection to upload it, somehow the motivation waned. I've been up in Canada all week staying in Ottowa with Linda's folks for a few days of R&R and now we're in the van en route to Montreal for world cup tomorrow.

Last weekend was the Tour de Leelanau, in Michigan. It's a 1 day UCI race around the Leelanau peninsular. On paper it didn't look like too hard a course, but once we got out to ride it and realised that the up and down bits seem to vastly outweigh the flat bits (and the up bits outweigh the down bits) we got a very different picture, and the different picture turned out to be the more accurate one! It was a very tough race, and one that didn't go exactly as we'd hoped with Anne Samplonius on the Cheerwine team going off the front early and somehow managing to stay away solo for the race win. We got a very good workout (my heart rate average 175 for the entire 3 hour race) and still a decent result with Jo taking 3rd and me and Brooke 7th and 8th.

Having come to the conclusion a few days ago that the drugs testers were most likely waiting until I got home to pounce, I got rudely woken up at 6.30 this morning by that familiar banging on the door, actually the front door banging failed to wake me up, it was Linda's banging on the bedroom door that alerted me to the fact that I had the delights of peeing in a cup to start my day!

The advantage to the early arrival of drugs testers (in Linda's eyes at least) was that I was up and about early and could go for a ride before we hit the road to Montreal. I dragged the Aussie out of bed too and we got a nice easy hours spin without having to do battle with the Montreal traffic.

Well as you can see, the full on website overhaul hasn't happened yet. Its still in the pipeline but I've been helping out with some of the team logistics and with 14 riders going in 12 different directions for 16 races (yep I'm still prone to the odd touch of exageration) I've been kept fairly busy recently so website overhauls have been put on the backburner at least temporarily!

As part of the overhaul I've been meaning to put up some new photos, but its one of the (many) things I haven't got around to, but my favourite picture of the moment I wanted to post is one of my dad about to set off with a friend for a cruise..

My latest news is from the Mount Hood UCI stage race. TIBCO had a strong team of 5 riders there, and with Jo winning the prologue and taking the first race leaders yellow jersey we were off to a great start. Day 2 was labelled a crit, but with only one real corner and a wicked climb each lap, it wasn't a crit as we know it. Given the small time gaps from the prologue we knew the lead would be hard to defend, and despite an impressive 2nd on the stage Jo was pipped to the line by Tina Pic who also took the race lead by a single second. Day 3 was a circuit race over 3 1/2 laps of a road course with 10 miles of climbing per lap. Not content to sit around waiting for others to make the race, TIBCO were on the attack from lap 1 with the most notable break being a 10 mile solo effort from Helen before she was reeled in. Coming into the last lap it was clear nothing was going to be allowed to go, so we did what we could to keep Jo in good position and she finished it off perfectly taking another stage win and taking back the yellow jersey. Day 4 was an 18mile individual TT, not much to say about it, we started, we rode hard, we finished, Jo and I both finishing inside the top 10 in 8th and 10th respectively. Day 5 was on paper the hardest stage of the race, with most of the last 40 miles being uphill. With small gaps at the head of the GC we were hoping that several teams would share our goal of an agressive race, making Aarons work hard to keep their race lead, but alas it was not to be and we had to employ a frustrating mix of agressiveness and patience. As we hit the final climb at 10 miles to go I got the instruction to attack, and set off in pursuit of 2 riders who had a lead of around a minute. For company I had Meredith Miller (Aarons) and Stacy Marple (Cheerwine) but neither of them were willing/able to help me (one was defending the race lead, the other somewhat injured from a crash) so I set my own tempo and slowly reeled in the leaders. With about 2km to go I was 30seconds clear of the bunch with just Meredith on my wheel, stuck in the awkward situation of not wanting to sit up for fear of being caught, but not wanting to take Meredith to the line either. As we hit 1km to go the decision was taken out of my hands as we were caught and passed by a flying Mara Abbot. At 300m to go we were caught by a select chase group, and there was nothing I could do to react, after 10 miles of driving my legs had a single speed and it wasn't a fast one! I took 5th on the stage, happy that my legs are definately coming around but frustrated to get so close! The final stage was a crit crit (as opposed to the earlier fake crit) and once again we wanted to be aggressive. From the gun TIBCO were on the attack, and despite several moves where a break looked like it might sneak away there was always someone to chase back and it came down to a bunch sprint although we'd done a fair bit of damage to the field with a group of just 30 riders finishing together. Once again Tina pic showed why she is national crit champion and took the stage win, but Jo took another impressive 2nd place and retained the sprint jersey as well as 5th overall. I took 10th overall which I was pretty happy with.

11th May - Tour of the Gila

Over the last couple of weeks I've had all these great plans to update my website, not just post a new blog, but a full overhaul (I go through it every year or couple of years when I get bored of the look) but I've just taken on looking after some of the logistics for the team and somehow its taking up about 5 times as much time as I thought it would, which is eating into my time for mindless surfing on the internet, but is also taking up time for the planned website remodeling. So, I decided I should get an updated blog posted, and then hopefully at some point in the not too distant future I will get said overhaul done.

The main event since I last blogged was the Tour of the Gila stage race in Silver City, New Mexico. The race was a bit of an up and down one for me and for the whole team (figuratively as well as physically - there's several thousand feet of climbing most days). Day 1 highlight was Rushlee being off the front in a break for a good 25 miles, day 1 lowlights were Jerika coming down in a crash and 2 riders from the same team crashing into each other at the base of the final climb and causing me to have to stop and then chase and I never regained contact with the leaders. Day 2 highlight was AMBER WINNING THE STAGE!!! she was in a 3 man (or woman I guess) breakaway for about 50 miles, and took the victory in a tight sprint finish, the unfortunate lowlight of the stage was another crash for Jerika, where she hit a pothole and came down hard. Despite bravely battling on to finish the stage it was the end of the race for her. Stage 3 saw Jo taking 4th in the TT.

Stage 4 was the criterium (and yes it does get its paragraph, you'll see why shortly!). and the team plan going into the stage was simple, we wanted to win the stage, and we planned on doing it from a breakaway. After a lap or two settling in we were straight on the attack, with Amber and Helen winding the pace up Jo and I jumped hard up the hill and created a small gap, but the other teams were quick to chase and after a lap or so it was all back together. The next 15 laps continued in a very similar vein, there were lots of attacks but nothing stuck. With 5 laps to go, just as it was starting to look like the race would come down to a bunch sprint Alison Testroete from Aarons attacked taking Suz Weldon from ProMan with her. The 2 quickly got 100m gap on the field and with some loud encouragement (read yelling) from Jo, I bridged the gap and joined the 2 leaders with Leda Cox (America’s Dairyland). For a couple of laps the break worked well together, then with a lap to go, safe in the knowledge that we had Jo for a bunch sprint if we were caught, I sat on watching for any attacks. Remembering advice from Helen on how the race had been won last year, I jumped hard into the last corner and held it to the line for TIBCO's second stage win of the week, and a rare crit win for me!!

Stage 5, the Gila Monster was another stage with a plan of attack attack attack. In order to move Jo up the overall classification we needed to tire out the other teams by making them work, so from mile 5 until we hit the base of the final climb at mile 55, Rushlee, Helen, Amber and I launched attack after attack. Unfortunately nothing was allowed more than a few minutes freedom, but I think we did some damage, and Jo managed 3rd on the stage and moved up into 4th overall, not a bad week all in all :-)

24 April 08 - Back in Reno

Once again I'm back in sunny Reno and its good to be back here (I say that like its a regular occurance, rather than the third time in my whole life that I've visited the place!). In order to try and get used to the altitude (and that nasty feeling that someone has stolen all the oxygen) before we head to New Mexico for the Tour of the Gila next week, we're having an unofficial team training camp staying with Amber's parents, and when I say we, I mean the teams foreign contingent (plus Bob and Adrian, who being Aussie and Irish fit the foreign contingent criteria anyway). Thus far the training has been going really well, we've had two trips up Geiger ..... a climb that will forever be burned in mine and Ambers memories after we battled each other up there last year into a full on blizzard, and today we're hoping (snowfall permitting) to climb Mount Rose.

Yesterday we took the time trial bikes out for a spin, which might have been somewhat easier if it weren't for the 50mph winds (maybe I'm exaggerating a little on the wind speed but not much) but at least now we know that our LOOK tt bikes handle really well in very strong cross winds, although obviously I'd prefer not to have need for that knowledge at any time trial soon....the bike may like the wind, I however, am not such a fan.

I've just realised that in all my excitement about Reno, I forgot to mention Sea Otter, which given our last couple of not so hot races, should have been right up there in my first bit of writing. We had a pretty simple plan for the race....Rushlee was going for the sprints competition, I was going for the climbers competition, if it came down to a bunch sprint we were leading out Brooke, but most importantly, if a break went up the road without at least 1 TIBCO rider in it, we were more than likely all getting fired. Fortunately for us, we didn't let any job threatening moves go, by virtue of either attacking ourselves to create the break, or having enough TIBCO riders patrolling the front of the bunch to ensure we were represented in anything that moved. Somewhere around 10 laps into the 22 lap race a QOM sprint caused a split in the peleton and a break of 10 riders went clear with Rushlee and me in it for TIBCO. The break had good representation from all the big teams, and soon started to pull clear of the bunch. A few laps later midfull of Cheerwine sprinter Laura Van Gilder's prescence in the break, Colavita drove the pace over the climb and the break split, with a group of 6 going clear. With around 4 laps to go Colavita's Tiffany Cromwell attacked the break, and solo'd in for the win, I took 2nd in the sprint from our break for 3rd in the race and my first NRC podium of the year :-)

17 April 08 - Ojai

Its been an up and down week in the TIBCO camp, well no, to be fair the week has been good, but the weekend at Ojai wasn't so hot. Things started well, we arrived in Ojai on Friday afternoon following a 4 hour van ride which despite being at least twice as long as it should have been due to LA traffic, was painless enough, and got settled in at our host house before heading off to find burritos for dinner. Saturday was also a good day and we got a great training ride through some amazing scenery, and then got to cool off in the pool when we'd done, ah this is the life!

Sunday morning all seemed to be going well, we had pancakes for breakfast, and relaxed before heading down to the race where Steve had found a good parking spot and we were all set up in the shade (when I said Ojai wasn't too hot, I wasn't reffering to the temperature, which was easily the hottest I've been in since about August last year). After collecting numbers and getting radio'd up etc we set off to warm up and this is where things took a turn for the worse. Amber was mid over gear sprint when a too close overtaking motorbike startled her, her hand slipped from the bars and she hit the deck, hard. Long story short (as I've just realised the time) she ended up in hospital with a cracked rib and lots of road rash, the rest of us raced, but our performance would suggest we were all a bit shaken up, and then we spent the afternoon at the hospital waiting for the doctor to give her the all clear to travel home with us, and then it was back in the van for another epic drive!

Like I said, I've just realised the time, and I need to get out and train....thats twice in 2 days I've been out before 8.30am!!!

11th Apr 08 - Redlands

So much for that new leaf of blog posting, I've had 2 reminders in the last 2 days that I've once again been slack in posting any news of what I've been up to, and so I've been shamed into opening up Dreamweaver and getting something written. I'm sure I will fail on writing a full update of my antics and activities over the last 3 weeks but I'll attempt to give you at least a small flavour of my life in sunny California ...... guaranteed to make the 2 people who have nagged me very jealous and maybe prevent further nagging.

Last weekend was the Redlands stage race, and I have to admit it wasn't my or the teams greatest performance in a race, somehow we all conspired to have an off weekend all at the same time (even Brooke racing in Europe joined in with a sympathy stomach bug). There were definitely some positive points to the weekend (apart from the amazing food our host Andrea plied us with at regular intervals), I got in a break for almost half of the first road stage, (unfortunately not the half containing the finish line), Amber remembered the old "tuck n roll" and so when someone wiped out in front of her in the crit, she managed to crash without hurting herself to badly, she broke her hand here a couple of years ago, so to escape relatively unscathed is a good thing, but you know you're kind of scraping the barrel when not crashing too badly gets up there on the list of highlights. I think probably the most positive thing to come out of the weekend, is that as a team we realised we hate losing, and we're all really fired up for this weekend's race, and next weekend's, and well pretty much every race this season.

The team's foreign contingent, that's me, Helen (the Aussie), Rushlee (the Kiwi) and Amber (the Yank who now lives in Austria so counts as foreign) have been staying in Huntington Beach with Brookes parents. It been a relaxing few days with some great training rides. Day 1 was a flat saunter along the Santa Ana Valley (I have a suspicion I've got that name wrong so I'll have to check and correct myself later), day 2 we went for a ride with the Shoair junior team around the US national RR course, and yesterday we found 46 different ways up the same hill to get our hill intervals done (or at least it felt like 46 by the end). We're now in the team van on our way to Ojai for this weekend's Garrett Lemire race.

19th Mar 08 - TIBCO on Facebook

In a determined effort to start as I mean to go on I'm now posting my second blog within just a week of my arrival in the USA, not bad considering my track record of 3 blogs in 2 months at home. Once the season starts and I hit the road, I have very little "normal life" stuff to distract me, and therefore very few excuses for not updating my website regularly, although it could be argued that even at home my day isn't filled with enough activity to justifiably call myself busy. I do sometimes wonder how on earth I'm going to cope when I have to reintegrate back into normal society with a job and a day that has to start before 9am and with something somewhat more productive than 2 hours surfing, sending emails and playing scrabulous on Facebook.

Talking of Facebook, TIBCO now has a profile, and you can become a fan, I think you just go onto Facebook and search for TIBCO and there's a link. I understand that you can become a fan even if you don't have a facebook profile, but I'm guessing if you dont, then you're probably not going to go on it anyway (Mum, Dad's one step ahead of you on this! and he could be 2 steps ahead if I can remember the password I gave him and go in and sign him up as a fan).

I'm currently staying up in Sausalito, just north of the Golden Gate bridge, with friends Kat and Janelle, but I'll be heading South shortly to join up with my teammates, as Kat and Janelle are both off to Italy with the US National team (see Janelle you don't even need your own blog to get the news out there).

I haven't written a report from this weekends racing, and to be honest I probably wont. I can safely confirm that trying to ride a 40km time trial or a 40mile crit with jetlag and a 12 hour plane ride in your legs is a painful and fairly unscussful experince, so I wont expand too much on my weekend's performace, other than to say I pretty much sucked! Luckily I've got a couple of weeks before the next race, so hopefully plenty of time to get back on track and find my form.

14 Mar 08 - Almost Posting

Over the last couple of weeks, I've almost updated my blog on several occassions, I almost blogged about my week of flights from hell, when I flew home from Majorca on a flight that was delayed by 3 hours and then after an hour at home flew to Dublin on a flight that was also delayed by 3 hours, and landed around 1.30am, then 3 days later I flew home, or rather didn't fly home on a flight that was cancelled as we were on board the plane, and eventually flew home the next day on a flight that was only 2 hours late, I almost blogged about about the GB team pursuit trials (where I didn't make the team) and my subsequent rush to get my life in Manchester temporarily packed up and book myself on a flight to San Fransico (via Dublin, obviously), I almost blogged when I was sat outside the airport in San Fran waiting for the team mechanic to collect me, as somehow I'd managed to clear immigration, collect my bags, clear customs, (even with a slight delay due to the golden syrup and Kit Kat easter egg I was trying to smuggle into the country) and be outside waiting by 1.15pm from a flight that was only due to land at 1pm.

And now, I've just had a call to say the team van is on its way to collect me, so I have to shut the computer down, and hopefully continue this later this afternoon!

Laters......

So, where was I.....well having condensed the happenings of the last 3 weeks into one paragraph, or possibly looking back at it, one sentence, I can move on to where I am now, which is a host house in Exeter, CA, our home for the weekend of the Sequioa Cycling Classic. To accommodate my heavily jetlagged bady and ease me gently into racing for the season, I'm entered for todays 40km TT and tomorrows 1 hour crit (I thought I'd got a reprise from the crit but one of the team is sick so I'll be there on the start line). We rode the TT course yesterday and apparently there's several craters on the road, mainly on the racing line through corners, which need to be avoided at all cost, and which I blatantly failed to notice in my none too alert state, which doesn't bode overly well for this afternoon, but fingers crossed I can keep my eyes open and my bike upright and on the road!

27 Feb 08 - A day in Majorca

Once again I'm back in Majorca, so I thought instead of the usual inane ramblings about a random subject that happens to come to me at the time of writing (which today would very probably be overage drivers and the reasons they should not be allowed on the road.....the main one being that they have a tendancy not to see cyclists, even those dressed in bright red white and blue kit and therefore see no need to modify their planned somewhat random direction of travel to avoid knocking said cyclists off their bikes...guess who was almost knocked off their bike this morning!!) I would give an idea of a typical day out here, so here's what I did yesterday:

8.15am - Woken up by Bec's alarm (which has a much nicer tune to wake up to than mine)

8.25am - Get woken up again by Bec's alarm snooze and admit I really have to get out of bed.

8.30am - Decide that as we've got a long hard day in the saddle (and I'm bored of the hotel breakfast), its a good day for pancakes and so make some using the mix of ingredients I brought with me for such an occassion.

8.45am - Wonder down to breakfast (armed with homemade pancakes) to get cafe con leche and join in the morning discussion about nothing in particular.

9.15am - Full of pancakes and coffee head back up to the room to get ready for a 10am departure on the bikes.

9.50am - Downstairs, ready to go, for Dan's briefing on the specifics of todays ride

10am - Depart. Unusually the men's endurance squad, the Pinarello team and the women's squad were all heading out at the same time in the same direction, so for the first half hour we had a much bigger group than usual and some new people to talk to, but at the bottom of the first climb we all split into our respective groups. For us it was a brief stop to ditch layers and then individual threshold efforts to the top of the climb. The rest of our ride was a steady pace from the top of the Lluc climb to the top of the Sa Colabra descent (a nasty road which somehow manages to be uphill in both directions), an individual descent down Sa Colabra doing battle with the tourist buses, and then intervals back up the climb. At the top of the climb Dan decided we'd put in enough hard efforts for the day (I'm not sure if it was the vacant stares or the leaning against the car for support to remain vertical) and we were excused the normal 40 minutes through and off that has graced many of our long rides, and we just had to get ourselves home (via the magic uphill road).

2.00pm - Arrive back at the hotel and clean my bike

2.15pm - Shower and mosey up to the Swannys room to see what treats are on offer for lunch

2.20pm - Discover unsuprisingly that lunch options are not significantly different from what they have been every day this camp and for the previous 2 camps, and opt for a tuna baguette and a creme caramel now that Tony has reverted to buying the old type rather than a new brand he bought earlier in the week which Wendy reliably informed me tasted like scrambled egg.

3.00pm - Retire to bed with an Alias dvd

3.20pm - Fall asleep halfway through an episode of Alias

5.30pm - Wake up (I'm fairly sure I did wake up a few times in between, but it was only at 5.30 I decided I should really get out of bed)

5.45pm - Force myself to do some stretching and some core work

7.00pm - Dinner time (I didn't do over an hour of core work, but I can't really remember what else I filled my time with so I doubt it was exciting enough to write about......unlike the rest of my day :-) ). Dinner (every day) consisted of salad to start, followed by pasta with tomato sauce, then meat and somewhat overcooked tinned veg, I think it was lamb and carrots, and a kiwi fruit and pear and a slice of cake to finish.

8.30pm - Return to the room to discover that the only thing on TV is Eastenders which I try to avoid watching if at all possible.

9.00pm - Chat to Adrian on the phone, being very thankful to the inventors of Skype and the long inexpensive chats it enables.

10.00pm - Decide that I can push the boat out and have a late night and stay up to watch Hotel Babylon (the rock n roll lifestyle of an elite athlete eh!!)

11.00pm - Bed

I've also uploaded a photo album from Majorca, click here to view it

19 Feb 08 - Moving Around

Once again its been a while since I updated my blog, and I've got a fair bit to write about, although I'm off out for coffee with a friend any minute so chances are I'll have to finish this later, but I promise to make sure later is measured in hours rather than days (or weeks!). Last time I wrote I was in Majorca, and since then I've been to Dublin (twice), London and the Lake District.

A couple of days after I got home from Majorca I had a trip up to the Lake District. Unfortunately my reason for heading up there was my Grandma's funeral, but it was expected as she had been ill with cancer for a while and on a positive note it was good to see all my family again and it was a nice service. After the service Sarah and I took a wonder around the village we'd visited regularly as kids, and got to spend a bit of time reminiscing about the village square and the woods where we took the dogs walking, and argueing over whether it was the post office or the corner shop where we bought our fruit polos and 10p mixes.

The first weekend in March saw me catching a flight to Dublin for the Dublin Wheelers 75 year anniversary dinner dance, a rare opportunity to get dressed up for the night in something other than lycra (actually I dont very often wear lycra at night and especially not nights out, but I'm sure you get the point)

The next day was a lazy affair (not related at all to the number of empty glasses on the table above) with a leisurely training ride getting back just in time to see Ireland scrape a victory in their six nations Rugby match and unfortunately in plenty of time to see England throw their match away in the closing minutes, boo hiss.

Sunday I got to see the Irish weather in all its glory when we joined the Dublin wheelers for their Sunday club spin and got rained on for approximately 98% of the 4 1/2 hour ride. It was one of those rides which you hope will make you tougher, but I suspect may possibly have contributed to the 3 days I then spent in bed with flu...we live and learn I guess!

24 Jan 08 - Almost Sarah's Birthday

Its a good thing I decided to update my blog today as I've just checked the date and realised that its my sisters birthday tomorrow, thats one of the problems with life as a full time cyclist (and lets face it there aren't really that many of them) you lose all track of time and dates, to me its 2 days or 3 training rides to go on the 2nd Majorca training camp, the fact thats its Thursday or the 24th of January is somehow incidental, which is not an issue in itself, only when you have to interact with the real world (and remember things such as sisters birthdays) and people who work in normal days not number of days till the training camp/race starts or ends. Fortunately I am not too much of an evil sister and I was well prepared enough to buy and even wrap Sarah's present before I left, so Sarah in the very unlikely event that you happen to read this, your present is sat in my lounge waiting for you.

We've got an easy ride planned for this afternoon so I thought I'd sneak out to the internet cafe briefly before the ride...the internet cafe bit I managed, the sneaking wasn't so successful as I ran into Dan on my way out. I thought I might have possibly managed to avoid having to admit I was off to the internet cafe, until I got here and found Martin the mechanic in here, and then all thoughts of avoiding being found out were eliminated when Dan walked into the cafe, oops!! Good thing I did ok on this mornings training ride so I hopefully had a few brownie points in the bag!!

Training has been going well, apart from a minor hiccup a few days ago when I just couldn't face the afternon session, which would be understandable in the Manchester rain, but with the sun shining outside I took it as a fair indication that an afternoon in bed was called for, and 5 hours and several dvds later I was feeling much better and ready to face the final 3 days of training.

17 Jan 08 - On the Track

After a whole week back at home I'm now in the middle of packing to head back out to Majorca for GB Squad training camp, part II. I'm also in the middle of checking out new ovens online as the temperature control has gone kaput on mine which means the oven is either off or at about 800 degrees, nuking everything within minutes, so dinner is now cooked on the hob and all baking activity has been curtailed, although this is possibly not a bad thing given the imminent arrival of the season and the need to be good at going up hills this year!

The week at home has been a fairly busy one, and one where I feel I've pretty much lived at the track. I started with a trip down to see my Irish friend Julie and the kids cycling club that she had brought over to Revolution (the same ones I met over new year) who were having their first taster of riding on the track, joining in the Eastlands velo 8-10am session (needless to say I did not make it out of bed in time to get there for 8, but I was there by the end of the session). Then it was off to Starbucks for breakfast, a lazy afternoon, and back at the track in the evening to watch the Revolution.

Sunday I managed a day away from the track and another much needed rest day, before a 3 day team pursuit camp starting on Monday morning. The team pursuit camp went really well, we did everything from standing starts and standing kilos to rolling 3kms and flying 2kms, by the end of the 3 days the changes were good and we were following wheels well, but I was having serious disagreements with my saddle...I guess that's one of the joys of track racing!

9 Jan 08 - Still In Majorca

Its now day 7 of the Majorca training camp, and according to my maths, we're just over 28 hours training (30 if you count the travel day...which I decided in my last blog, that I don't). It wouldn't be so bad if they were 28 hours of general pootling and easy riding, but they haven't been, we've been uphill and downhill (and in a phenomena that we can only put down to mid ride tectonic shift activity, there seems to have been an awful lot more of the former than the later.....its a phenomena that would also explain why the coast road to the hotel gets longer and longer with every ride), we've been through and offing, high cadence efforts and standing starts, and there's been a few team time trial drills thrown in there for good measure. Tomorrow is the last day of the camp, so I'm sure Dan will have some little treat for us up his sleeve, and much as I am trying hard with telepathy to ensure that its a cafe stop, I suspect a steep hill or a race is somewhat more likely (but I can keep hoping).

I've also realised now that we're into the new year, I should update my resume above and admit that I'm now into year 8 of my international racing career (how did that happen!!!). Although this year is going to be a a bit of an odd year, with selection for the Beijing Olympics being my main priority, I will once again be returning to the USA and riding for Team TIBCO. The team is based out of California so once again I get to spend at least some of my year in the San Fransisco area. Its a great team and I'll be riding with several of my teammates from previous years, so I'm looking forward to it. More details on the team to follow soon.

5 Jan 08 - In Majorca

Its January, which must mean its Majorca time again. In what is becoming a regular tradition, some unearthly hour of the morning of the 2nd of Jan saw me meeting up with the GB squad and heading to the airport bound for Majorca and a training camp to remind me why I really shouldn't eat too many pies over Christmas! Its day 3 of the camp (day 3 proper before I get told my maths is bad, travel days don't count) and we've done a split day (yuk) and 2 rides in the mountains taking in 2 of my favourite climbs...the one up Lluc from the Inca side, and Sa Colabra (won't mean much if you've never been training in Majorca, but the Sa Colabra climb is straight out of a car commercial, amazing views of the coast, rugged rocks, and winding roads full of hairpin turns). Descending down Sa Colabra (there's only one road so you descend, u-turn at the bottom, and climb back up again) I once again realised how great life as a bike rider is! Shooting down a hill with the sun shining, wind rushing through your hair (well though the vents in the helmet) and somehow the experience is only enhanced by the somewhat masochistic pleasure to come in making your legs explode and lungs scream as you climb back up again....there really isn't anything to beat it.

Apparently its the Parade of the Kings tonight. I'm hoping we'll get to see it as its supposed to be worth watching, although I think it might clash with dinner, and no matter how spectacular it is, its not going to take priority over dinner. Its a carnival they have over here to celebrate christmas, I'm not sure of the details, but if I do find out, then I'll write all about it in my next blog.

Please note the date parents, it really is the 5th of January (and there's no year in there so I can't have got that wrong).....I got nagged at for having forgotten to change the date of my last blog and confused my poor old Dad by saying it was new years eve on the 26th Dec, I think that senility that he's been talking about for years has finally set in!!