On Saturday the team had a Newport session planned for the evening which meant I could have a lie in Saturday morning before the mind numbing travel up to welshland. Fortunately it proved not to be too bad as I had the very entertaining company of Will Kemp and Drew and Trevor Holmes in the team van. The session went pretty well and it was clear that Will was the strongest even though he probably lost about 80% of the power he put through the pedals by being rather, to put it politely, 'unsmooth'. It was good to see all the guys who were only riding the track for the second time, and Tom Redwood who was riding it for the first time, getting stuck in and apart from the odd hairy moment it all went really well. On the way home Trevor took us to for a cheeky sweet chilli chicken deli in a certain dubious restaurant with golden arches, but it turned out to be the perfect recovery food, probably because it was either that or go hungry though.
Despite the bad looking weather prediction from Will Kemp's mate who apparently is always 'hot on the weather' it turned out to be a pretty nice day for a ride today. It was one of the first days in over a month that it was actually good cycling conditions, and you could tell as there were loads of riders out on the roads today. I set off aiming to meet team mates Tom Laker , Drew Holmes, Will Kemp and also Sigma rider Tom Copeland in Ditchling for 10:30. However, my ride started pretty badly as after only 10 minutes riding the rear derailleur snapped off on my winter bike. Luckily my dad wasn't doing anything this morning as was able to drive me over my race bike which brought me a lot of stick from the other riders for 'riding carbon on the roads in January' but to be honest I didn't have much choice. Once we had met in Ditchling Tom C lead us along to Ditchling Beacon which we preceded to climb. Will Kemp decided that he wasn't even going to try to follow Tom C's hot pace, from what I've heard Will has been riding with Tom a lot lately so clearly knew all about the pain that was in store for us who tried to follow. Drew lost the wheels about half way up and I was dispatched about three quarters of the way up which I was pretty happy about to be honest after being ill. Tom L did a solid job and stayed with Tom C all the way to the top of the climb and he seemed to do it fairly comfortably, it must be something about the name.
After this Tom C tested our physical and technical skills all the way to Lewes where we met the McNamara Brothers, Paul Barnard and a few others for a few more hours of pain. After this Tom L, Drew and myself decided it was time for a coffee stop and the others kept going as the likes of Will and Tom C were planning on doing 5/6 hours, whereas us youg'uns only had four ours set by our separate coaches. After our Coffee we started heading back and after about 15 minutes I departed from Tom and Drew to face the very slow crawl home back to Brighton against the huge headwind. By the time I got home I was WRECKED but was pretty happy with my first weekend back on the bike and I'm looking forward to getting back on a training plan for some more pain.
Here are some photos of our ride courtesy of The Cycling Teacher (Will Kemp) who most inappropriately decided it would by a good idea to start taking pictures on his phone on the section of road with the strongest cross winds. Nice one Will.
Photos of the Newport Session will be up soon.
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