Savage Weekend

I’ve been neglecting my blog over the last two weeks due to fun fun fun A Level revision and exams, however, as of yesterday I am free from exams for at least 3 months. Lucky me.

This weekend myself and my team had yet another busy weekend of riding on the cards. It started with a Hillingdon Winter Series on Saturday, winter being the focal word of this sentence with it feeling like it was at least -20 degrees on the day. It was the first race of the year in which the whole team attended so despite the cold weather everyone was fired up to start the season with a bang. The only riders who couldn’t make it were Jack OB and George Pearle, who are both experiencing ongoing illness, and Will Kemp, who had teaching commitments to attend to.

LEWNOZ set the standard high coming 2^nd in the 4 cat race with Tom Redwood also putting in a solid performance, although he unfortunately ended up getting boxed in the gallop.  Everybody else was riding in the E,1,2,3s and in the first half of the race there were quite a few moves with our riders in it that were dilly dallying on and off the front of the bunch. At about the half way point the significant move of the day went, with 8 riders in it, and we had ‘northern star’ Matt Pilkington comfortably in the mix. The rest of the team blocked and chased down attacks when necessary but after only about 15 minutes it became apparent that the break was not going to see the bunch again for the rest of the race. Matt ended up getting a well deserved second place missing out on a win by less than wheels length to Orbea rider Lewis Atkins.

It was a far more successful first race of the year than last year’s as I am told, as I was not in the team then, that most of the team ended up on the floor at this event last time around.

Sunday meant an early start to meet at the Triangle in Burgess Hill for 8:15am for the routine team training session. However, this week it was not so routine as we were being photographed before and during the ride by a professional photographer and were told that the pictures would appear in Cycling Weekly as well some other magazines. So look out for a ‘wall of orange’, as some other riders have started calling us, in cycle magazines over the next few weeks to. The ride was not the usual route either, as we embarked on a trip to Beachy Head and back to take in a more ‘scenic’ route for the photographer. Once we reached Beachy Head we met youth team mate Sara who then joined us for the trip back. By the end we did 76 miles which took little over 4 hours.

After getting out of our kit and in to people clothes we then headed for some lunch and then for a Seminar from team manager, Dan Bennett. After talking about the ride today and yesterday’s race we were shown the 99% finished team calender for the year and from what I saw nearly everyone seemed as excited as me about it. By the looks of it were in for a tough year but with a stronger team than last year, due to progression from riders as well as a few new signings, we are hopeful for some very good results indeed.

My training has been going pretty well since my ‘man flu’ at the beginning of January and I am on my 3^rd week of training from coach, Stuart Blunt, since then. In just over a week’s time is my first road race of the season which is the Perfs Pedal Race. It’s looking like we’re going to have five riders  from the team for the race so hopefully we can get a good result to continue the team’s decent early season form.