Well its about time I had an update.
It has been a busy couple of weeks, and its raining outside with flooded roads so a good time for an update, so i will try and cover whats been happening and the couple of races ive done.
Since I last posted James came down for a week or so. I rode to Aachen to pick him up. Unfortuantly for him he had 2 crashes on the way home which was more funny than anything I think, and I will admite to laughing at his misfortune. Luckily he escaped with no injurys. I think this is when Karma decided to get me back and the next day I had my first crash in a while. It was a stupid crash really but it left me with abit less skin than i started the day with, and a very sore head. I guess I might have to start wearing a helmet from now on, but really it takes a couple of head injurys for me to learn a lesson, and we just got team cycling caps the other day, perfect for training in so i'll give myself one more chance before donning a helmet while training.
I then had a race which I cant remeber the name of but was a UCI 1.2 race so the biggest race I have done to date. The race was abit hilly for the first 60k before a flat section for 60k and then cobbles in the last 50k. The race didnt go great. I was feeling good for the first 60k and I was getting over the climbs with little difficulty and was feeling good. Then 5k before the first cobble section of 1.5k about 70k in there was a crash on a descent. I got held up by the crash and by the time we got round it we had to put a serious chase on to get back to the Peloton. We finally caught back on right at the start of the cobble section. I was already deep in the hurt from chasing on, and my lack of ability at riding the cobbles left me going straight out the ass. I was abit dissapointed because I think had I not been hurting so bad going into the cobbles I could have got through with the bunch and possibly gone ok for the rest of the race, but that racing and it just ended up being a 50k cruise to the finish line. So not the greatest race but things should improve.
The next race I did was last night. The race was 50k away and our new visitor for the next 3 weeks Matt Sillars and I decided to catch the train to the race. We managed to get to the 6.30pm start easily and the race was good. It was a 5.2km circut to be done 20 times. 3k of the circut was on narrow 2m wide farm rodes which were dusty as. The narrow roads meant holding postion in the 110 rider feild was easy enough but moving up was made difficult. For most of the race I just rode 30-50th wheel and just followed the feild around. With 6 laps to go a group of 20 got up the road so i moved to the front to try and bridge up. After attacking a few times I soon realised my legs were average, and I wasnt going to be bridging solo so just rode the last 30k in the bunch. I started to crack abit with 20k to go but not wanting to waste a gel if I wasnt going to win I just battled through and finished 50th odd.
It was post race that our troubles started. I had it all planned that we would ride the 15k to the train station, catch the train to Trooz and ride the last 5k home at around 10.30pm. (It is still light to around 10.30). But again Karma got us and Matt had a random doping control. We ended up having to wait around an hour for this and instead of leaving the race at 9pm we left at 10.15pm. We managed to make it to the train station at 10.45 and just our luck a train to Leige was just leaving. We jumped on and arrived at Leige in the pitch darkness at 11.15pm. The problem was we had missed our connecting train to Trooz and there were no more trains there till 6am. We thought about riding the 30k home but at 11.30pm with no lights decided we didnt want to die. We made the choice to have a sleep in the train station till it got light then ride home. This was going swell until they shut the station at 1.30am and it was freezing cold outside. Thankfully the very last train of the night, leaving at 1.45am was going to Pepinster only 10k from home. So with few options we jumped on the train and arrived in Pepinster at 2am. We managed to ride home in the Darkness, and thankfully saw no cars and finally arrived home at 2.30am quite tired and cold.
It was an epic night but at least makes a story for the Grand kids one day, and something to write on the blog so not all bad.
Thats about all really Hope all is well
Sorry if its not a good read but I am still tired.
Peace out
Josh
