Grain of Sand

Rode over to Hillingdon today after watching a severely disappointing tour stage. Plowman Craven turned up with 4 riders which could have made the race interesting. Unfortunately they weren't really there to race and just wanted to do a training ride. Its a bit of a shame for those of us who do go to race but you can't really do much other than complain. I gave it several attacks and got a gap quite a few times but they chased everything down even if they had a man in it. Coming into the last lap some guy rode into my front wheel and buckled it so I had to abandon.  Annoyed but will hopefully do well this weekend.

After Spending Saturday lounging around the house, Sunday I headed off at 7:30 for a race in Strijpen, Belgium. It took 4 hours to get there however a lot of British juniors made the trip including a team from yorkshire. I went with John Barclay who takes over British Juniors almost weekend. The race (90k, 10 laps) started fast and fortunately I was near the front. A break of five went up the road early which Joe Perrett and I bridged across to. This break was then joined by ones and twos until it was about 20 riders strong. For the next few laps, attacks whittled the group down to 10 riders. With 20k to go one rider attacked but our group kept chasing fairly well- knowing he would tire. Unlucky for us, he didn't and went on to win by 50 seconds. Our group ended in a bunch sprint which I screwed up by following the one guy who didn't bother. I came 7th in the sprint so 8th in the race. Erick Rowsell came 2nd and Joe Perrett came in 5th. A bit a of a frustrating race as I direly...

I have set up this blog site to help anyone who is interested in seeing how I am doing with my cycling and what kind of stuff I am up to. This last month of July has been good for racing but also pretty relaxing. I took part in the European Junior Road Race Championships held in Arona, Italy. I arrived Thursday 3rd for the Race on the 6th. The weather for the 2 days preceding the race was beautiful at around 30 degrees however come the Sunday, the heavens opened.   4 hours of heavy rain and thunderstorms coincided with our 9 am start time and as we were lining up, we were all already soaked and shivering. We started at the back so I spent the first half lap moving to the front. It was pretty crazy as most people couldn't see (I was alright with my new glasses), and were swerving everywhere. The course had a big climb in and as we hit it my legs started to feel pretty poor. To add to my problems my back brake pulled through making the technical descents interesting for the rest of...