Grain of Sand

Make sure you check out my earlier posts, I recently just got up to date. My early week was relatively easy. Only started training hard Thursday/ Friday. Decided not to do Echelon Cycles stage race as needed to do homework on the Saturday. Did AW cycles RR today. Still feeling a little fatigued, perhaps from the camp or perhaps from my training Thursday/ Friday. It was 90k on a rolling circuit with quite a bit of wind. I attacked with Jon Mould 3 laps to go and we got joined by a group of 5 or 6. We stayed away and I attacked in the finale but to no avail and it came down to a sprint and I lost out and came 7th. Pretty gutted as prized went down to 5th.  Charles Whitton took these great photos I have entered the Edinburgh and Smithfield Nocturne. I am planning on riding for cyclefit and helping out Warrick Spence. Cyclefit have been really kind in helping with my bike fit and core. Major news is my Dad has entered the folding bike race in Edinburgh. Perhaps he doesn't want to embar...

Straight after Paris Roubaix was a British Cycling training camp down in Newport. We drove all the way there Sunday night. I was soooooo tired Monday, but we did a track session and a road ride. I was suffering for the whole camp, especially on the track (team pursuit). Its not pleasant but at least its only training. Anyway we went home friday evening and I had a huge dinner, in fact I gorged myself pretty much all weekend. I see it as a belated Roubaix celebration. By the following Tuesday my legs lost some of the definition from the camp but I can build that up again for Road Nationals.  Me chasing down a break Saturday was a recovery ride, 1:30, and Sunday was the race. I was pretty tired but that was expected. I needed to defend my national series lead, so I ended up doing a lot of chasing during the race. It was a flat race and no wind so that made it hard for breaks to stay away. In the last lap it was all together except for Joe Perrett who had attacked an earlier break. I trie...

First of all as a taster have a look at the pictures on the official website: There are some good ones of me 'suffering majorly' on the pave, as Sean Kelly would say. http://home.nordnet.fr/jjdelrot/image/prxjun09/index.html Me and my brother went for a 1 hour spin in the rain on Friday morning. I was feeling a bit tired after a harder day yesterday (1:30 ride + roller session), but very excited. Bumped into fellow TCC member Briand up in the park which was nice as haven't spoken in ages. We travelled to Folkestone in the afternoon but not without a few hiccups. At lunch I managed to slice my finger open with the bread knife. On the Saturday we drove to the hotel in France and had lunch with the French, Italians, and Belgians. It was just normal stuff like bread and pasta, no crazy surprises. We then went for a 1 hour practice ride over the pave. I took a few pictures of my bike prepped for the ride. All of GB rode Bontrager race x lites with vittoria pave tyres on. I did a...

Well its Thursday and only 3 days till the big event. I have been checking the weather forecast occasionaly. Yesterday they predicted heavy rain and a max of 6 degrees but today it has improved to 10 degrees and light rain. It would have been a real Museew or Kelly style roubaix with that kind of weather. Makes for good pictures though. Just been having a light week. Same volume- around 12-15 hours, but not many efforts. Went for a long ride yesterday and going out for a few more 2 hour rides with some sprints in before Sunday. Took my custom Sidas insoles to the shop yesterday and they confirmed my suspicions they were collapsing. Makes me feel better that my core is getting worse, just my insoles. I am getting some of the specialized ones till I can see cyclefit again. They are getting in some new motion control carbon ones that never collapse! The sidas ones were really comfy but do to my excessively high arches they did not have such a long life. Not sure what bike modifications to...

Last Week started good just after my win. Morale was high, but legs were very tired! Went out for a long ride Wednesday and could still feel it. The Maidenhead time trial on Thursday night felt far worse than the final climb at Cadence! That horrible muscular fatigue that you get and you can't get your Heart Rate up. I must have dug pretty deep on those Welsh Climbs. I also got news about my selection for Junior Paris Roubaix. The race runs the same day as the pros and passes over most of the cobbles around 2 hours before. Check out the website-  http://asso.nordnet.fr/veloclubroubaix/prxjun.html  We arrive in Roubaix at 2:30. My team mates are Dan Mclay, George Atkins, Sam Harrison, and Pete Dibben. I had a fun session on Calshot Track on Saturday with my club, Twickenham CC. Calshot is a great track as its only 150 metres round so you pick up some real g-force. We did a few short races and lots of skills. It was a good leg refresher for the Thames Velo Race. It was Stuarts first...