Grain of Sand

Bad news- I was training by myself in Innerleithen doing the xc trail yesterday and managed to fall off. I was just coming down the descent after the summit and I was caught by surprise by one of the bigger jumps. I didn't lift my front wheel up enough and I did a bit of a nose dive and face planted the ground. I also whacked my shoulder.  I was a bit worried about what I should do as I was by myself (stupid!) and my face was bleeding everywhere and my shoulder was in agony. I rolled down the rest of the trail until I hit a fire road which I followed around the mountain to Walkerburn. At Walkerburn I managed to bump into some guys who worked at a chemical engineering plant who took me to the clinic at Innerleithen. They stitched my face up while my aunt and Granddad collected me. I still had a lot of pain in my shoulder so we went to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh but luckily it is only severe bruising and some lightly torn ligaments. That should heal quickly. Racing wise I don...

Last Sunday was another Mountain bike race, this time down in Devizes Wiltshire. Training didn't go so great during the week as I felt very tired- so I was a little nervous. I also had new shoes and saddle so I needed to get used to the new position. The course was really good though and I enjoyed it. My goal for the race was to give it everything in the first few laps to try and stay with the leaders. Unfortunately that went down the pan when I got a terrible start. My gears were slipping everywhere and I couldn't get my foot in. I ended up doing relatively consistent lap times that were ok- not great though. I ended up 6th at the finish. My brother all rode in the sport section- see below. It was certainly a good workout prior to National Champs next weekend and hopefully will have prepared my muscles. On Monday I had a rest day and went to see Bruno- that movie is disturbing. Then I flew up to Edinburgh. I am spending the week up here to see my grandparents and also for the ...

After a bad race last weekend, I hoped to make up for it at Euros. It was held in Hooglede Belgium and was 140k, consisting of 40k straight then 8 finishing circuits. I prepared well with lots of recovery and was ready for the start in Oostende- but pretty nervous. We had a good team as well with Joe Perrett- who won the Euro time trial!, George Atkins, Sam Harrison, Tim Kennaugh, Pete Dibben, and Jon Mould (an me). It turned out to be a strange race. I crashed about 10k and managed to smash my head so hard that I have lost all my memory from the crash to about 60k in! Joe Perrett (European Time trial Champion!) thinks that I tried to bunny hop a roundabout and mistimed it. That pretty embarrassing considering I'm supposed to be doing mountain bike too! I must have just been on autopilot for 40k. Apparently I was asking Pete were I was and kept forgetting stuff- weird! Anyway I finally started getting my head together with 3 laps to go and decided I needed to cover all the moves. D...

Sorry for the slow posting. I didn't really have much motivation to write about my race as I didn't do very well at all! I was somewhere outside the top 20 but still in the peleton. The course turned out to be not that difficult, which was a shame. Tim got away early then Joe and George bridged across. I didn't follow their attack immediately and regretted it as I ended up spending the whole race attacking and getting nowhere! Disappointed but hey!

Sandy King- Cadence RR Joe Perrett- Sid Standard Josh Edmonson- Tom Simpson George Atkins- National Road Race Championships To See Joe Perrett at Hog Hill click here