Geraint's homecoming/ Welsh Champs

I'm on track, actually getting the blogs out ahead of schedule for once!

Photo by Huw Fairclough

 Last week I was fortunate enough to be involved in the Geraint Thomas 'home coming'. This was pretty special and I was super happy about being approached to be part of the day. I didn't know what to expect with regards to turn-out as I wasn't sure how knowledgeable the general public would be about Geraint's Tour de France achievements. I was blown away by the 8000 odd people that showed up in Cardiff to welcome G home. It was nice to see how widely recognised G has made the sport of cycling in both Wales and the UK. From my position, personally, it's very inspirational and shows what's possible when you put the hard yards in. This was proven even more so after riding with G a few weeks prior to the Tour when he had to diet so hard whilst training in order to get down to the weight needed to ride the Tour. He wasn't even going in as the leader then; its just crazy to see the difference now. He's definitely the highest achieving Welsh Sportsman in my opinion.

Photo by Huw Fairclough

In other news, personally, I have been doing a fair few local TT's and the local Llandow circuit race. I am happy to keep up my 100% record at Llandow this season (be it only racing here twice....). These local races are just good for the confidence and the condition ahead of the last push to the end of this season with Rydale and The Olympias Tour on the horizon.

 On the weekend I raced the welsh championships up in mid-Wales with the Time Trial on Saturday and the Road Race on Sunday. Both days featured fairly rolling courses which I enjoyed. Thanks to Will Pring, the organizer and his team, for putting on these events as they provided great racing on both days. I was happy with my performance on Saturday in the TT coming away with 4th place behind some solid TT specialists. Big well done to George Evans winning convincingly. Then Sunday proved to be an exciting Road Race with plenty of attacks and groups getting up the road. Once again I was happy with my performance. With 2 laps remaining I bridged across to the winning move with Gruff Lewis. Then helped to wear the group down on the last climb to try to play to my strengths.

Photo by Gary Main

I attacked right at the end within the last 1km only to get caught on the line and pushed down to 3rd place (it needed a photo-finish to establish who had won 2nd.......).

 All in all, I'm really happy with my race and it bodes well once again for the remainder of the season.

I shall update you once again after the last few races are finished.

Summer roundup

I appreciate it's been a little while since the last update. There has been plenty of racing including crits, time trials and a few National Road series. To start off with, after the Belgium racing we headed back up to the north east of England yet again for the Tour of the Reservoir. This was a bit of a disappointing race for me. It had been one of my targets but just didn't go to plan with 2 crashes and still carrying fatigue from Belgium. I felt a bit 'down' after this race but my morale quickly improved when Rob told us he had managed to get us a ride in Omloop Het Neiwsblad - a cobbled classic! With my legs feeling a bit more recovered I managed to get round the pounding of the cobbles and a pretty hot race in 51st place. This race was just a great experience to be a part of, even though I'm not exactly suited to cobbles...

Omloop Het Niewsblad

Next up, the team had a couple of weeks of criterium racing. I enjoyed racing these a fair bit as I just like railing corners (but not necessarily the horrible repeated kicks out of them...). My favourite crit out of these was Abergavenny. I have been racing at the annual Abergavenny Crits since my Youth days and the Town knows how to put on a fantastic Event. It's always a great atmosphere and I superseded my expectations in this Crit bagging a top 25.

Stockton Crit

Abergavenny 2010...

Abergavenny 2014.... 

 Another race that I really enjoyed over the last month was the local Llandow where I was pretty happy to take home the win. It was good to get stuck into such a short aggressive race. Then after this, it was back up to the North East yet again for a bit of a bizarre/cut short Stockton GP. It was a good race however trying to support teammate, Will in getting 13th, his best National result.

In recent weeks we've all had a good solid block of training including Time Trials. I've been very happy taking a few wins in these. It's just a good morale boost. It's also been great to be able to get some solid hours in on some great home roads to set up the last part of the season. The biggest ride of which was an epic 200+km loop including most of South Wales most iconic climbs.

I'm now looking forward to the racing in the coming weeks with Welsh champs and Rydale on the Horizon.

Finally I can't not mention this really....but a massive congratulations has to go to Geraint Thomas for a phenomenal and truly inspiring performance in winning the Tour de France...…..