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 It's always a great atmosphere and I superseded my expectations in this Crit bagging a top 25.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...…..