So where shall I start? 2014, the year I turned 21 was bound to be a big one and as of yet it has not disappointed. I started off with a big 21st blow out holiday in the French Alps for a week of skiing with 4 of my best mates. The choice of destination for this, was non other than Alp D'Huez the prolific Tour de France Finish. To say the least the holiday was bloody brilliant, 8 hours a day skiing followed 10 hours of partying and drinking in the bars, clubs and on the piste.
Obviously no riding was done during this week away and it was fair to say I was a wreck when we returned home to England. But I knew the mountain bike season was about to get underway and I needed to get back into some serious training. I had recently joined a local cycling club located in Odiham where I met some brilliant local riders who were just as enthusiastic about cycling as myself. This lead to making some great friends and training partners at the same time, some of whom were very keen on tearing up the racing scene.
My cycling season got underway with a couple of local mountain bike races to dip my toes in, but never really posted any exciting results due to the high quality field and stupidly entering into a category that was just a little bit out of my league.
March came around pretty quickly and it was time to pack my suitcase for the second time and board another easyjet plane. Still in the search for mountains but this time hoping for dry roads and plenty of sun. We were heading to Port Polenca, Majorca for 3 days of riding / training with the club. After also 350 km in 3 days with every element of weather mother nature could have thrown at us I was pretty tired and ready to come home. It was a brilliant trip and my first time riding aboard, 2015 has been booked for a 5 days of riding this time and hopefully the weather is on our side.
It was now time for the spring and summer months of racing, which including mainly racing on the road as a category 3 racer with Odiham / 1stgearcycles.com teams as mountain biking was taking a seat on the bench for the time being, with the ambition to become a category 2 riders before the year was out. There was a good turn out of riders from Odiham who were prepared to work hard as a team and see how far we could go in our first season together. It was soon apparent that we were more than capable of holding our own in a 60 - 70 man field at local races and some further a field. We were soon seeing our category 4 riders gaining enough points to earn category 3 and each becoming quicker and quicker. It was nearing the end of the season and it seemed all the years work was paying off. We were seeing some podiums and even 3 or 4 wins including one from myself, which I was chuffed to bits with. Two of us had done the brilliant job of earning category 2 British Cycling Licences for the 2015 season which presented new challenges which you will be hearing about on this blog in the coming months.
Enough about me for a second, the Tour of Britain was finally here with some excellent racing across the week, I was fortunate to take a ride along with AnPost / Chain reaction Cycling Team in their team car, courtesy of Continental Tyres around the time trial course in the heart of Central London. The day was amazing, the team were fantastic in looking after me, chatting and getting me really involved which actually taught me a lot of road racing.
As we move into the winter months, my attention turns to wrapping up warm for the cold and breezy rides and the "hour of hell" cyclocross racing, I am going to leave this blog here and open up Netflix some some post racing entertainment.
I hope you all enjoyed this and will ensure I continue to write about where my two wheels takes me.
Cheers,
Ryan.
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