TT PB

Yay! The weather played in my favour this week, it meant that I could achieve a 24:16 on my local Time Trial course! Which is a personal best!

First win on the road in Under 16s

Finally! After some hard fought racing over the past month, I have achieved my first road win! This was at the Mallory Park road race league. The course was the anti-clockwise lower circuit with the Hilltop finish. This is my favourite course and I have managed to win several times on this circuit! The wind was a strong headwind for the finish.

The day's field consisted of about 20-25 riders in the under 16s. This meant that my teammate, George Evans had the chance to attack on lap 4 - making the leading breakaway. The break consisted of 4 riders; George Evans from MI; James Alexader (Solihull); Louis Perry (Lyme); and myself. We were working quite well together for the remaining laps, not drilling it but keeping the pace, other riders off our backs and not messing around by trying to attack each other. With one lap to go Louis went for an outstanding attack and tried to solo it to the win. This wasn't a surprise, as this tactic has worked for him in recent history, thus I decided to chase him down at once - there was no way I was letting that go again.

We briefly regrouped and I needed to pick my moment. Suddenly in the closing straight I heard my teammate George shout 'FINN! GO!' I had a 10 meter gap! Burying myself I did the longest sprint in the history of my cycling career! I put as much power as I could into my Raleigh... Up the Hill... Goooooo! I'd got it! 

Mid Season Review

The last 6 weeks haven't been the greatest in my youth cycling career. While my results haven't been fantastic I have learnt a lot.

I have had some Road races that I've really enjoyed but I'm yet to have a win in this season. However I've focused on other things like learning to attack and succeed in breaks during races for example. So to be fair it's not suprising. So far I haven't raced any national races, but I'm really looking foreword to race the Tour of the North West.

Photo by Cycling Photos by the Taceys

My Track racing was an extraordinary learning curve. All the way through my first 4 omniums I was progressing through the group by learning racing strategy thus improving my results. One of the major things that I learnt was that your equipment plays a major part in track racing. I mean, looking at the guys who are leading the races, their on £3000+ equipment. So in the final 2 events, I borrowed some track wheels and this greatly improved my results! I went from fighting for a single point to fighting for points on the sprints in the points race! A huge step up! Thanks a lot Geoff and Mike! My goals for each event were to successfully complete certain moves, so my 'wins' we're using techniques which I had discussed with my coaches.