Assen Day 1

Assen is finally here! With months of preparation we have arrived at our camp. 

Yesterday - me and the team (with a few friends) rode some of the following days courses to suss out some of the roads etc. We then signed on and went to our houses. 

Today's stage was a short, 1.5 km Prologue. It was fast, twisty and technical. What made it worse was that it rained at around 10 so the bricked section was very slippery.

 

I posted a 1 min 50 time which in the end put me in 60th. But the times were so compact that if I were half a second quicker I would be in 44th.

 

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.

Tour of Flanders 2016!

The Tour of Flanders. The first monument. A legendary race. 

This year The MI Racing Academy went to see the race and to ride the sportive. It was awesome! 

We made it up all bar one of the climes which was the Koppenburg due to loads of traffic!! And now I have a lot more respect for the people who win these monuments. There really hard!!

I was on my Raleigh Criterium Sport running the Cole wheels and Shwalbe Durano 28mm tyres at 90psi for extra comfort on the cobbles.

 

Tyre Pressure and Wheel Experiment

I bet we've all wondered what our ideal tyre pressure is. So I decided to find out what it really is. It's time to do an experiment!

Milton Keynes Series 2016

To kick off the 2016 Road Season Lotta and I raced the Milton Keynes Mini Series. This runs all the way through March consisting of 4 races. And is on the Milton Keynes bowl.

Photo Credit Elliot Haigh - https://haighphotography.smugmug.com

The first race went very well. I was animating the race with a series of attacks and on the 2nd to last lap I went with an attack off the front but got caught in the final 200m.

The second race didn't go so well, In the first lap I had a mechanical and that meant I was basically out of the race. However there were good points to take out of that race which was that I didn't panic when I had the mechanical and that I could still have a decent race after having a mechanical.

Race 3 was one of the best. I contested in the final sprint as the race was held together and that meant that I could use my sprint to achieve 8th. I think my new Raleigh bike helped quite a bit!

Race 4 was the race I enjoyed the most. It was really tough as there were attacks left, right and centre. But what really made the race for me was leading out my teammate George who got 2nd in the bunch sprint and 5th overall.