Moving forward...

July.

What was supposed to be a month of enjoying racing at home, and preparing for the back end of the season. Headed in a bit of a different direction to planned about half way through. Following on from the Marches 3-day I had ridden into some good legs, and was ready for a month of racing at home without all the hustle and bustle of racing in Spain. Its very relaxing to race without convoys, radios, and motorbikes passing every once in a while.

However, shortly into July I picked up bout of Illness that set me back for 2 weeks. It wasn't an ideal situation to be in knowing I would be returning to Spain in the coming weeks but not much you can do about it other than rest. Upon clearing it out of my system I took back to normal training which has been positive so far. As although I missed out on races, and more hours in the legs. It gave me a chance to fully recover and have a reset from what has been a long start to the year. It seems like forever ago I was lining up in February for my first race of the year which happened to be a Spanish national stage race in Almagro. When racing every weekend for months on end it can be difficult to find time to rest, and recover which is usually the cause for illness springing up.

As now I have gotten back to a decent level of fitness and form I will be racing next week in Vuelta Avila. Three tasty days on the bike. kicking off on the 8th of August. The first stage being a summit finish at 118km. A rolling second day for 139km taking in a 1st category climb, and last but not least a brutal final stage with over 2854m of elevation and countless category climbs. No easy route back into racing, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Spain. I'm hoping August and September will have more stage racing than the previous few months of one-day races. They seem to offer a different style of racing that isn't quite as vicious as the all out smash fests the U23 calendar has produced so far.

I'm so looking forward to getting some consistent weather out of the next month or so. The flavor of this year has been far too much rain. Spending countless hours on the bike getting drenched. I've lost count how many times I've trained in the wet in the last week alone. I know I'll be praying for some when its 40 degrees next week.

A massive thank you to all the people that support me. It's only possible to have these experiences from the support I receive. Hopefully next months blog will be filled with more experiences after a tough past month of pressing on.