Junior Tour of Bristol

Had my first stage race of the year at the weekend and it was the junior tour of Bristol, a two day stage race and the second round of the national junior series. we were racing as a scottish team so we travelled down together on the thursday. the team was me, stu, jack and taylor and the coaches/mechanic and parent. we finnally made it there on the friday morning and managed to get out for a short spin on parts of the route for sundays stage and realised that it was going to be a very hilly day. the first stage was on saturday and was 8 laps round a 13km flat circuit, working as a team we decided that we were going to try and cover all the moves that had more than three people in them and we set about this from the start with each of us trying to cover moves, plus trying to save energy for sundays stage which was gonna be savage. the stage ended up becoming a bunch sprint which was exciting with riders all over the road, we all made it home at the front of the bunch safely with only a couple of people managing to get clear of the bunch in the final lap. Next up was sundays stage stage which was going to be very hilly with five cat 3 climbs, the first climb came only 10miles into the race and the field was already splitting to peices, i managed to get over this one in the front main group and was feeling strong which was agood sign for the day ahead. a group of four managed to slip away over the top though and built up a lead of 1.30 which wasnt good for us as there was no scottish riders in it. As the race the headed towards the 2nd climb of the day which would be four laps up it and finishing on the final time up, it was a hard climb at 14%. gradually lap after lap i managed to stay in the front group and we reeled in the break away and it was anyones game. in the final lap there was a solo attack from the eventual winner and the group turned negative with nobody willing to chase. we had a wee chat to each other as me and taylor were in this group and felt good, stu had fought hard to get in the group each lap, with him having tired legs we sent him up the road to intiate another person to chase, perfect! me and taylor chilled out and waited as we had no intention of chasing our teamate who was out in the lead. then as the final time up the hill came round it was flat out from the bottem with stu getting brought back and the solo break still ahead it was a race to the top. i used the wheels and manged to stay at the front of the race and finished in 5th place which was a much better improvement on my 50th place at the first round of the national series back in wales, this put me in 6th place overall 58seconds behind on the leader. Also got myself some bang tidy tan lines which i aint going to complain about haha.
here is the BC report on the race http://new.britishcycling.org.uk/road/article/roa20110411-Road--Junior-Tour-of-Bristol-0
Cheers Grant

Early season of racing

Hello people, been a while since my last post got a bit lazy during the winter, I guess I’ll start off with my winter training which has gone rather well this year other than a couple of illnesses; I managed to get plenty off miles in. Had the national cyclocross championships in early January which went really well and I managed to finish in 2^nd place which I was really pleased about then finished my cyclocross season off a week later with a win at the Scottish championships. My first race off this season was the first round of the national road series which was being held in Wales, since it was my first race of the year I wasn’t expecting too much, but my lack of race form was prity obvious as I cramped up in the final part of the race and just had to make it home to the finish in about 50^th place. Anyhow next up was the first round of the national MTB bike series which was being held at Sherwood pines in Nottinghamshire. I have raced there many times before so I knew that this course is proper fast and relatively flat therefore it was going to be flat out from the start. I had an average start but through the first lap managed to move in to the top two positions with Matt Sumpton and the race was on. The course being so fast it was hard for either of us to open up a gap and after 4 laps of close racing it was going to be a sprint finish. It was my first sprint finish for a very long time and something I usually try to avoid because it’s not my strongest point, ha-ha. Anyway, I had noticed in the pre ride that if it was going to be a sprint the final section of fire road before the woods was going to be the most important, I used this to my advantage and got in front into the final section and managed to hold Matt of to the finish and claim my first win of the year, by a close 3 seconds. Next up is some more road racing with a super 6 and then the junior tour of Bristol.

That’s all for now

Grant