At the end of my last blog post, I explained that I had left Girona, having got a good few weeks of initial base miles in the tank, and had returned home to spend Christmas with my family. After six days at home relaxing and enjoying the festivities, I packed what felt like almost all my worldly belongings into my car (including almost £20 worth of Sainsbury’s crunchy peanut butter jars), and set off at 4:30am on 29th December towards Dover ferry port.
There are tired legs in the bunch but on a wet and windy Saturday night at the Gent Six Day 2012 all roads again led to Het Kuipke for another sell out beer and bike racing fest.
Stuart Balfour’s win in the supporting u23 race to the GP Ouest France Plouay, one of the most prestigious amateur in France, was special. The Dave Rayner Fund thought so too and made him their ‘Rider of the Year.’ As well as his Plouay success he won in Montpichon and at the Ronde Briochine; he was top 20 in the tough Kreiz Breizh UCI stage race and top 10 in the Tour de la Manche.
TUE's - once again I'm reminded of Elton John's words; 'and all this science I don't understand...' The forums are ablaze with righteous indignation from carpet fitters and bike shop mechanics, all of whom are well versed in conditions which affect an athlete's breathing and the treatment of any ailments related thereto. Me? I'm a glazier originally and I can't remember Prednisolone ever cropping up once during my 'apprenticeship.'
Continuing with our series of articles about Scotland’s cycling selections for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games – albeit the track cycling takes place on the Lee Valley Olympic ‘Pringle’ velodrome in London – we caught up with John Archibald who was a silver medallist in the pursuit at the last Games.
I was on a high from last week’s success before the Ronde des Combattants, a race with four stages over three days in Verdun. Teams were competing from Luxemburg, Germany and even a team from the CCM (UCI World Cycling Centre) in Switzerland (who host riders from poor countries without the support of large national federations).
The 2010 edition of the Drummond Trophy saw Endura's domination of the domestic road racing scene march on with a 1-2 for Evan Oliphant and James McCallum; and only a determined Robert Hassan kept Ross Creber off the podium and prevented an Endura whitewash.