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.
To misquote Shakespeare; 'that which I greatly feared is upon us.' Brad hasn't been taking bottles in the chases thus far and we'd no reason to think he'd start tonight, but he did. Right at the moment his mitted hand clutched that bottle, my heart sank - I've lived this nightmare before.
Vanelli-Project Go's Louis Moore, the newly crowned student champion, won the Scottish Hill Climb Championship on a long and difficult Glen Quaich course, the first 5k of the narrow strip of tarmac which connects Kenmore to Amulree in the Southern Highlands.
No appraisal of Scotland’s cycling medal hopes for the 2018 Commonwealth Games would be complete without speaking to multiple Commonwealth, Worlds and Olympic visually impaired tandem champion, Neil Fachie.
Here’s what the man had to say to VeloVeritas, recently:
When we spoke to Britain’s Joss Lowden back in July she told us about her intention of attacking the world hour record. She’d already exceeded Bussi’s 48.007 kilometres in a ‘test’ ride. She turned intent into action on the boards of the Grenchen Velodrome in Switzerland with 48.405 kilometres on 30th September, well in excess of her own ‘test’ ride distance and Bussi’s record.
The Hilton Edinburgh Grosvenor has announced that they will sponsor Edinburgh RC/The Bicycleworks, one of the UK's biggest cycling clubs. The sponsorship deal will see the hotel's logo appear on the club's kit, website and race support vehicle.
Our pal Viktor has been hard at work; it's not everyone who could do his job, those long hours huddled over a computer screen, day in, day out - checking those Belgian cycling results websites. Lifting his head only to make another coffee ("sometimes my fingertips tingle with the caffeine"), or to phone me; "Ed, there's a boy you should be talking to..."