Winter 2017/18

With the season soon approaching I thought it would be good to look back on the Winter of 2017/18 and how it has gone.

    The season for myself and Giant Halifax RT, my new team for 2018, starts on the 25^th of February at Kuurne- Brussels- Kuurne in Belgium. I’m really excited for this race as it will be a big step up as my first junior race and also first race in Belgium. KBK is also a UCI 1.1 race also so is a big race to start the season off with!

   Coming back to how Winter went, after a few weeks easy after the end of the season I started training properly again around mid-October with my new coach from Trainsharp cycle coaching. Trainsharp have been fantastic coaches over the winter and in the build up to the season and I am very fortunate to have their support and I hope this relationship continues long in to the future. Winter this year was a little different as my efforts were over a longer period to prepare me for the longer races that are to come this season, whilst also trying to maintain the top end and explosive power which is needed for the end of races.

One thing that was always in my plan however was the Winter Friday night track league at Manchester velodrome that I attended most weeks until it stopped at Christmas. This is great for building strength and also keeping a good sprint over Winter. After Christmas however, I was happy to have been promoted up to the Tuesday night premier division track league as I was now officially a junior. I’ve only been able to make it to one Tuesday night so far, but it was a good experience and a lot tougher than Fridays.

    As usual through Winter a lot more was done on the track due to the weather and because there are more opportunities to go to the track over the winter than Summer. These opportunities came in the form of the winter Revolution Series and Senior Track Nationals in January. The Revs series went alright for me, managing to get a couple of top 5s but never managing to get on to the podium unfortunately. At Revs I raced for team Wiggins which was a great experience especially getting to keep the few pieces of Rapha kit I was given to race in!

After the first round in London I was placed 7^th overall after some consistent top 6 places.  I managed to move up to 6^th overall after the 2^nd round in Glasgow after a 4^th in the devil and 7^th in the scratch where I attacked and was just caught with half a lap to go when in a 2 man break. Unfortunately, I dropped back to 8^th overall in the final standings after a crash in the Madison in the final round in Manchester. We finished the race but after picking up a couple of injuries and road rash, I didn’t do so well in the other races. Nevertheless, Revs was still a great experience.

    After a big week leading in to Christmas I had a bit of a cold so had a bit of a rest after but then built back up with another block going into senior track nationals at the end of January. I was part of the 4 representing Giant Halifax with guest rider Joe Burns along with team mates Josh Greenwood and Max Rushby. This was the first time I’d worn the new Santini kit for 2018 so was a good day no matter what the result! After feeling strong in qualifying we were in the 7^th/8^th final in the afternoon where we won the heat to finish 7^th overall with a time of 4:25 over the 4km. Unfortunately, I was a lot weaker in the final so wasn’t much help to the other lads but was still a good hard effort. That day I also raced the qualifier for the scratch race where I finished 13^th with only 8 qualifying so didn’t make the final. It was still a great race that I enjoyed with it being my first proper bunch race with the bigger gears on as a junior.

     With a fair amount of track done this Winter I’ve now started to build up again on the road to hopefully get some good form for the early season classic races starting in Kuurne in a couple weeks. I am feeling good and really looking forward to what the season brings.

     For the 2018 road season I will be riding a Giant TCR advance courtesy of Giant Halifax UK with an Ultegra mechanical 68000 groupset and Zipp 303 race wheels for the flatter days, with some lighter weight Giant own brand wheels for the hillier days. On all my wheels will be Vittoria Corsa 25mm tyres again thanks to Giant Halifax and Vittoria. The finishing touches on the TCR are Look pedals with thanks to Look bikes UK and also an aero Garmin mount courtesy of blu buzz UK. All this amazing equipment and racing across the UK and Europe wouldn’t be possible without Giant Halifax race team and all its sponsors: Giant Halifax UK, Lister Horsfall, Kinetic systems, Stelram engineering, blu buzz UK, Jelf, Vittoria tyres, Look pedals, Scicon bags, Santini, OTE nutrition, Weldtite and CSS cycling insurance with personal sponsors of Pedal potential and support from Trainsharp coaching. Thanks to them all!!

1st outing in Giant Halifax RT kit at senior National track championships team pursuit