Tour of California for motivation!

don't know if you've caught any of the tour of california coverage but i was watching stage 2 last night and man they got it bad over there!! Torrential downpours as well as cold and wind is making for some interesting riding, but it still gives me the hunger to get smashing on the pedals in anger again! i've been following it on http://tracker.amgentourofcalifornia.com/ pretty neat coverage appart from stage 1 was dodgey as they coundn't recieve much signal due to the weather conditions. the racing though hasnt been hampered by the elements... the prologue was won by a typical ride from world tt champ Cancellara (suffering from flu and pulled out of the race the following day but still managed to maintain apparently near 600watts for the 4min 32 effort!) that guy is amazing! then the first road stage was won by another comeback king Mancebo who took off on his own nearly from the gun, got caught by 2 others midway through the stage, dropped them, got caught by 2 more at the end of the stage but still managed to beat them at the finish! another eye opening ride! then yesterday Leipheimer pulled his finger out and jus road away on the final climb of the day, bridging a 3minute gap to the break and then towing Peterson from Slipstream to the finish for his easiest pro win ever! has been good watching so far put it that way!

my training has still all been going to plan and the legs are feeling good going into the start of racing. i did my 1st motor pacing session of the year (sitting behind a scooter and riding hard pretty much it really!) at the end of a long ride at the weekend and that felt good as well as painful! good fun as well. the annoying thing was that it's a 50cc and is speed restricted at the moment so although you can be doing 50kmh on the uphill drags, he couldnt really go much faster on the downhills meaning that at times i was infront of him pacing him along!! ;-) getting it unlocked next week hopefully though so can down some more specific faster efforts or sustained hard efforts which continue on the desents. yesterday i had my final hill reps before thursdays race and i felt awesome and the good sensations were there as well as a big chunk of motivation so i think im ready to roll now! Today i'm just chilling out and will probably go and turn the legs over easily this afternoon as the weather is being kind again... has been for a few days now which makes a change! then tomorrow ill crack out the first pre-race ride of the year which is usually between 1h and an 1h 30 steady ride with a couple of easy geared sprints and A 5minute sustained effort at about 75% max hr to flush out/open up the legs ready for some hard riding the following day.

you can follow the stage results and video's/pics of each stage at http://www.cocpv.org/ . the 1st 3 stages have been done with 3 different winners including a beglium wrapping up the bunch sprint on sundays stage. the belg is riding for the same team as british rider Andrew Griffiths who has done a couple of the stages so far and hopefully will still be there when i go down for the last 3 stages. will be gud to race against another brit and can hopefully catch up a bit too.

so the next blog will b up after the weekend and ill hopefully hav lots of interestin race reports to put up nd some photo's of us rockin out the new kit too!

oh yea forgot to mention... i had to go to the local sports doctor to have a check up done to allow me to get my race licence for the season... a bit late i know! turns out after alot of wierd noises (on his part) and bizare standing positions (on my part!) that my hips are a bit out of line... my right one is higher than my left. not too uncommon apparenty tho so nothing to worry about i jus need to get riding position checked to make sure that they aren't too bad when i ride which could lead to back pain. so i mite need some sort of shoe support to balance me out a bit he says!!
apart from that abnormality all is in good working order.. and i'm not quite as tall as i though.. 192cm not 193! mayb i've shrunk now im getting older! and if dan smith is reading this... Dr Graziana says hello!

keep following!
t