and for those of you who may be interested the velo 29 winter series mentioned below is the first winter road series in the North East taking place at Croft Motor circuit - races for all categories - usually good racing up there and Australian pursuit so..... a good pre season work out for all

http://velo29.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/winter-series-banner.jpg

Racing calendar for the start of the season

• 29/01/11 - velo 29 winter series - croft 1
• 05/02/11 - velo 29 winter series - croft 2
• 12/02/11 - velo 29 winter series - croft 3
• 19/02/11 - interclub Mellac (France)
• 26/02/11 - La Melrandaise 1/2/3
• 27/02/11 - Plaintel/Plaintel 1/2/3
• 03/03/11 - Etoile de Tréssignaux 1/2/3

the rest of my race programme will be on the 'calendar' page above when i know it

new year

Now then, happy new year and that if ii havent seen you yet, which i most probably havent seen as the only time i left then house over the festive period was to ride my bike and work.

Yes days over christmas went something like this for me:

5am – Wake up – slip into cycling kit
5.05 – double espresso ( aided by the houses new Jura coffee machine)
510 – Clamber onto the rollers for an hour v- do some kind of leg speed (the weakness i am trying to work on this winter) or strength work
610 – off the rollers then a bit of a stretch.
6.30 – off to work delivering milk, bread and newspapers around whitby and the surrounding area
8.00 – return home and spend a couple of hours eating a massive breakfast and copious amounts of caffeine woith the fmily

(anyone who has had the pleasure of living with me knows breakfast is actually my fave time of day and i can quite easily make it last most of the day, reading papers and drinking coffee…. at home christmas is the only time the all my brothers and i and the parents are home together for more than a day or two, so its nice to catch up on a morning. my dads back at sea now, middle brothers jetted off to europe modelling and im soon to leave as well. and young brother will be away to wellbeck college later in the year.

10am – a longer ride on the road/ back on the rollers

After the ride monging out on the sofa/ cooking with ma nd pa in the kitchen ( at one point i thought i had burnt the house down when i might have put a little too much brandy in a sauce before flambéing it haha ( i just chucked a tea towel at it and danced around screaming – oh how we laughed.) and eating

Sleep then repeat

now the new year is here though the season is nearly upon us i think its time i pulled my finger out and get some training done…. enough moaning about the cold and illness….. no excuses now, time to crack on, especially with the Velo 29 winter series and the ‘prestigious’ 50 in 4 just around the corner. Its just i shame i wont be here to clean up the big bucks on offer on the 26th February (my b-day) as my season proper will be starting in France that day with the 1/2/3 cat Melrandaise…. a very good race if i remember correctly

after Christmas i have now started a hard block of training to take me through to the end of January when training will become more specific to racing and with he help of said Velo29.com winter series should get me into some sort of race fitness for the start of the season. I hope so any way.

so the next month is going to involve some long rides mostly riding on my own over a bleak and cold north york moors – sounds grim – and no doubt it will be, but personally for me there is something that i strangely enjoy about these rides. 5 or 6 hours riding along…. concentrating on keeping the heart rate in the correct one depending on what i am doing.

anyway – get your heads down, enjoyn riding and stick it to the weather, you’ll always warm back up and dry out ready to go again tomorrow

and sorry for the lack of photos

hmmmmmmm

Dont you just hate it when things start to go a bit wrong. it really is fairly annoying BUT we live to fight another day. so theres no point moaning about it.

Basically as far as my training is concerned there hasnt been a great deal of it for the first couple of weeks of december. with out boring you too much heres how it went

• I was out for a bit of a recovery ride when i pushed down on the pedal ‘as you do’ with my right leg and i got a sharp unbearable pain on the outside of my knee. fairly randomly.
• This resulted in me having to ride the half an hour home only pulling up with my right leg as it was so painful to put any force down on the pedals.
• the pain continued as a i walked up the stairs at home……… i realised i may have somkind of problem, got a bit pissed about it and proceeded to self diagnose myself via google – i had alsorts wrong with me a this point and my cycling days were over
• Decided to be sensible and have a couple of days off my bike.
  during these two days the mild, wet and windy place i like to call home turned into what looked like a somthing from scandnavia.
• Also during these two days i came down with the mother of all flus and then spent a week, sweating, freezing, sweating, aching, with a pounding head ache and a poor appetite.
• plenty of time for my knee to clear up though…..or so i thought, first day i felt a bit better on the rollers and 5 mins later agony again. ‘FFS!!’ i believe is the abbreviation of the phrase i screamed out at this point.
• Went to a shit physio who i know (and who didnt charge me) and he poked my knee and told me to rest for a couple of weeks. hmmm no thanks.
• Found a better local physio someone told me about who is a fairly desent cyclist himself and he reckons that my right IT band was tight. which when he was stretching it compared to my other leg it was fairly evident.
• So a bit of strapping on it, plenty of ice and lots of stretching , and a week of easy sessions on the rollers and i am away once again with no evdience of pain at the moment.

And after alot of looking at the possible causes it would appear that the cleat on my winter shoes was set a bit too far back compared to my race shoes and apparently this is a known cause… so back to it now.

and if anything good has come of this it is that it has happened at the end of november and not during the season (fingers crossed) and it has got me back into the routine of doing plenty of stretching which cant be a bad thing.

In other non self news i was reading a ridiculous article the other day about how to endure the festive period with out putting on too much weight. this Article may as well have said ‘ Have a shit Christmas, your a cyclist and therefore a stiff’ some of the advice it actually gave was… and feel free to take it if you want:

• have a healthy filling meal before going to a buffet asnd drink a big bottle of water to keep you full.
• Why on earth would i spend my own money on food that when someone else hasa put on a buffet (or challenge as i like to call it) to demolish. and if i had a meal before hand i personally couldnt just sit there whilst everybody else ate.
  
• Drink a pint of water between every alcoholic drink when you go out.
• Fair enough ,in theory is sound advice BUT who really wants to ask for a pint of water after every alcoholic beverage consumed plus…. i dont know about your mates but i dread to think what mine would do if i was knocking bike pints of H2O or H2O on the rocks all nite.
• opt for less cheese and more fruit when the cheese board comes out or have a little salad
• Im not even going to comment on this.

I like the advice on this website

http://www.adelaidecyclists.com/forum/topics/christmas-cycling-tips-for

ha but in all seriousness eat more , ride more

Oh, i have another job as well working the local shop, get plenty of easy hours with good times for training. i.e couple of hours early on a morning doing the papers then home for 8 out training and back to the shop at 3 -4 o’clock until 10ish so all good. im therenow infact as im typing this….. just dont tell the boss hahah

and i swear if one more person comes in and tells me how ‘cold it is out there’ NO SHIT’ get over it and say somthing a bit more interesting…… theres plenty of other things kicking off in the world of news

Bert Out

off season

The off season, winter what ever you want to call it.

Gone are the days of old that i have only read about when we hang our bikes up at the end of the season, hide all our kit in the back of the cupboard and pile on the pounds eating and drinking until January the 1st.

New training methods (cheers sports scientists), the fact that the Pro season starts in January now and even good amateur races kick off in late January/ early February means that although training at this time of year is much less specific it still we are still out there getting ‘in the miles’ through november/ december… even October.

Personally I reckon the UCI should bring in a rule that means that once the season is over, no one is aloud to train until January 2nd . Although I have no doubt some hitters would eat some bad meet that would cause them to hallucinate and accidently train with out knowing it and there fore break the UCI ruling………. something like that anyway

that rule is unlikely to come in to place though :

So my off season/ winter so far.. hears what i’ve learnt:

• I reminded myself how much a hangover wrecks your head and whitby porto pizza rots your guts for days.

• Running hurts – To beggin with anyway, during the first month or so of training, i did a fair bit of running down the beach and on the cliff. TO be fair i did actually enjoy it but i was in agony that first week, back, hips ankles, muscles i didnt even know existed. This resulted me doing most of my running on the beach with the dog. thanks to foolishness and lack of plannin i got caught out by the itde a few times and ended up wading knee/ hip deep through rock pools… good times.

• Swimming is boring – My mam pursuaded me to go swimming with her a few times, heres how that went – ‘I reluctantly passed £4.20 to the lady behind the counter (funnily she was wearing a black and white striped jump suit.) From here i went to the cold wet, changing rooms, slipped into my speedos (bought in France, Me and meadows have a matching pair each, youths size (cheap)), whilst doing this i was been watched by big hairy fat man, also sporting speedos, a quick shower COLD!!!!!! into the pool ‘SORRY SIR CAN YOU PLEASE GET OUT, OVER 40 LESBIANS ONLY SESSION UNTIL HALF PAST!!’ ‘but its 27 mins past and there is no lesbians, infact no one in the pool’ eventually i am aloud in, splash around, get no where fast, and im fairly cold and the arms are hurting. Found a float to use instead throwing my arms in random direction. 30 mins later, bored, cold and annoyed that i had parted with nearly £5, i had a quick wee inn the pool for old times sake and went for a shower, which was too cold to be pleasant but too warm to get out so i spent more time stood there than actually swimming. WASTE OF A morning!

• People spend more time posing and looking at themselves in the gyme than actually working out and i can squat far more than i can bench press.

• If you have a few light flu symptoms dont go for a 5 hour hike in -4 and knee deep snow. It makes it worse and causes a case of full blown, knocking on deaths door man flu.

• If I do get man flu i should move to my grans where i get sympathy as oppose to continue living it my mams school of hard knocks, march or die i dont care if your ill dig the snow out of the road, clear the snow off the conservatory roof and walk the dog for a few hours FFS. ( i did survive though after been very close to death).

I have also started drinking cans of whoops ass and having 2 teaspoons of MTFU with my weatabix on a morning. This has resulted in doing 5,6 and even 7 hours rides in wind, rain , hail – Why??? i know not. And for your interest my current long ride food tipple is panini bread with cheese and ham or salami. Fantastic, keeps me ticking over nicely.

Now the snow is here i have managed to borrow a cross bike which should help a bit, as well as the rollers there should be no problem . The dream would be sunnier climates but as it goes im not made of money and still have too work.

Gonna have to get my hands on more cans of whoop ass i reckon

oh and next season I am going to be riding for Lecuimie espoir Quimper in Brittany again and im heading out there on the 14th/15th Feb.

i leave you with this :

Dan up the road on a brief visit to France - holding onto a motorbike but showing that although form comes and goes class is permanent

WaaaaaaaassssssssUUUUUUPPPPPP!!!!!

Right, to start with….. I normally read theses things and people do nothing but apologise for late postings or not writing anything for say hmmm…. 8 months??!!! Well I don’t apologise, I’ve simply had better things to do with my life than write a load of shite about what im doing, whats been going on bla bla bla bla bla……….. Until now…. I have 5 mins to waste

oh and I went back in time to a place called Scaer for a few months where internet doesn’t yet exist (not even dial-up like what we have in Whitby ‘GET OFF THE PHONE MAM IM TRYING TO USE THE INTERNET’ ) . hohoho

Also lacking back in Scaer is plumbing ( we had a bucket under the kitchen sink), they are JUST getting the hang of electricity - we did have it BUT couldn’t have the kettle and cooker on at the same time and if we wanted a cup of tea after 11 o’clock we had to boil the water before 11PM and stash it in a flask otherwise all the electricity went off and we had to go hunting for the flick switch in the pitch black down stairs.

My first night in this appartement alone, said bye to the old parents as they went off too there 4* hotel. hmm ‘what should I do now???, I know I’ll have a cuppa!!!’ Bad idea, Pan of hot water, hob on, BANG Electric off…. WTF. Pitch black didn’t know what to do, scary old appatement, not even any street light. I poked around in a fuse box , clever??! then decided bals to it before finding my bed and getting some kip.

Anywho, racing in France – Fantasic, think I would struggle to find the motivation to race in the UK these days, even the smallest of races have closed roads, a bit of a crowd, a Frenchman shouting random shite down a microphone, one of the regulars who just shouts something that just sounds like he thinks he’s on the BUDWEISER advert WaaaaaaaassssssssUUUUUUPPPPPP!!!!! The crowd seem to love it.

Don’t want to bore you with a full season of race descriptions/reports etc… its great, its hard, its often windy and more often wet. if you get the opportunity do a race or two out there then grab it with both hands and if you here someone shouting QUINZE, DIX, CINQ!!!! Sprint like your life depends on it

that’s it for now

im sure your waiting in anticipation for my post……… it may be a long wait/it may not be

In France at last

A few things have happened since my last post. The most significant been that i am now in France and have a race under my belt, another been that its a good 10 degrees warmer than when i last posted so all is well.

We left home last sunday (21st Feb) a long drive to portsmouth, a ferry crossing to st.Malo and short(er) drive to Scaer later and we were at the doorstep of my new home for the next 6/7 months. one problem........... not a person in sight. I knocked on random doors, my phone was dead.... nothing.it was like the kid catcher scene from, chitty bang bang (u know the one i mean) SHIT!!!!! so we sat in the car and waited. a shutter went up 10 mins later and an old man, my new neighbour appeared. i threw every french word and name i new at him in random order and he was eventually on the phone. 2 cars appeared with in minutes, the coach, jean louis conan and the treasurer henri. the unpacking, meeting and greeting, tours of town, visit to the doctors and that night discussion of training then took place.

a week of training under the guidance of JLC and i still havent got lost it;

Fridaynight, some birthday cake and bubbly at la chope was nice for my 21 st then the next day it was time for my first race. Melrand. A pretty uneventful race for me, i finished in the bunch. good crowds though. much better place to start the season than the neil white ( i hear its cancelled).

so a very short summary there of a busy week and half and no pics yet. This weekend two races, tressigneaux and la manche atlqntique.

so an easy day today.

enjoy racing in the UK :) or not as the case may be

ciao