The second training camp

With the onset of me feeling more and more like a professional athlete, except for having a full-time job still for the moment, what with France and me being one coming up so very shortly, there are a few other reasons for this too. One being that yesterday I took part in the second Aprire Bicycles training ride, where we also had a team photo and had a session with Ben Wright, our coach for this season.

It was a great experience riding with everyone on the team next year with some fantastic additions including William Pratt, Nick Wilkinson and Harry Evans, with everyone in the same kit riding in some good, but windy weather through Kent's heart. It promotes such a good feeling of belonging and the pleasure of seeing all this was written all over the team owner and manager's face, Phil Dempsey, who has watched this team really grow since it's rather, quite humble beginnings only a couple of years ago. Once we got back from our 65km, 2hr ride, we hit the showers which our Italian rider (every cycling team, no matter how small, has got to have an Italian onboard otherwise it's just not a proper cycling team) Fabio seemed particularly keen on. Afterwards Ben went through a lot of the exercises he has given us all in the certain sessions we will all have as part of our respective training programmes, with the sound theories and ideas behind all of them.

Then to wrap things up Phil bought up the direction the team should undertake next year, the aims and aimbitions of/for each rider and the team's. Unfortunately for you lot I will not be shedding any light on this, but it will be pretty obvious from what's going to happen this season, all I can let on this that hopefully we will be punching well above our weight in terms of quality and certainly numbers when it comes to some of these bigger races. Just can't wait.

Also, for those of you who are interested, Aprire Bicycles should be having a stall at some of the bigger cycling events on the calendar like the London Nocturne where you can not only watch some great racing and see the team do well, but also where you can get to try out some gorgeous, custom, carbon-fibre bikes. Now, what's not to like about that?

Another interesting piece of information I recieved was from my girlfriend who was chatting to this young man at her athletic team's end of year club dinner in Italy, with this conversation sparking her into sending me this link to a piece GQ did on the famous L'Eroica sportive. It sounds amazing and looks spectactular and I can not wait to do this one day, having said that I have done some of it already, albeit on mountain bikes. Here's the link to the GQ piece http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2012-10/15/erorica-rules-and-report

Right I'm off now and I should be updating this blog again sometime soon, probably as soon as I recover from getting tested, which should be Saturday, so until next time...