Unlike some of my more illustrious contemporaries and competitors I'm as hard as nails, therefore, rather than being a sissy like the bunch of pansises at Team Sky, Lotto-Belisol and many others I decided that I needed to go on a training camp in the Brecon Beacons instead, using my friend's family home as a base, situated just outside of Bridgend. My mate by the way is called Graham Howell who is a decent cyclist who hopes to have a similarly succesful year in 2013 to the one I've just had in 2012. So on Saturday night I boarded the train to my destination, unfortunately this was quite late in the evening and I did not actual jump into bed till about 1am. After such a long day and late night me and Graham had a bit of lie-in and went out for an easy cycle on the Sunday all round the lanes of South Wales, quite a knobbly route with some decent climbs on, probably did a few equivalent to Toys Hill, no mountains unfortunately, covering 72miles in about 4 and half hours.
On the Monday me and Graham went on an epic ride through the Breacon Beacons including the Bwlch and Rhigos mountains, as well as the mini-Bwlch and Banwen/Glyn-neath clmbs that are pretty major in and of themselves. We then descended into Swansea, not before stopping for Graham to repair a puncture that he got from unfortunately keeping right behind my wheel as I was drafting a Ford KA that decided not to point out a massive pothole in the middle of the road. I was pretty lucky not to puncture myself and we were both fortunate that something much worse didn't occur. Once we reached Swansea we headed round to Verdi's where we met up with Graham's dad Tony, after refuelling on milkshake, coffee and cake we headed straight back home. To be honest my body was half-guiding me back to any one of the places I occupied during my time in Swansea, I didn't really till I cycled through it, how much I missed the place and wished in many ways that I was still there at university.
Tuesday was a really tough and intense ride, where me and Graham rode 3 laps of the Betty Pharoah course with an aim to average the whole ride at 20mph, we managed riding 105km at 20.5mph. The circuit is a cracking fast course going through some lovely lanes and up some pretty short sharp climbs. What was mpst pleasing is how fast we averaged considering that included the warm-up. Suitably knackered after some pretty tough riding we did what we had done and continued to do over my time in Wales, sit and eat, watching rubbish on T.V.
Graham was feeling very much worse for wear and decided to seat my session out where I went for an easy 2 and half hour spin meeting up with Tony and Graham for a coffee in Porthcawl, a town that I had never before been to and it was or seemed at least, to be, a lot more pleasent that has been made out to me to be. This was on the Wednesday.
Finally on Thursday I did a series of intense circuits on a series of road that run outside the Llandow circuit, where crits are held reguarly throughout the year. Again Graham was feeling like a man that had been trampled by a herd of ramapaging buffalo so instead he decided to wait for me and Tony at Forza Bike shop as I did the efforts and Tony escorted me. After the efforts we dropped into Forza, a lovely bike shop that sells some proper top notch gear, where you can grab a free and proper Italian espresso. I declined, but I got chatting to a man called Dave who had cycled for a number of years in Brittany when he was younger, telling me about all of his experiences and offering me plenty of advice. After that we headed to the beach cafe at Llanwit Major, not before Graham fell off his bike for no apparent reason. Thanks to some more coffee and in Graham's case a massive lump of pie we headed home, where Graham absolutely smashed it dropping his dad within a few miles... what a lovely son.
Clearly me and Graham had the gods on our side as it was unseasonable warm all week and every time we cycled it didn't rain, or on us in any case, really, a massive blessing. It was a fantastic week's worth of cycling, where I probably clocked around 570km over the past couple of days, I can not thank Shirley (Graham's mum), Tony and Steph (Graham's sister) enough for their outstanding hospitality and generosity over the past few days, definately need to write a review of my time at theirs on TripAdvisor. I should also prehaps thank Graham for doing this all with me and helping get some cracking training in, by extension I should probably thank his girlfriend Rae for letting Graham off the leash and allowing him to come out and play.
I am going to wrap things up now by saying that tomorrow and Sunday our my first races of the season, hopefully there ain't too much ice and snow around for these, a bit different to the guys racing Down Under, but there you go. Hairs on the chest and all that... Anyway I wish everyone else the best of luck with their seasons and happy racing.
Also, before I go, my girlfriend, Verity Ockenden, has decided to start her own blog about her many culinary ventures whilst she is out in Italy, not a bad idea to share her experiences of such an amazing place by describing and showing their many impressive dishes. Here's the link to the blog
http://lavitaockenden.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2014-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=2
Enjoy!!!
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