July update

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was sitting on a cliff in Norfolk, writing last month’s blog, a couple of days before the National Championships road race. However a lot has happened since then and Nationals seems the best place to start. After around 70km of racing, I managed to get in a large breakaway group including Ian Stannard and Ben Swift from Team Ineos. I remember thinking that it was too good to be true, so to enjoy it as much as possible, despite the effort. This was my first race against WorldTour riders, so to be rolling through with childhood heroes felt pretty cool. We had a gap of around one minute when Stannard attacked solo, going for glory, so Swift stopped working and the group lost momentum. I found it slightly odd that Swift and Stannard were ‘team mates’ at this point in the race, yet fierce competitors in the final. When we were eventually caught,  I didn’t have many matches left, so I rode to the finish in the peloton, content with my bid for glory, but frustrated that I hadn’t cashed in.

After Nationals my focus turned purely to the Giro Valle d’Aosta - a six day stage race in the Alps, dubbed the hardest under 23 race of them all. This involved continuous training blocks, doing efforts day after day, but upon reflection , no amount of training at home could compare to the brutality of the race. This was my first experience of a stage race at this level and all I can say is it was the toughest race I’ve ever done. I think this is because in a one day race, if you feel terrible, you can cut your losses and accept you can’t get a result, whereas in a stage race, if you feel awful on one day, you have to live to fight another day, whether it’s to try and get a result yourself, or to help a team mate. There were several points along the way where I didn’t think I would finish, but after a small resurgence on the final day, I managed to get in a breakaway in the middle of the stage and hauled myself up the 30km final climb to finish 19th in the young riders classification
and my team mate Calum also cracked a top 20 overall on GC.

In August, I’ve got another busy month of racing with the team and hopefully the form to really push for results. Thanks again to everyone who supports me and I’ll try to post race updates on Facebook/Instagram/Strava. I guess that’s it until next time,

Ciao