January's Whirlwind Tour

The rest of the week was a little less intensive; clocking up an average of five hours training a day. If you're already a little jealous about our trip to the sun you might not want to watch the video below!

After arriving home at 2am Sunday morning hours later I took to the start line of the final Brass Monkey winter enduro. At the race venue the cold temperature was a shock to the system, going for 25 degrees centigrade to 3 degrees wasn't huge fun! However after a second and a first I was targeting the overall series win. I immediately took the lead up the first climb from the start line leaving me with a clear path ahead whilst the hundreds of riders behind battled it out for position. Pretty quickly a small lead group started to form including Phil Gale, Gareth Montgomerie and myself. As the laps went by I felt surprisingly strong and managed to pull out a lead allowing me to take the team's first victory for the year.

After a little recovery this past week Sion, Josh, and myself joined the rest of the team for the year's first fitness testing at TORQ HQ.

First up was a lactate threshold test on the turbo trainer with blood samples taken every few minutes as the power output increased. (This pinpoints the output at which lactic acid begins to appear in the blood and muscles.) Shortly after was the dreaded threshold test, where a twenty-minute full out, no regrets hammer up the nearest hill was used to record our power output. The following day we embark on a five-hour group ride around Shropshire, taking in the technical trails around Eastridge as well as the long Mynd and Stipel stones. With Sunday providing a four hour ride around Eastridge centring on increasing handling skills - Check out the video footage of our weekend…

http://vimeo.com/19472919