Life In The Saddle

Today was a rest day - an unusual occurrence now that I'm at home and have the trails and roads of the Isle of Wight on my doorstep, but having had over a week of sunshine, and cycling in shorts and jersey, the weather seems to have caught up with itself. So today's rain and tired legs have confined my to just one small gym session. I don't mind though because the last week of riding has been fantastic - I built the new On One Whippet up about ten days ago and it is one rapid bike. Super-stiff and seriously light for a mountain bike, it flies up the hills and is surprisingly forgiving on the downs. Hardly any issues with it at all, in fact the only real one is that during yesterdays ride I went through a large amount of sheep Sh*t on a downhill from Shorwell Down and then proceed unknowingly to massage a pile of it into my beautiful new white SLR saddle for the rest of the ride, staining it rather yellow on one side - I guess sh*t happens! (actually most of it came off with

In September 2009 I cycled with a friend from Le Havre to Paris and back; two days down there, two days back. It was a fantastic trip - carrying all our kit on our old steel road bikes and loving the French back roads, cheap camp-sites and rolling onto the cobbled streets of the Champs Elysée in Paris after a few days of very rewarding cycling. Perhaps some time in the future I will get round to writing up a blog post about the trip, if I can dig out the photo album and rack the memory. But for know I thought I would write about a planned trip that I would really like to do sometime in the future, potentially this September, depending on how finances and time go. So here it is: "Le Tour des Montagnes": 1480 Miles, 18Days and some of the best climbs and roads in France. The Route: Le Havre, France Orleans, France Lyon, France Grenoble, France Col du Galibier, Valloire, France Col de la Bonette, Jausiers, France Marseille, France Montpellier, France Saint Girons, France Lourdes

It might be a 3hour drive from Warwick down to the National Velodrome in Newport, South Wales...but boy is it worth it! The facility is almost brand new - built just a few years ago and inside it is an impressive sight, even more so when you walk in to the spectators area to see the Olympic Youth Squad training on the track - very impressive lads and girls, all pushing some serious speeds up to 40mph as they practised their 500m times on the 250meter track. After getting suited up in skinsuits and collecting our bikes we headed into the centre of the track - a little daunting to say the least - the angle of the banking is pretty damn steep! The coach got us riding round the flat area on the edge of the track to get used to the fixed speed bikes. Then gradually we moved up the banking - first on the "Cote d'azur": the blue edge of the boards that isn't too steeply sloped, then moving up and gaining speed onto the higher levels of the track. Before long we were picking