On the Up?
David Smith | Saturday 20th August, 2005
David Smith |   |
Well, I'm currently 2 stages into the Surrey League 5 day, a strange time to be posting an entry I know but I have to give Mark Young his laptop back soon which he has very kindly lent me for the past couple of months! Cheers Mark!
The knee is now 100% better which is great news, thanks to the Highland Institute of Sport for sorting me out with some physio treatment, it did the trick! I've now been training for just over 2 weeks, I did a training camp with the rest of the DFL lads at the start of the month and we packed in few miles and had a good laugh so that was great. I started to feel like a bike rider again.
Yesterday we started the 5 day, it went great for the team with Yanto taking the stage and the yellow jersey in some of the worst weather conditions I've seen since I came down here in June. The rain was torrential and some of the road surfaces just turned into a mud bath so it was punctures and crashes galore! Yours truly was the victim of one of the first of the day, what I thought was a double puncture but was actually dog s**t on the tyres which made it seem as though I'd punctured. As we were going down a particulary lethal decsent I decided it wasn't worth the risk and got a double wheel change, the staff in the car had a pretty smelly drive round the course so sorry about that guys! Anyway I got back on just as a counter group was going on the hill prime, I had to come from the back of the bunch and close some big gaps. As a result I was the last man dropped from the group over the top and rode the rest of the stage in the main group finishing 16minutes down!
So this morning I was determined to do something and when Ben Greenwood attacked for the KOM I went with him along with one of the South Africans from PCA (who turned out to be particularly work-shy!). We quickly built up a lead of around 1min30 and were joined by Julian Winn, Shaun Snodden, Andrew Roche, Gary Dodd and another guy form Red Kite Cycles. The 8 of us worked well together, well 7 of us as the PCA guy didn't do a single turn for 60 miles! With a lap to go on the finishing curcuit Julian Winn turned the screw on a drag and that put an end to my day out front along with Andrew Roche and the red kite guy. We were quickly swallowed up by the DFL led bunch who were controling the race for Yanto. With half a lap to go Martin Ford put in a dig and got across to the remainder of the break and won the sprint making it 2 in a row for DFL! Its great for the team moral especially with the Tour of Britain a week away and hopefully Yanto can hold onto the jersey for the next 3 days!
As for me I'm still vying for one of the remaining 2 spots in the Scotland squad so with any luck today's performance will help my case and I'll slavage something from this less than successful year. Here's hoping!!
a bientot.
