Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving. ~Albert Einstein

just arrived home to sunny boomtown (blenheim) with my new improved battletruck- the motor that got put in is outstanding, got so much more horsepower than the old one its unbelievable. apparently the motor that was in there is that wrecked they cant even pull any parts off it as spares, its all going straight to the scrap heap. excellent.
rode gorges wed morning with roly at a fairly good clip, then hit out at the track on wed night, safe to say my legs were roasted, still managed to pull off a couple of sneaky wins which always helps cover the entry fee.
im up home now till tour of nelson which starts on the 2nd of jan, looks like a top field this year with alot of people which is good for me, will allow me to race the stages how i want to race, if i need an easy day i should be able to tick along in the bunch nicely or have a hit out everynow and then. the plan is to go training every morning before the stages and do some power efforts on the fixy, as straight after the tour we fly down to invercargil for track camp, and i really need to hit the ground running there before LA, and not have to spend a couple of days trying to find my track legs which normally happens after a tour.

so all in all, everything is going really well, i still havnt really found any place in the south island yet that takes bartercard (prize from a crit-which was meant to be cash) i think maybe KB’s bakery takes them, im not too sure, the bartercard website doesnt even really tell you that much about where to go, so for the moment it will just sit in the battle truck, might hopefully be a few KB’s over in nelson where i could bust it out, nothing like a raspberry bun after a hard stage to bring you right.

over in nelson ill be staying at the wonderful hotel tye (dales ma&pas) which will be awesome!!! ive heard a rumour cath and dayle cheatley will be there as well so should be a good laugh for the tour, then its straight down to the good old southern institute of sport in invers to review my pursuit position with head aero guru jerry stock!! cant ask for much more than that really.

merry xmas everybody

well things have just been ticking along nicely down here, weather has been warm, and nice to get out in.
had a pretty good wee session at the track last night, topped off with a 20km madison, rode round all night again on an 87 inch gear, just to hurt that bit more, and safe to say i couldnt really do too much when hash got out of his seat and decided to sprint haha, stupid small gear.
got our last night track racing on wednesday, then im heading up home which i cant wait for!!
thats if my truck gets out of the garage, the radiator was shagged as i thought and had to be re-cored, which adds another lovely 470 bucks to the bill!!! bloody hell this thing better do over 800kph when it gets out of the shop or im going to be seriously pissed!
next up after that is the tour de vinyards in nelson just after new years, im actually pretty excited about that, havnt done it for the last couple of years and then fly straight down to invercargil for the training camp before the la world cup.
should be a pretty busy wee world cup, with the ip, tp and hopefully a good shot at the madison i reckon so may be a touch tired coming out of that lot!
looking forward to it though, if i could find my cervelo track bike that is, its currently lost somewhere in the world, got posted over for roly to try out in aussie, and sorta never got to him or got back to me? maybe some of the airport boys got hold of it and have been having time trials against the jets up and down the runway or something

well i tried, and it just didnt happen on the day-so no complaints really. it was just one of those courses i really never got comfy on, and then it got a touch wet, and for the life of me i couldnt corner to save myself and that was really that!! a bit dissapointing, but at the end of the day i was wasted at the finish which was the plan i guess. good wee work out on a rainy day.
had a great time staying up in auckland and had a good look round, went to a nice wee bbq and caught up with some mates i havnt seen for a wee while so all good!!
just got back from a 180km ride in the wet, was meant to have track tonight but obviously with the wet it got binned, which may not be a bad thing after todays wee ride around canterbury, got slammed by a car though near the end which wasnt really fun, some idiot driving beside me just decided he wanted to head into the carpark coming up, i was looking ahead to the left as there was a car about to come out of the carpark and i wasnt sure if he’d seen me or not, then BOOF big shoulder charge off the side of the car as it turned in on me, i managed to get my hand out to lean on the side of the car, with my left hand grabbing the brake i managed to slow up enough to turn into the carpark with him, and then just let rip. all the guy could do was stare at me with his mouth open, i think he probably got more of a fright than me but she couldve been a bit more messy if my wheels had gone out from underneath me, but lived to fight on another day

im currently sitting in at Performo and its 5.50am in the morning. im wasnt completely sure this hour of the morning still existed as i havnt been up this early for quite a while, so i thought they may have cancelled it, but they havnt.
im in helping gareth out since hes away and people still want to get their altitude training in before they head off to work, so here i am. i havnt had a coffee yet or anything to eat. it was one of those auto pilot mornings where i just got out of bed pulled the clothes on and got in the truck-which must have driven itself here as i cant remember doing it, and here i am.

across from performo is the pro fitness gym, which actually had people queing outside it at ten to 6!!! i dont think ive ever been to the gym that early ever!!! the people look rather awake as well, we have a massive glass walls in here so can see straight into the gym, and people are already pounding out the kms on the treadmills, which is something ive never understood at all. if you want to go for a run-why would you pay somebody to go run on their treadmill when chch is rather blessed with places to run?? anyways onto the weekend.
we had the armstrong prestige races this weekend, something ive never done before-last year i missed it as i had chappys wedding on(which still ranks up there for the top wedding ive been too)

saturdays race was round the long bays, a pretty standard training ride normally round here. there were apparently 1500 people on the start line which is awesome. it was pretty hairy though, lots of people ive never seen before battling like crazy to get in behind the car in the neutral section!
we headed out of town and round the flat for the first 40km and try as hard as i might i couldnt get away. i was actually feeling bloody good which was a big change from the rest of the week, where i had to take a trip to the doctors at QE2 to make sure i didnt have anything going on, as i had caught a major case of creepitis.
we hit the bottom of gebbies pass and that was that, probably the fastest ive climbed it for a while bit with 1000 on the line and 250 for first to the top of the hill i was never going to make it, so settled into a good group and rolled along to the finish, a happy wee camper as my legs were back to where i thought they should be.

that night me, heath, logan and sharon rolled down to mighty timaru, (home of legendary stuntman dick johansonson)
for cory williams 30th party. and well, i got a wee bit untidy, and felt alot worse for wear the next morning when i woke up at collys place, for the mandatory instant coffee and tried to patch myself up with a bit of food but no avail.

we got back into town about an hour before the crit started, got changed at the flat, had another coffee, and rolled into town.
all in all i had about 5min of warm up, which consisted of riding round at 25kph trying to remove what felt like an axe in the back of my head.
there were 50 guys on the start line in the elite-a few more than apparently whats on the line next week at crit nats, but hey ho. the race start really aggresively with people firing off attacks everywhich way. i was just trying to stay up the front and out of trouble and not spew, and soon enough the field whittled down to about 20 guys or so.
with about 20min to go a group of 5 of us got away, including jeremy yates, cleatus, oddy, and jo chapman.

in the last 10min it was announced we were sprinting for a crowd prime, and looking by the size of the crowd it was going to be big. i hit into the last hairpin in second place about to give it big booftas, and bang, down went cleatus. he was the first one into the corner and down he went, with me and jo chappy straight over him. left yates a pretty easy run to get the prime (which was massive-i saw the bucket of cash at the finish)
we rolled into the pits and got our bikes all fluffed up and back out into it. when we got back josh england from subway had bridged over which made it interesting, they tried one-two’ing it a bit but it stayed together until jeremy put a massive attack in with about 3 laps to go, i bridged over to him and didnt really want to roll it too hard as i was pretty gassed from getting there and it all came back together with one to go. heading into the last hairpin jeremy was leading, i managed to get in between him and josh and hit the hairpin and me and josh took off, it was a long sprint so i rode most of the sprint seated as it was quite twisty and tight to the line, hit the straight and pulled up beside josh and rolled him which was nice, first win for a wee while so cant complain!

went out for a nice feed with the fullas after it, the subway boys were having a party but with a late night the night before and an early start this morning i just headed home after dinner and watched some family guy and relaxed, definately feeling it was the right option this morning when i woke up and my breath didnt catch fire when i walked past naked flame haha