UP / DOWN

Well 2012 has well and truly started - a new year, a fresh start and opportunities - 2011 wasn't a bad year though, in fact all in all it was a good year! Like every year though really it had it's ups and downs - here's mine!

GOING UP
The year started brilliantly really - training for the start of 2011 season in Calpe (Spain) was brilliant. The other riders and I from the Forme-Impsport-SanLamere Cycling Team spent a little under seven weeks there training in really good weather and on great roads, and all based near the sea-front. Personally I think we couldn't have had it better!

The above photo is one that we did for 'Sue Me' whilst in Calpe

This photo was taken on a coffee ride from a cafe near Denia

Not long after we got back from Spain we went away again for a UCI 1.2 (one day race) and a UCI 2.2 (stage race) in Croatia. We were there for ten days and raced against some good teams including Michael Rasmussen and his 'Christina Watches - Onfone' team. It was a brilliant first big race of the season and gave us all the chance to see where we were fitness wise. Even the food in the hotel was really good, though this actually presented me with a problem as I can eat a LOT - not ideal if you're away for ten days and supposed to be a lean cyclist!

COMING DOWN

After Croatia we returned to the UK and moved into the team house in the Peak District (this was a very high point as the team house was brilliant all year) and settled ready for a some British races - first up was the UCI 1.2 Rutland - Mellton CiCle Classic. The race started well for us as we stuck to our plan and were riding well as a unit near the front - our overall plan was to ride for Jack and so keep him at the front coming off of the second lap of Rutland Water. As the race left Oakham on the way to the 'sectors' I punctured and after a wheel change I rejoined the peloton as it was splitting up and so that was my chances of doing well over - I finished (puncturing a second time with 5km to the finish) in a group that was never in the action. Jack rode well though and made the front group but dropped his chain on one of the sectors about 15km from the finish and so then lost contact with his group. He finished in 32nd place - a position that would have been much better without the bad luck!

After 'Rutland' we moved on to the next Premier Calendar of 2011 - the 'Tour Doon Hame'. On the first day (three day race) I was under the weather and so really struggled in the conditions (very bad weather and extremely cold in the rain) and so my race was over before it started really - I just had nothing to give. On stages two and three I was much better but still not great.

From the Tour Doon Hame we went on to the 'Lincoln Grand Prix' - one of the best races of the year, a British classic and a must do race for many British riders. I punctured after only 22km on a day when I felt like I was floating and could really have done something in the race. I punctured as the race approaches 'Michaelgate' through the centre of Lincoln, this is exactly where you would least like to puncture and so my race was over there and then.

GOING UP AND COMING DOWN, LITERALLY, AT THE SAME TIME!

The 'An Post Ras' in Ireland - a UCI 2.2 stage race (eight days). Although it went quite wrong for me the race was also bizarrely one of the high points of the season as I really took to the race and the people there around it. On stage one all of the team were involved in a HUGE crash that saw the majority of the peloton involved in a big pile up - other than a broken bike we got away with it quite well. For such a big crash no-one to my knowledge had any major injuries which was surprising. My crash on stage four shaped the rest of my season though as I hit the deck and needed stitches in my knee and my elbow (minor fracture) plus treatment to my hand which was badly cut up. My injuries later led to me abandoning the race.

Ready for stage one of the 'An Post Ras'

The 'Ras' though is a brilliant race and is organised by some fantastic people. I made some great friends there in Joe and Sean that helped us from 'Forme-Impsport-SanLamere', and Brona O'Sullivan and her team were great hosts and put on a really good race. No matter what I really want to go back to the 'Ras' next season - I've unfinished business!

GOING UP
The crash at the Ras affected me for pretty much the rest of the season, though at the Tour of Bulgaria I started to feel back to normal again. To be honest we started well in Bulgaria with two in the top twenty on stage one (ninth and nineteenth) and the young riders white jersey, though we also lost Jack on stage one due to a bad crash. The race was personally was very enjoyable though and it was nice to feel ok on the bike again - it reminded me somewhat of when I started cycling and was doing it purely for the pleasure of it and without thoughts of achieving this and that as on each stage I was simply enjoying being in the race rather than racing putting pressure on myself to achieve x,y and z. My favourite day was day two when we did split stages (110km in the morning and 140km in the afternoon) as it was a day when I felt good and just really enjoyed the racing.

Bulgaria was the last race of the season and was a nice way to finish. The whole season based in the Peak District was brilliant - it's a really beautiful place and it's great for cycling. Throughout the year I had support from some great people and so personally I've come away with some new friends and plenty of good memories. During 2011 I went to Spain, Croatia, Belgium, France, Ireland and Bulgaria plus all over Great Britain and had a great time doing so as I love travelling - a big thanks for the year though has to go to my team-mates and also their families plus Adam at Forme Bikes and Lauren at Moore Large, Peter at Impsport, Frank and Harry at Advent Business Sales, Tim Mac at Sue Me and Raph at High5.

Throughout the year there were other low points when things didn't work out though there were loads more high points such as the races we won and the team house which was more or less a constant plus and a great base for us. I learnt a lot during the year and travelled to some nice places, I did some brilliant races and so it will always have been a good year for me. Now though is the time to look forward and use what I learnt last year - planning is well under way for 2012; I'm expecting it to be a brilliant year and I'm really looking forward to the racing kicking off in February.

2012 - Faster. Stronger. Better.

GIVE US FIVE

The VeloUK site ran by Larry Hickmott has recently been running a series of 'Give us Five' articles with riders talking about their winter training - below is my one that was featured on the site recently.

VeloUK: Have you started your winter training and if so, how long did you spend off of the bike post season and how many hours a week would you spend now training?

Rob: I've been back riding again for quite some time now really. May last race of the season was the Tour of Bulgaria that was on at the same time as the Tour of Britain (11-18 Sept.) - it was an eight day / nine stage race which was a good race to do at the end of the season. After Bulgaria I carried on riding a bit as for a while it looked like I may do another UCI stage race in October but it fell through which was a shame as after Bulgaria I had good legs. I therefore took about the last three weeks of October off of 'training' though I still did a couple of cafe rides each week and met Dave Clarke for the odd easy ride. At the moment I'm riding about 20 hours a week - I'm quite lucky that I have plenty of people to train with and that makes life easier!

VeloUK: What is a typical weekday ride for you (how long and what intensity) and what sort of rides do you do on a weekend (how long and what intensity)?

Rob: At the moment I'm doing fairly short blocks of training and so one week I may barely ride at a weekend and the the next weekend I may be doing eight or nine hours. In the past I've probably done too much steady riding and so at present I've got more specifics within my schedule. A standard training day at present is about 4 hours with some structure within it such as some over-geared work, time riding tempo or seated climbing on laps of a hilly 40 minute loop that I do near Bradgate Park (Leicestershire).

VeloUK: Do you ride Xmas day or New Years Day?

Rob: Most years in the past I've generally ridden on both of them and I expect to do the same this year. Christmas Day I normally try to get out for a few hours or so with a few of my mates. New Years Day this year I'll be doing about 3-4 hours as I don't have anything big planned for NYE - a day on which I normally try to do a long ride.

VeloUK: Do you intend to go on a training camp abroad and if so, what would be a typical training camp there in terms of time spent training and the type of training rides they would be?

Rob: All being well I'll be going away for a while in both January and February although I don't have anything arranged yet. This year I spent all of January and February based in Calpe in Spain and I did plan to go back there for this winter but that's not happening now. If I go away for only about a week I'll do in the region of 30 hours a week whilst using the terrain to put in some longer efforts within rides of about 5 hours, whereas in the past when I've spent most of the winter abroad I've just trained a similar amount to what I would at home, the main difference being the temperature!

VeloUK: Finally, what will be your first races for 2012?

Rob: At present I'm not sure where I'll be starting the 2012 season as the team I was going to be racing for in 2012 isn't going ahead now and so a lot has changed in the last week or so, therefore at the moment I don't yet know who I'll even be racing for! Hopefully soon I'll know more though if I'm going to be in the UK at the time I'll probably start at the Perfs Pedal Race in February as I'd like to do a similar race program to last year and so do a UCI stage race in March.

PEN TO PAPER / FINGER TO BUTTON

The fact that you read my blog may be bad enough, but I've recently been asked to start writing regular articles for the Daily Cycle website, and so I'm now also asking you to direct yourself there from time to time. I'll no doubt post links from here to the site anyway, such as this one which is a link to my first article, though it can also be read below!

Andy from the Daily Cycle website asked me to write something about winter training. Now obviously being a cyclist and one that rides my bike a lot - even / especially in the winter - I know quite a bit about training. I'm not a qualified cycling coach however, though I could point you in the direction of several different people that I would recommend. Anyway, here's the article.

Best and Worst
Winter training can be one of the best and worst times for riding your bike. It's often cold and can also be wet, but it's also a time when many cyclists ride more sociably as the next race season is some time away and so people often simply ride their bike without worrying too much about doing more than enough to stay fit. The winter can therefore be an enjoyable period of the year for riding your bike, however it is a time pivotal in the progression of a cyclist; a time when riders can lay the foundations for the coming year. What many people I believe fail to consider is whether they have reached their current level because of the training they have done or in spite of it! In order to progress a rider needs to be open to change - to look at the training they have done and be prepared to approach things differently, rather than simply using the same methods of years passed expecting greater results.

Structure
A structured approach with structured goals over the winter months will help with progression and motivation throughout the winter and set you on the way to achieving your objectives come the summer months. The key is to be realistic - you may read about the top pro riders doing 20 hour plus training weeks on a regular basis, but for the very large majority of cyclists a weekly volume of anything remotely close to that amount is not attainable. A qualified cycling coach will discuss your goals with you and plan out your training whilst considering the daily factors of your life such as family and work commitments. However if you do not have a coach and are intent on working to your own plan then be sure to consider these factors. A balance is required: it's important that you don't ride continuously too easy or too hard - riding too easy will see you fail to progress, and continuously too hard can run you down and suppress your immune system. This is probably one of the biggest reasons to have a coach - the advice and direction of a qualified professional can be priceless.

Enjoy
The biggest factor though really is the most basic one - to enjoy yourself. The reason I assume all of us started cycling in the first place was due to an enjoyment of cycling. Make sure that you are enjoying your cycling, as ultimately if it stops being fun, then what's the point?

The challenge now is to think of / find regular material that will provide interesting reading for some articles :-) I'm just hoping that my articles are more popular than my old DJ sets from before I took up cycling, as it will mean that at least two people like them (I'm joking here, kind of)!

Regarding 2012 season, well it's almost 2012 the year! An update coming up on that shortly. Seeing at the majority of this post is regarding winter training I'll talk about it some more. Mine is going ok - I did several decent weeks of what I would call informal training when I was going out and getting the hours done but without worrying too much about specifics. At the end of November (as I was due to step it up a bit and include a lot more structure) I caught a really nasty cold / virus that was going around and so that messed things up for a couple of weeks, but since that's passed I've been doing ok. There's various things which I'm working on but I feel good and so I'm happy for now.

Only one week now until Christmas, then NYE will quickly be here and before you know it we'll be into January. The traditional British season opener the 'Perfs Pedal Race' is on Sunday 12th February this year, which seems quite close but at just under eight weeks away is really not that close at all!

Cheers for now. Have a happy Christmas.

Rob.

THE TOM CAMPBELL POST

An explanation: In a moment of substantial humour (I'm being ironic) my friend Tom tweeted back at me recently when I posted / tweeted the web address for my blog by saying how much he enjoyed my blog post. In reply I said that as he loved it so much that I would dedicate my next blog post to him - so here it is. You can follow Tom Campbell on twitter - he's actually very funny (I think so anyway) though please ignore anything he says about me as it's (probably) not true!

On to cycling. As I write this I'm not feeling too good as I've picked up a nasty cold so I'm just chilling at home and catching up on things - selling some old bits on eBay, updating my blog and tweeting like I'm getting paid for it! Training has been good (until now, obviously) and so I can't really complain there. I've been training quite informally to some extent - doing plenty of decent kilometres with some specifics, though the structure of my training will change slightly from December onwards. Last year I spent January and February in Spain - I'm still toying with the idea of going away again although I may opt to stay in the UK next year and simply go away for a couple of week long training camps. Much will be dependant upon factors regarding the team next season, and when and where we will start racing.

I was out training recently and met Andy from Daily Cycle who was out road testing a new bike for an article. Andy has asked me to write a short article about winter training for the website, so keep checking back on there for when it's posted up. I'll no doubt provide a link at some point anyway too.

Preparation for next season continues, though below is a picture of the 2012 'Forme Thorpe Elite' race bike. My 2011 race bike will be going back to Forme soon and so I'll be on a Forme Plateau training bike for a while. I'm actually quite looking forward to being on a different bike again for a while, though naturally I'm looking forward to season 2012 even more.


Forme Bikes will soon be selling the team bikes from this season, so if you're interested in a 2011 Forme Zenith (Dura Ace wheels and groupset) then search and contact the team on Facebook under 'Forme Impsport SanLamere Cycling Team' or use the 'Contact Us' option on the Forme Bikes website. All bikes have been professionally maintained throughout the season - asking £1800 or near offer.

If I'm honest I'd say that this blog post has said quite a lot without actually saying anything, which is quite appropriate as it is a bit like my mate Tom on twitter. Follow him anyway!

Cheers.

Pine Barrens

Right then. Two things to mention. One is that the title of the post has nothing to do with anything other than it is my favourite episode of 'The Sopranos', and as I had that on my mind this morning, well, there's your title! Secondly, why so long without an update? To be honest it's due to a few reasons. Training in Calpe (Spain) at the start of 2011 for 6-7 weeks was great, but with only the wi-fi at bars and cafes to use, updating wasn't easy, especially with so many other things to do on the internet (legitimate things I may add, such as correspondence with sponsors ahead of the season). This all made it hard to update regularly. This pattern then continued with going back to the UK, starting to race, jetting off to Croatia for a UCI one day race and then a stage race, then coming back to the UK again and moving straight into the team house for the season. Once in the house, besides needing time for training, the majority of all team organisational issues were dealt with by me, again taking time. Not that I'm moaning, I like all these things, it's just that the blog was the one to bear the brunt of it, and once I'd left it a while, well, it became easier to then keep ignoring it!

With the above set straight, I'll sum up the season the best that I can.

Spain was great. I went there heavier than I wanted but came back at more or less race weight, but I feel in hindsight that I should have trained slightly differently, as the terrain there makes you strong but good at slogging away, and not necessarily 'fast'. I know what I need to do though and will change a few things in 2012.

The season started, and the first few months I was just finding my feet after not really racing properly for some time. The UCI 2.2 Istrian Tour in Croatia was good, with riders such as Michael Rasmussen in attendance, and it helped me start to adjust. The Tour Doon Hame Premier Calendar wasn't good for me though. Feeling great the day before the race, during the first stage I was simply terrible and so simply tried to help the lads on stages two and three. Jack made the front group on the last two days, coming home in the top fifteen, so it wasn't too bad. Other notable races were UCI 1.2 Rutland-Melton, where a puncture at literally the worst time possible meant I had to ride round just to finish once rejoining a group after a wheel change. At the Lincoln Grand Prix I felt brilliant, though a puncture at 22km in and the convoy avoiding the town centre due to the cobbled climb meant the end of my race; the bunch rode off with me stood at the side of the road!

The next big race was the 'An Post Ras' in Ireland, a UCI 2.2 eight day stage race. To sum it all up in one word - CRASH! Stage one, all of the team were at the front in readiness for a sprint finish. The biggest en masse crash I've ever seen saw nearly the whole bunch go down, Jack snapped his frame, and we all lost time! Stage two saw some big splits in the bunch - I rode too defensively and ended the day in the main group some time down. Stage three I worked to position Fox as we hit the finishing circuit climb, but with the break staying away it made little difference. Stage four however shaped my season. Having got barged off of the road into a ditch as the bunch squeezed to one side of the road at about 35km into the stage, I got up, dusted myself down and was rejoining the race through the convoy when we hit a particularly bad stretch of road. As the team car was next to me I hit a HUGE pott-hole which jolted me to the side. I hit the car, slid down the side of it and then rolled numerous times along the road, having been going about 60kmp/h just before. I was attended to by the race medic, who thought that was it and that I should get in the ambulance. After some time I managed to get myself together a little, took a load of painkillers and rode 110km by myself to finish the stage. I then got in an ambulance and was taken to hospital. I received six stitches in my elbow (which had a huge hole in it) and three stitches in my knee. My right hand was mangled with very little skin left on the upper part of my fingers, though luckily it wasn't broken, though I had fractured my elbow. I was treated for quite a while before being able to leave. I rode the next stage (160km) again by myself just trying to beat the time limit (which I did), all with a hand that looked like one of the big PMU hands from the Tour. The lads on the team started to refer to my hand as 'the claw' such was it's size! I started stage six but abandoned after 15km as I was simply nailed.

The long term effects of the crash were that I then got run down and ill from pushing myself, and so had no form at all until mid July, whereas the other lads that did the Ras were flying from mid June once they had recovered from the race!

With the lads getting some decent results and holding quite good form I then simply rode for them whenever possible for the rest of the season. Which although I was happy to do it was also to my detriment a lot of the time, as I didn't really get any results of note myself. I won two races in 2011 but neither of them were anything to shout about, just small races.

We finished the season though with the Tour of Bulgaria, which was a cool race. An eight day / nine stage UCI 2.2 stage race, with temperatures in the 30's every day and a max of 38 degrees, it was a good way to finish the season. The second day was a split day with a morning stage and an afternoon stage giving a total of 250km racing that day, which to be honest I think I enjoyed the most. The overall effects of the race has left me very motivated for next season but also with good legs, but no races to use them in. My season would really have been very different if I hadn't crashed in Ireland, but c'est la vie!

2012 will see me being part of a bigger set-up than 2011, and with a large role to play in the structure and organisation of the team. With a worldwide cycling icon as the Team Ambassador and riders experienced at the very top level of the sport, 2012 looks like being a good year. For now though there's lots to do, and some kilometres to ride as well. It's the first of November today and the sun has just come out, so I'm off out to ride. Catch you later.