The Prova de Abertura

Portuguese cycling has changed, quite suddenly and from one season to the next. Before it was fully professional, with many hilly stage races of a very high standard. Now there are three. A 2.2, 2.1, 2.1. Is this bad? Many believe that portuguese cycling had grow beyond it means and regard this change as an evolution and that it will give rise to a big pro team, rather like Team Sky, i.e. nationaly representative.

A extremelly possitive development is the fact that dope control has become very rigorous.

The race was strange, no radios meant few people took initiative and many times the speed came right down to 20kph, to shoot up to 60kph, there was no particularly impressive riding, unless you count the last 30k. Which my team took at incredible speed. The last 8k covered at over 60kph. My team mate Samuel Caldeira came thrid in the sprint and said the team had done a perfect job.

I had the rather tiresome and boring task of riding on the front for ages, infact we controled most of the race with only 2-3 riders. Better than hanging on in the bunch, but not nearly as much fun as if we had blown the race appart. Oh well!

Now I will go to the Volta ao Algarve and be out of touch. However I will post next Monday my views on the race and how it went. The course profile can be found here:

http://jornalciclismo.com/guia-da-36%c2%aa-volta-ao-algarve

It's a very tricky, hilly race, with horrible weather predicted.

Season kicks of this weekend

It's the prova de Abertura, the season opening race in Portugal. This used to be two races, an U-23 and a professional race. But this year, because of lack of funds it's one race. I came second in this race in 2006, and won the metas volantes last year, so I tend to go well there.

This year I don't know. I presume my team will want to bring it down to a sprint. Which is fair enough, I think we have the legs for a result here. That said I wouldn't discount completly a break arriving. We are racing with under-23's, there will be no radios... so it is quite likely. Infact attacking the race to force the others to chase might be more economical than burning up 7 in a chase for the line.

I'm a bit sick, usual plight of head colds and another virus thing. I should be better by the weekend. I've been stressed recently, moved house, living with my girlfriend. And with all the credit crunching going on, this wasn't as smooth as I had hoped. Although all is well now. It's amazing how hard it is to train, rest, feed, tidy and clean... I'll get on top of this though.

This year I am going to start to think about my post racing career. I want to have something there, to take the stress. I do of course want to take this to another level. I know I've got the fundamentals of an excelent cyclist. But that's just it. It's my tough luck should nothing more come of it. Suck it up and move on. I have enjoyed every moment of it.

I wish I was flying, I've got the "Volta ao Algarve" next week. This was the first race I ever watched. In 2004, while my mum was dying of cancer, I went to watch the Volta and gain inspiration from a certain Lance Armstrong. Inspiration was found. Six years latter there I am racing it myself. I have an autograph of Lance's from that race.

I started read "Minho and North Portugal", a book by my grandfather, Patrick Swift and David Wright. My girlfriend is from the Minho, which kind of brought me to picking the book up. I wonder if my grand father ever thought that 50 years into the future his grand son would be racing round those same montes? Amazing really. I won my one and only race in amateur on a cobble stone climb in the Minho!

New Season

I haven't posted anything on this blog for a long time. But I now have the time and the facility to post more often. This has been the hardest off-season of my short cycling career. Hard but also rewarding.

I finished the season last year with some very exciting performances and really prooved to myself that I had a right to be in the peleton. I came 21st in the Tour of Bulgaria, 3rd on the 3rd stage, despite a crash on day one which forced me to do the last 80km including a huge climb before the climb and long technical descent through fog on a bike for someone 4cm shorter than I. 4cm in the leg that is. I also worked km after km for others in the team. So really, the results are kind of irrelevant, relative to my performance.

Starting the off-season full of confidence was fantastic. I jumped on a plane to England with zero stress, despite having zero guaruntees for the following season. This continued through out an October of insant partying and fun having. Cycling was far from my mind. I did a few runs for fun and was pleasantly suprised to see I could still run well, despite a couple of years of not running. I even finished 2nd in a charity mini marathon. Thankfully the guy who beat me was a fitness instructor, so I didn't feel too bad.

In November I did begin to wonder about my fate and was a bit annoyed nothing was said by anyone from anywhere. I decided the best thing would be to hold fast. But this niggle of stress is very destructive and like it or not, it will wear down even the the most mentally steadfast. I started to get depressed, after a three month high of happyness and achievement. Despite this, after a few rides, I entered my second moutain bike marathon with my "dog", dog being slang for a bad bike. I came 3rd. I felt bad about this. I have for years battled against a reputation as a poor bike handler. I think people forget I started riding at Loughborough at 20. I turned pro at 23. People should worry more about themselves than worry about me.

Finally, sometime right before Christmas I signed with my current team Palmeiras Resort/Tavira. Which made me happy. For all it's flaws, this is the team that has made me a cyclist.

We had a training camp in Serra da Estrela. Here team spirit bubbled to the surface and we had a very good time cycling and walking in the mountains. The weather was fantastic. We saw a little bit of snow after a long climb up the 2000m mountain. That made me happy. The decent was even more fun, but despite our best efforts we still rocked up late for lunch and got into trouble.

Training since then has been awfull. It's rained incesantlly and we are doing a new program which involves riding for 5,6,7 hours 4 days a week. Not nice and slowly but with many heavy going sets. When the weather is good it's fine. But rain and cold sap extra energy.

We did more tests to determine training zones. And have been training hard ever since.

My first race is the "Prova de Abertura" on the 14th, that is if it doesn't get pulled at the last moment...