Saturday, March 29, 2008

Long Time Coming

Hello Everyone.

This update has been a long time coming. I have just been waiting for a few topics to write about. Well internet access has been hard to come by, we have it set up but the adsl wont be turned on until 9th april and we had found a house across the street that has wireless so that was good for a few nights until he caught us and had us running like indians. So we decided to stay away from there for a while. Our internet isn't too far away which will make life a whole lot easier. Other than that, 2 weeks ago the snow decided to fall, and fall it did for 10 days with only 2 of those days being able to get out for a ride, 1hr - 1.15 if we were lucky before the cold toes and fingers got the better of us and had us heading back to the farm house for hot coffee and toasted sandwiches to warm up. Before the snow set in Josh and I rode down to Holland and rode the course for Maastrict-Valkenberg. One of the big one day classics close to our town. a good 200km, we skipped some and ended up lost and rolling home 6 and a half hours later which was a good day. So the form was coming good before the snow set in. So its now back to getting a few miles in the legs and some work behind the motor bike to get a bit of speed back.

Off the bike for 10 days wasnt all bad though. We played the tourist game making the most of the time to get some sight seeing in. So with the snow delaying my first race by 2 weeks I will now make an apperance tomorrow. An 80km circuit race in Holland. So finally i will take to the start line. Has been a long time waiting and frustrating at times but has all worked out now. I also got given my team bike and a whole lot of team kit. Early christmas.

Lastly, Team bodysol-euromillions was presented on Tuesday. With a media presentation and lunch date in the morning and presented to the public Tuesday night. Was a great day spent getting to know my team mates and playing tenpin bowling which i was convincingly useless at haha.

We are also going to view a new house next week which will be cool. I will post some pictures tomorrow along with and update from the race.

Thanks for reading,
Ryan

Tuesday, March 4, 2008


Testing few weeks.

Well it's been a testing few weeks since arriving in Belgium. With the cold weather always testing the motivation and sickness getting the better of me for the past week i think i am now back on track. Arriving on Thursday the 21st feb in darkness didn't help the sense of direction and not being able to sleep made for an early morning. 3am to be exact. Josh and i made it to 7am before we decided it was time to take a look around the town. Our town is very small and with nothing of interest we decided to walk to the next town. The signs said 5km so that wasn't bad but when it was time to come home we had been walking for 6hrs. Luckily we found a bus back to our town. We had a call on Saturday to say we would be training with the teams on Sunday which i was happy with as it was an opportunity meet the team mates and Director Sportif. As we started rolling out they told me we would only be doing 90km tempo as it was the first time everyone had been together. Well i was good for 70km so i thought nice easy 20km to finish. 90km came round, 100km came, i thought can't be long to ride now, 130km came and went, 160km came then i thought well that's it, guess we are in for a long day.. well 210km later we were back and everyone looking a little worse for wear haha.

So at the moment we are living on top of an old farm house which isn't the greatest and we only lasted a week before coming up to Holland to stay with friends. So now we are in the process of finding a new apartment which should be a week or so more. Other than that it has been business as usual except for coming down with something early last week. I have since been to the doctor and am waiting on blood test results to come back before getting into some racing and testing out the legs.

Finally, was out riding today when little white flakes started to land on my gloves and and legs.. i thought "oh yeah a bit of hail, great". Turns out it was snowing and it's expected to be white everywhere tomorrow which will be a new experience.

I think all going well i will be lining up in my first race on Sunday down in France and in this weather probly in leg warmers and thermal jacket!!

Until next time..
Ryan

P.s A few pictures. one of the new team kit and one of the dirty farm house.