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Californiacation: Part 3

Well I'm back from Cali now, had an amazing time riding, chilling and making new friends. We spent 4 days at Woodward shredding the step up, learning and dialling in new tricks. Getting ready for the start of the season. Had an Amazing time thanks to Jake Kinney for sorting it out. After we rode woodward we basically chilled out down in San Diego plus I have broken my Toe so I couldn't really ride. 
Partied a bit chilled at the beach and watched the guys ride a local spot.

Thanks to Mike, Lobes, Kevin, Chris and Jake for helping us out and sorting places to ride. Cant wait to get back there soon.

Here is the last video and link to some pics from our last days in Cali.

 

Filed under  //   Ray Samson  
Posted by Morvélo 

Race-chasing

It doesn’t happen very often in Belgium, but at this time of year one doesn’t need to be on one’s own bicycle to be entertained. For 11 months of the year you could be forgiven for opting for a ‘weekend away in Gravesend’, rather than Flanders (said with the same sort of masked affection you would employ when calling your best mate a pleb), but this Belgium’s moment in the sun - quite literally too, at the moment. There’s so much excitement and buzz revolving around the arrival of the cobbled classics that one weekend flies to the next faster than Tom Boonen ascends the Taaienberg.


The best way, in my opinion, to get any real sense of the races from a spectator’s point of view, is to get out amongst the hubbub of it all and go race-chasing. Similar to the popular hobby, Storm chasing, but with more drama and risk involved.


It’s the done thing to do for a lot of locals at the big races – Het Nieuwsblad, E3 and of course De Ronde. Last year I joined the masses and chased the Tour of Flanders around, testing my local road knowledge and managing to see it 6 times. With so many other people doing the same, the scenes can only be described as resembling the type of frantic mass exoduses you see in films like Independence day or Godzilla. With the berg locations so close both geographically and in time, the lead car is often rolling past while hundreds of people are still arriving, and the last rider in the bunch as barely come into view before everyone is running back to their mode of transport – off road things like quad bikes and motocross bikes are often popular for ‘short cuts’.


Anyhow, as my Mum and Girlfriend were visiting last week, it would have been rude not to join the masses for E3 Prijs. We managed to see the race 5 times, which wasn’t a bad effort. Ok you don’t get to see the race unfold, but there are no lack of crowded bars to watch the finish in once you have seen the gory bits and managed to piece together what’s happened so far. 


The pictures are roughly as follows - Crowds gathering on The Muur. 

Protestors on The Muur (about it's absence from The Tour of Flanders). 

The back end of the bunch cresting The Muur. 

The bunch rolling over La Houppe.

Crowds massing on the banks of the Oude Kwaremont. 

Boonen, Pozzato, VanMarcke and Sagan get the gap on the Oude Kwaremont. 

Sagan leads the pursuit of Chavanel, Muravyev and Gatto on Le Cote De Trieu. 


Now, by tactfully choosing to race this coming Saturday, I'll hopefully get out and beat last years effort of 6 viewpoints in 'Vlaanderens Mooiste', the Tour of Flanders. 

Filed under  //   Josh Cunningham  

Season starter

Tour de Taiwan blog – Felix English

This is my first blog for a while and I think it comes at an appropriate time of my season. My last blog took us up to the end of our second team training camp. This point marked the end of my winter training and the beginning of my 2012 racing season. I had already spent 3-4 weeks away with my new team mates and as the start of the season drew closer, the exciting talks of racing were growing evermore common. Personally I couldn’t wait to take off the legwarmers and get stuck in.

My season started relatively quietly with a local 25 mile TT. A very cold Sunday morning in Sussex marked my first race, where I was entitled to proudly pull on my Rapha Condor Sharp skinsuit for the first time. Although the TT itself was hugely uncomfortable and not particularly quick, it felt good to lay down a definitive marker and I can now monitor my improvement as the year progresses. More importantly it meant the season had now officially started.

My first big race for the team was the UCI 2.1 classified Tour de Taiwan. But before I jetted off to the other side of the globe, I was looking to fit in a few more races to help ease the always painful transition from training to racing. I was lucky enough to be given the offer to stay up North with my team mate Rich Handley - I got to know Rich quite well after sharing a room with for the duration of our first training camp in Lanzarote. It appears I didn’t annoy him too much first time round, so he was willing to accommodate me at his home for a weekend of training and racing. Along with a few of our other team mates, we raced in the Eddie Soens Memorial and CDNW Pimbo circuit races. I was pleasantly surprised with how I felt in the season openers and picked up 6th on the Saturday and 9th on the Sunday.

Tuesday afternoon I was dropped off at Manchester airport to meet the members of the team I was travelling to Asia with; Luke, Andy and Pete. You can always sense the disappointment of the person behind the check-in desk at the airport who has to deal with us and this time was no exception as we had quite a large entourage of baggage to stow away on the plane; 7 bike bags, 8 suitcases and 1 very lanky rider. Our flight plan would add a few more pins into the chart on my wall with the journey taking us from Manchester to Amsterdam to Bangkok and finally to Taipei.

With no apparent signs of jet lag on arrival, the few days we had before the start of the race flew by. A few short rides, lots of Starbucks coffee, birthday cake purchasing, press conferences and probably too much twitter were what filled my time. After receiving our race programme it quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to be waking up any later than 6am at any point during the race. I generally don’t have a problem with early starts and here was no different but I did find myself struggling to stay awake past 9:30 most evenings.

Stage 1 was a short, very wet 55km crit around the centre of Taipei city. The short distance, bad weather and tight corners suited my style of riding quite a lot. I was pretty nervous before the start  – as John picked up on when I couldn’t stop fidgeting - as I didn’t really have any idea how I was going to compare to the highest ranked field I’d ever raced against. I was fortunate enough to be given a nice initiation into this level of racing with a fast but comfortable first stage where I picked up 4th in the bunch sprint, which was good enough for 10th on the stage. However, the following few stages weren’t as kind.

The next 3 days involved me suffering, wheel sucking and trying my best not to get dropped from the main group too early. Even after a nice first stage, in my head I knew I was going to take a bit of a kicking. Last year whilst stage racing, although I experienced some good stages I also experienced a lot of bad days where I was struggling from the start to the very end of the stage. Naturally, taking a step up from the racing I did last year I expected it to be harder, so I think not underestimating how hard it was going to be was what helped me get through those first few days. I wasn’t panicking about my performances at night and wasn’t dreading getting up for the race in the morning – quite the contrary as although I wasn’t performing as well as the rest of the team, I was still loving the racing.

After a tough 5 days and my personal goal of reaching the finish of the race nearly complete, I was given the opportunity of trying to get in the days break away. Stage 6 was my best chance, when the break was let go within the first couple of km’s. This marked for me, personally my worst day of the tour. Sitting in the bunch steadily riding along knowing I could’ve been in the break wasn’t a nice feeling and to top off a very long drawn out day, I got burnt to a crisp by the sudden heat wave shortly after the start – 35 degree sun and pale Irish skin without any suncream is a terrible combination.  After the disappointment of not capitalizing on my role of getting in the early break-away on stage 6, I was determined to rectify that on stage 7 and must’ve followed over 10 attacks within the first hour but to no avail. The not too shabby average speed of 49 km/h probably had something to do with that. The end of the race was tarred with an unfortunate event. A fast technical finish looked to be the perfect end to our tour, with Deano and Ben both up well within the top 10 with 500m to go but some bad dangerous riding from another rider saw Ben being taken down and bouncing down the tarmac on his ass. Not a nice end to Ben’s tour, especially after his solid performances taking  a 5th and a 6th.

Looking back now I am pretty satisfied that I got through the race. I loved the experience and it felt great to finally get involved in some racing after months of excitedly anticipating lining up with my new team mates. International stage racing has definitely become one of my most favourite aspects of the sport in the last few years. I relish the way the team comes together throughout the race to help each other achieve the best results possible and to get each other through the lows as well as the highs is something that I haven’t yet experienced anywhere else. Although in the Tour de Taiwan I was at times disappointed that I wasn’t able to help my team mates more, I think the experience gained there will stand be in good stead for the rest of the season.

From this moment I have quite a busy 4 weeks ahead of me. This Saturday (24th March) I’m racing for the first time since Taiwan in a short hilly circuit race in East London. I then move to my next race with the team the following Sunday – the Dengie Marsh classic premier calendar. After that I fly to Belfast for the 4 day stage race: the Tour of the North. Finally, I fly out to Holland to compete in the ZLM U23 Nations Cup event, where I will be riding my first race of 2012 for the Irish National team. A busy, but very exciting few weeks ahead and I can’t wait to get racing again.

Filed under  //   Felix English  
Posted by email 

Old & New

Ever since last weeks exploratory trip to work through the city parks and hidden alleys of Brighton, I wanted to do it again. This time it included some old favourites and the dawn mist was burnt away.

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Followed by some new trails I found running at the side of a city park, complete with a tasty selection of berms. 

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I can't say my 'knee down' was intentional but it was a lot of fun trying to get as low as I could on the cross bike. Also found a perfect little trail for some cross bike skills training. Mixture of steps going down, off camber, tricky little singletrack and flight of steps to run up. The whole path is probably no more than half a mile but you're on and off the bike the whole time. It's going to take quite a bit of time to truly nail it though and stay smooth through the whole section. It's not the cross season any more but with challenges like these, it my favourite bike at the moment.

Filed under  //   The DS  
Posted by Morvélo 

Loosing the feeling in the legs

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On the way home last night I lost the feeling in my legs. Of comment like this of course, generally would spark some concern, but not if you're a cyclist. As rare as a solar eclipse, for me at least, the time where you can push the pedals as hard as you like and you can't feel a thing. Not in a numb way. In a way that makes you feel turbo charged. I think two races back to back and a hillier route to work could be paying off. It could also be the late evening calm spring air or the first time the whole ride back was done just before the sun slipped beneath the horizon. Whatever it was, I want more of it. Just wish it would happen during a race.

I'm sure normal service will resume soon.

Filed under  //   The DS  
Posted by Morvélo 

Californiacation: Part 2

Second part of our super cool amazing road trip video and blog is up check it out. 

Basically we have been riding a lot of trails and thanks to Kalin Law aka Lobes we have been able to hit up some sweet trails. not to mention giving us a shower to use, cooking us tasty BBQ's and letting us chill in the hot tub. I am now up in Tehachipi riding Woodward, this place is so sick rode with so many BMX pro's today, met Steven Murray which was so good and to top it off Nasty invited us to a jam at his trails tomorrow. This week is going to be Epic...

Stay tuned for the next video, its going to be interesting haha 

Cheers Yaaall

Ray

Filed under  //   Ray Samson  
Posted by Morvélo 

Classics

First classic of the season last weekend with Milan San Remo, so it was fitting that last Saturdays Road Race at Barcombe involved rain, hills and filth. I turned up typically close to the race start time and asked if their was a spare place going, hoping the thought of 60 miles in the wet would deter some racers. My luck was in and I'd just pinned my number on when we rolled out. It's quite strange going to a race, getting your kit and bike ready, but not actually knowing that your going to get a ride.

So my mind wasn't in full race mode, if ever indeed it is, but I heard from other riders about this course at last weekend's road race. Tough, hilly, a 2/3 cat race and only an hour earlier I was deciding what daytime TV I should what before Milan San Remo came on. That's before I took the last minute plunge, grabbed my kit and headed out. So my previous too road races I professed about 'race craft' and not holding back. This time was I definitely on the defensive and seemed happy to ignore my own "wisdom". I was a bit nervous about firstly the hilly course I hadn't ridden and secondly about having to go out and play with some 2nd cat riders. I'm not sure my legs could handle it.

The course was awesome and as it happened went straight past a close friends house so I started to recognize many parts. Lots of lumps, a few sharp corners, some balls out downhills and some typical Sussex bergs. My aim was low. Too low I think. I just didn't want to get dropped, so I foolishly never pushed myself up near the front. Now the first thing you ever learn in road racing is NOT to sit near the back. You're forever playing catch-up, sprinting out or corners to try and grab that last wheel, always at the mercy of someone else's pace. So the going was hard yet the pace was slower than last weekends 3rd cat race.

The rain added some seasonal glamour to the proceedings alongside plenty of road grime and roadkill. Their was one excellent section where the whole bunch flew down the hill in a big long paceline, stretching out around 2 or three corners ahead. I could see this great spectacle because, as I've mentioned before, I was sat at the back. Naughty boy. Then the hills hit which is the bit I loved, albeit still breathing out of my arse.

Come the closing part of the race, I saw the key move go and new that I should have been in it. Once they'd disappeared up the road the pace eased and I knew that was it. Game over. Still we had the last few climbs left and the excellent hill top finish. It felt like the whole race was up the road whereas one of us could still grab a top 10 spot. This needless to say, I didn't realise. All I knew was that I wanted to give it full beans on the last hill, for no other reason than it's fun. Once again I was at the back when everyone went for it. I made my move but as boxed in so actually had to brake mid climb! Not sure that has ever happened to me before, but then a gap opened and I gave it, as a downhilling MTB friend calls it, "the berries". 

Finally after 60 miles I felt I was racing properly and being pro-active, as I climbed past rider after rider. If anything the finish line came too soon. 17th place was my reward, so a good better than last week but I know now it could have been so much more. So you know I say how I've learnt the 'race craft'? I have. And this fool I ignored it.

Still, was a great course, good competition and the organisers, marshalls and volunteers made the whole race one I'm already looking forward to doing again.

Filed under  //   The DS  
Posted by Morvélo 

Roaming

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Not in as in a 100 mile expedition but as in a 10 mile commute. I kept seeing off-road paths snaking their way between houses on my road ride to Morvelo HQ. So today on the way to work I roamed around Brighton, under the pretense of getting to the office. As it turned out it was perfect for the cyclocross bike. Small pathways, open city centre bridleways, steps, some cracking woodland trails with some great whoops, banks and drops. Don't know if it was the spring sunshine or not but I just couldn't help but hop up, over and around all the numerous obstacles that crossed my path. Like a spring lamb. But not quite so fluffy. More roaming on the way back.

Filed under  //   The DS  
Posted by Morvélo