In the breakaways, on the podium...

With my first (slightly short) block of racing out of the way, I can safely say 2014 has got off to a solid start! A few days in Majorca with Just Pedal provided welcome relief from the grim weather in Britain, and helped sharpen me up before my first race of the season.

My race program kicked off properly with the Surrey League race at Dunsfold, with my main objective being to win the morning Cat 3 race, before racing the afternoon Cat 2/3 race in support of my teammates.
However my morning ambitions were brought to a rather sudden stop when I punctured after just an hour of racing. At this point, I was ready to climb in the car and go home- I was pretty annoyed that I could work hard all winter just to have my race ruined by a small stone in my tyre. However a few guys from VC Meudon talked me into signing up for the afternoon race- and it was definitely worth it.
As I didn't have the time or equipment with me to change a tyre on my race bike, I pulled my training bike out of the car and started to warm up on that. It only took me a few seconds to figure out something was wrong- I had changed my position on my race bike while I was out in Majorca, and hadn't had the opportunity to change my training bike to match. After a few minutes tweaking the bike, I got in a speedy warmup and I was ready to race. Then, two and a half hours later, I was crossing the finish line with my hands in the air.
In all honesty, there's not much to write about during the actual race- three riders (including myself) got away, and we just stayed there, always lingering 30-40 seconds ahead of the peloton. It wasn't until the last lap that I really considered we were going to win, and after 100km of riding on the limit there was no way I was finishing second. I clung to Stuart Bettis' (my breakaway partner) wheel on the last kick up to the finish, before putting everything I had into a few pedal strokes to pass him before the line, celebrating with around 60m to go. I was absolutely ecstatic- after the disappointments of 2013, this was exactly how I wanted my year to start.

Taking 2nd place at Hillingdon, sprinting from a 12 man split.

Two more top 10s the following weekend gave me confidence that my fitness was definitely in the right place working towards my next big target- the National TT Series. However, just a few days before the event, my preparations quite literally took a knock when a car drove into the back of me towards the end of a training ride. Over the next 48 hours, my back muscles kept tightening, and although I managed to push through the pain to claim 2nd place in the Beyond Spring Crits, I couldn't repeat the trick in Sunday's time trial. Halfway through, I was forced to sit up as I could no longer sit in the "tuck" position, and after that my average speed just plummeted. I finished a long way down the field, and was absolutely gutted.

However, in a weird way, it's left me even more motivated for my next event, the SERRL Spring Stage Race. I hate to have opportunities taken from me by "bad luck", whether it's puncturing, suffering from injury, or simply missing a winning break in a road race. But from what I've found so far this year, the harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.

Celebrating my first win of 2014 at Dunsfold, after a 100km breakaway.
Photo by www.themomentimages.com