It's June

An accurate, yet pointless title.

It's very very busy. I'm actually looking forward to the Tour de France, because it'll quieten down a bit. After BikeRadar Live that is.

Speaking of which, here's Martyn Ashton doing some crazy stuff on a road bike in the vicinity of Bristol:



Other news in brief

The National 25, BDCA 100 and National 50 are done. I had some solid results (16th, 4th, 14th), definitely an improvement on last year, but I've got a bit more work to do.

The 25 in Yorkshire was baking hot by UK standards. So my power was a bit down but I made up for it with good pacing. Hutch only put 4min into me this year, last year it was 6'23. I know I've said that before but he's improved too, so I was happy.

The 100 didn't quite go according to plan. I'd swapped frames mid-week to what I thought was the same frame but it was 1cm longer/higher than the old one. So I hadn't got my position right, lost a pin from my number early on, had the bars twisted a bit and ate too much. 6 minutes behind the winner was a bit crap.

On a positive note, my power was slightly up on last year's WTTA 100, despite being 1'30 slower. And I paced it a bit better. Didn't blow up but did feel ill from trying to eat two gels/hour. One is sufficient.

Today's 50 was OK. I changed my position during the week to go a bit narrower put my saddle up. I thought it was faster, based on some preliminary testing, but I don't think it was that much. I'll do some proper testing on Tuesday.

The course was ostensibly fast but the wind was against us on the uphill leg, so it was slow. I averaged nearly 50W more than I did for last week's 100 (good!) and almost the same as the National 25. And I got better as the race went on.

John Tuckett (9th) caught me for 1min after 10 miles, then put another 30sec into me, then basically hung there for the rest of the race. Hutch caught me for 4min just after halfway and gave me an encouraging shout, then put another 3'30 into me. I'll take it - I'd expect the gaps to be roughly double what they were in the 25.

But I need to get back into a more comfortable position and not slide around all over the saddle. The main reason being I've got a 12hour in two weeks, interspersed by a visit to the US. Going to be fun!