First post

This is my first blog so I want to start off by saying how much I am looking forward to meeting the rest of the riders, having a stand at the BMBS and generally having the backing of a well sorted team. I am also looking forward to getting a new pronghorn PR6 Carbon, some swanky new (and very noticeable) team kit and the new Gaerne Ara shoes in white which are nothing short of PIMP! Actually that’s an understatement! I am very excited about that!

I raced Sport last year and had a pretty disappointing season so this year I am targeting the promotion places to Expert for 2011. I will be at most BMBS rounds and a good selection of Midlands and Southern series rounds. As well as this, I decided 2010 is as good a year as any to do a solo 24 so I will be riding Sleepless in the saddle in August.

I had my first race of the season on Sunday, the Gorrick Spring series round 1 at Mytchett. I entered the open category as the number of times I have been offroad this year can comfortably be counted on one hand and I didn’t want to completely destroy myself at the first attempt! The course was a perfect introduction to the season, lots of nice short climbs, what seemed like miles of singletrack and a couple of small drops thrown in for good measure. Nothing too technical, just good fun. I finished 8th out of about 75 finishers which I was pretty happy with, especially after doing my usual post-race geeky lap time comparison showing I would have been similarly placed in sport had I completed 1 more lap at a similar pace.

Definitely a good start to the season and hopefully I can improve on that in round 2 with a few weeks of hard graft and possibly a few more jaunts off road!