Looking forward to the Tour de France and Olympics

Hi!

I am looking forward to blogging regularly up to and during the 2012 Olympics. I will be filling you in from my races in the build-up to the Olympics and obviously how I’m feeling etc. Feel free to ask me any questions you like… I won't be able to answer all of them, but will do my best to respond to as many as I can.

So far this year, things have been going really well. The Classics were my first big target of the year. The run-up to the races went really well and I ended up 10th in the Tour of Flanders. This is one of the biggest one-day races in the year and something I grew up watching, so to be at the front of the race going for the win was great!

Since the first ‘big hit’ of the year, I have had a few easy weeks and have now begun my build-up to the Tour de France which recently included an altitude camp in Tenerife. This camp was more to see how I dealt with being, and training, at altitude.

The Tour is my next goal, where we will have to race at over 2000m above sea level. Tenerife was also a great place to train on the climbs, it was either up or down! We were staying on top of the volcano so it was pretty barren and boring up there. We didn’t have an internet connection most of the time and couldn’t watch the Giro d'Italia. Saying that, we didn’t have much time to worry about being bored as we were either on our bikes or conked out in bed.

After the camp, I went out to Italy. I rent an apartment in Tuscany, not far from Florence. It’s a great place to train. For a start, you don’t get any abusive drivers! The weather is great and there are plenty of climbs to train on.

I am now racing in Bayern Rundfahrt in Germany (website in German). It’s a great race to do after a big training block. The roads aren’t too heavy going, they are nice and smooth making for fast racing. The hotels and food are also good so I couldn’t ask for more really.

The days and months soon fly by when you’re racing and training all over the world. Before we know it, we’ll be in Olympic year! I can’t imagine how big London 2012 is going to be, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

When we were in Beijing, we didn’t really get a taste of how big it was here in the UK, I guess we soon will. I will hopefully be riding in the team pursuit event on the track. We won convincingly in Beijing, but it’s going to be completely different this time round. The Aussies have a strong group of guys now and have closed the gap to us. The other events on the track are a lot closer, but I still think we have a great squad. It’s definitely going to be great racing and I can’t wait. Hopefully we can do the same as in 2008.

My next blog will be for the Tour de France which starts on 2 July. In the meantime, I look forward to your comments and questions. 

Geraint