The Grafton; It's always a worry when you get of the bike after 232km of suffering, recording an average 15th and say "Right, 364 days til the next one!" I have been looking forward to this race all year and hoping to garner a good result after really quiet an average season with family problems, illness and just not doing races. After a good road trip with a Bathurst mate on the Thursday leading into the Grafton, where we stayed in Inverell with Aussie Hotel Inverell team mate Brendan Jones and then a trip back along the race route on the Friday, all was looking good for Saturday until...

It has been a little while since the last posting on here. Since an average Tour of Gippsland where a nasty chest infection stopped me from helping my team mates, Robbie Hucker and Brenton Jones, from having a good Swan Song in the Torq colours, there was a stint of university placement for two weeks (it's amazing how full time work gets in the way of good training - made even harder as there was no financial renumeration for the period), this gave way to some NSW races. With the Goulburn Crit followed by the NRS Goulburn to Sydney my first race outing in a while. The crit didn't go to...

  After some hectic weeks of training on a programme set for me by my coach Mark Fenner (www.ftptraining.com) I was psyched and amped for the next NRS tour, Gippsland… and then I got crook on my taper week. Over a week of the bike, and three days where I could barely even get out of bed to drink a coffee, let alone anything else. Let’s just say it was less then ideal preparation for racing at the pinnacle of domestic Australian racing.   Couple that with a parcourse that doesn’t really suit my physical characteristics 9 stages with 5 of them being crits… it was going to be a...

It's been nearly 5 weeks since the hectic North West Tour, throw in the NSW State TT as well for good measure, family things and back to uni.  After using the NRS Tours of Toowoomba and North West as a litmus test to see where I stand in the domestic racing scheme of things, my coach, Mark Fenner www.ftptraining.com and I sat down to see where my next step as a rider is, and as a result got my training programme overhauled... significantly. After an initial FTP Test up Camberwarra Mountain down near Nowra to set appropiate training zones it was, excuse the phrases, "Balls...

Last weekend saw yet another weekend with racing on the calendar. This time, the trip, with Fenz, to Calga on the NSW Central Coast for the NSW State Individual Time Trial. After an up and down week, with not much training, only a few short sessions on the TT rig, we hit the road on Saturday afternoon and got through Sydney to Calga and got in a nice pre ride of the course.  I did this race several years ago and the pre ride only refreshed my memory of what a tough 43km it is. Up, down, up, down. With nearly 500m of vertical climbing through the course it is definitely one of the...