Well, my 2016 season is now well and truly done and dusted. I have had my feet up for close to a week now - but more on that in a moment. I've been a bit crap in updating the blog and site in general this year, but I was so wrapped up in giving everything to my training, that I always struggled to find / make the time. That is definitely something that I aim to address over the winter, especially, and heading in to 2017. My main race for the year was Vichy 70.3 at the end of August, and I was pretty pleased with my result there, albeit here was still some pretty large room for improvement; I'll aim to get a full race report up at some point soon, so keep your eyes on my Events page for that! I'm hoping that my result will be good enough for an AG slot for the ETU championships in Denmark, but I've got an agonising wait of another few weeks before I find out if I've made the cut. I thought that my final race of the year at Challenge Peguera would have been a good opportunity to enhance my chances, as - having done it last year - I know that the field isn't quite as large nor strong as Vichy. Unfortunately it wasn't to be, though, and this was the first part of 'ending on a downer'. Peguera was to be my first ever DNF. In any event. Ever. I was absolutely gutted. I picked up a puncture about 37 miles in to the bike, and (stupidly, with hindsight) wasn't carrying any spares, leaving me with a frustrating 3-4 mile walk to get to a point where a marshal could arrange for me to be picked up. My frustration was made all the worse when I looked at the results, and saw that I could well have been in the mix in my AG, if I'd held my power on the bike, and run as well as I have been recently. Frustration with a poor result was quickly put in to context / perspective just two days later, though. I had hired a road bike, and planned on a fairly epic ride around Mallorca; starting off in Port de Sollér, climbing Puig Major, down to Sa Calobra and back up, then looping back via Col de sa Batalla and Orient. I set off really early, to make sure that I beat the worst of the traffic on Sa Calobra in particular, and everything was going really well - roads were quiet, my legs were feeling pretty good up Puig Major (albeit I wasn't going full gas, knowing that I had a long day in the saddle planned, and wanted to keep it relatively leisurely), and the weather was perfect. My girlfriend got me a GoPro for my birthday this year, and I'd been wanting to film some epic descents on it ever since. Sa Calobra was my first real opportunity to do this, so I stopped at the very top of Col de Reis, set the camera going, and then testosterone and ego kicked in, and I started absolutely gunning it down the descent - which is probably my favourite piece of road that I've ever cycled on. I told myself I was going to get down as quickly as I could; wanting to been my PR on Strava, and make a video that did the speed of the descent justice. I was out of the saddle going round every bend, getting back up to speed as quickly as possible, and taking the racing lines as best I could. Then disaster struck. As I turned in to the second of the switchbacks, my front wheel just went from underneath me. I hit the ground hard, and the first thing that went through my mind was "shit; I hope I haven't broken anything", knowing that I was a long way from my car and any substantial civilisation, quickly followed by "I can hear the engine of a large vehicle coming up - I need to get out of the road" - so I very quickly jumped up, and got myself and my bike to the outside of the road, out of harms way. I inspected the bike, and the front tyre was absolutely flat as a pancake, so I'm assuming that it was caused me to lose all grip and crash. Having watched the video back a million times, there's a part a couple of corners before the one that I crashed where there's a bit of a jolt of the camera, and I think I may have clipped a rock that had fallen from the cliff face, which I'm assuming is what caused the puncture. I tried fixing it straight away (I was carrying spares this time!), but was shaking too much from the adrenaline, so I sat down on the floor for a couple of minutes to get my breath back, and check that I didn't have anything seriously wrong with me. I had ripped a huge hole in my shorts, which exposed a very nasty bit of road rash on my hip, and had other smaller parts on my forearm and elbow, but thankfully nothing broken etc. After those few minutes had passed, I got up and fixed the puncture, then turned around and made my way back up to the top. I had contemplated continuing down, but I wasn't sure how my leg would cope with climbing all that way, and I knew that in any event I still had the best part of 20 miles to get back to Port de Sollér - I'd already resigned myself to not being able to complete the full route that I had planned. That would definitely have been foolhardy. Thankfully, most of the 20 miles or so back were downhill - back down Puig Major - but suffice to say, I took that descent considerably steadier than I had down Sa Calobra! I made it back without further incident, and consumed copious amounts of coffee, cake and ice cream to make myself feel better. That was 5 days ago now, and my wounds are starting to heal, though my hip especially is still pretty swollen and sore; hence why I've had my feet up ever since. Given my season has finished - and it's been a long, hard one - I figured it's probably the best thing to do, to let it heal properly, and also to let my muscles fully recover. So, not really the way that I wanted to sign off on my 2016 season, but overall it's been a good one, and I'm definitely heading in to winter knowing that a decent training block will set me up really well for an even better 2017 - particularly as I'm just starting to consider taking on a coach to really push me on. If you want to see the video and consequences of my crash, see below - it's not for the faint hearted though!
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