UCI Class 2 Andalucia Bike Race

All going to plan this time tomorrow I should be sat in a nice hotel in Cordoba Spain. This will be my first international trip of the year; I’m travelling to Spain to race the 6 day UCI world ranking Andalucia Bike Race. The race is completed in pairs; I’ll be teaming up with Josh Ibbett who I’m also racing the Cape Epic with at the end of March.

My bags are packed but the bike box is dangerously close to being overweight, hopefully the airport staff are in a good mood and are feeling kind at check in! Having missed this race in 2011 due to injury I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to take my place on the start line in Cordoba for nearly a year. Over the 6 days we’ll cover around 400km’s of the areas finest trails.

Depending on the availability of internet access we’ll hopefully be able to send updates and possibly even some video footage! Keep an eye on the Ben Thomas Racing facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Ben-Thomas-Racing/330790256947713

Since my last update training has been going well, I completed one high volume high intensity week, followed by this low volume high intensity week as I taper for Andalucia. I wont be starting this race fresh but there are bigger objectives further down the line including the Cape Epic which is only 30 days away!!

For daily stage results keep an eye on http://www.andaluciabikerace.com/

No racing, just training

This afternoon’s blog was meant to be a story of another race, possibly another race victory but instead as you know it snowed and the Gorrick race was cancelled. As snow fell last night I went to bed still looking forward to racing, hoping it wouldn’t be too bad but no such luck as the weather beat us all.

Since my last update I’ve been enjoying plenty of time riding bone dry trails with numerous 6 hour plus rides, I was pretty happy with the 80 mile mountain bike ride I did on Thursday but I’m a little disappointed to have missed out on the opportunity to do another long endurance ride on what were dry trails yesterday.

On these recent cold wintery days my Montane clothing has been keeping me warm and on Thursdays ride the freezing conditions weren’t an issue. With the pockets of my Montane Hyena jacket packed with Clif Bar’s and my Lezyne saddle bag filled with spares I departed at 9am with the only thought being whether I should be taking my Exposure lights with me! The epic ride started off following one of my normal 60 miles mountain bike routes but as I was nearing three quarters distance I decided I’d divert off route to do the other long loop we often do. Doing these two routes together in one day wasn’t something I’d done before but the clear blue skies and dry trails were inspiring. Stopping off at Mountain Trax for a catch up with progress of the store refurbishment and a bottle refill was completed quickly as by now I’d already been out for nearly five and a half hours and had another 15 miles of singletrack riding left to do before darkness fell. In the end the 80 miles seemed to roll around pretty quickly in part thanks to the huge amounts of fun I’d been having on the big wheeled Santa Cruz Highball, this thing really does eat up the miles.

Looking out the window now the snow is melting which I’m thankful for because there’s only so many intervals sessions on the indoor rollers I can cope with! Interval sessions have crept into my weekly training schedule and will feature most weeks from now until the end of the season. The feeling of sprinting up a hill feeling like your going to be sick, or starring at a brick wall for a couple of hours isn’t much fun and isn’t the reason why we ride our bikes but as all racers know, if it make us faster and brings better race results then its worthwhile.

With no Gorrick race today my next race will be Andalucia Bike Race; this Spanish race will be my first stage race of the year. I’ll be pairing up with fellow Santa Cruz Bikes rider Josh Ibbett for the 5 day event. Check out http://www.andaluciabikerace.com/ for more details of that race. For more details on my race schedule for the year check out http://benthomas88.blogspot.com/p/2010-races.html

Thanks for reading.
Ben Thomas

None of this would be possible without the help of my sponsors
Mountain Trax http://www.mountain-trax.com/
Santa Cruz Bikes http://www.santacruzbikes.co.uk/
Montane http://www.montane.co.uk/
Fox Suspension http://www.mojo.co.uk/
Hope http://www.hopetech.com/
Rapid Racer Products http://www.rapidracerproducts.com/
USE http://www.use1.com/
Exposure http://www.exposurelights.com/
Vermont Images http://www.vermont-images.co.uk/
Lezyne http://www.lezyne.com/
Jagwire http://www.jagwireusa.com/
Kenda Tires http://www.kendausa.com/
Phenix Metabolic http://www.phxmet.com/
Crank Brothers http://www.crankbrothers.com/
Clif Bar http://www.clifbar.com/
Scott UK http://www.scott-sports.com/