My fridge is warmer than my house. It's time for a winter update.

Having just bailed on a ride, accepting that apparently I cannot part the Red sea, or even that little flooded bit between Loughborough and Stanford, I’ve found myself procrastinating in the ‘should be on the turbo by now’ realm, and decided to write a blog update instead. I’ll turbo later. I Promise.

Last time around, I had just moved out to Belgium to begin my season, whilst everyone else was just winding down for the end of theirs. However, given that I could count the number of races I’d done last season with the fingers on my hands and the number of wins with the fingers on my feet,  I was pretty focused on doing some serious racing and avoiding the lure of nights out in Gent with “the lads”. I spent most of my time racing with house “mate” Llewellyn Kinch,  and Josh Cunningham and Matt Pilkington who lived just down the road in Zottegem proper. The racing was epic, I think the most time between races was 2 or 3 days off, and we often doubled up on the weekends. Just for primes. Days off consisted of getting woken up by Kinch because he was bored and spinning to the iconic towns of Geraardsbergen, Oudenarde, and others for coffees. We watched films at night and occasionally cracked out the Flemish board games.  We were pretty damn cool. And we were certainly living the dream.

The results were ok. Sometimes I got in the break, sometimes I won the sprint for 65th, and once I didn’t even finish. But it was OK. I had 4 weeks to race, and trying to build race form having been injured and racing next to nothing all year was always going to be ambitious in less than a month. Here we go:

Date	Event	Cat	distance	position
2/10	Jef Schils Memoiral	Nat A	150km	10
6/10	Koeklare	UCI 1.12B	120km	11
8/10	Berlare	UCI 1.2b	115km	65
9/10	OpHasselt	UCI 1.12B	120km	21
15/10	Sleidinge	UCI. 1.12	112km	26
16/10	Haaltart	UCI 1.12B	108km	Puncture mid race
18/10	Niewekerke-Aalst	UCI 1.12B	120km	34
23/10	Merelbeke	UCI 1.12B	110km	19
26/10	Langemark	UCI 1.12	75km	12

I sneaked in a couple of top 20’s. But nothing more. My favourite race was the final one, an evening crit in Langemark. It was the day I left Belgium, so my dad arrived early so we could get to the race before catching the ferry home. The parcours was a 1.5km twisty lap, with a few hundred metre section of cobbles down to the finish line. What started as a nice evening turned into the mother of all storms, and of the 70 starters, only 19 finished. It was brutal and horrible, but I loved it. That’s the type of racing I live for.

Term started back in Loughborough in October. Given the lack of a road season, I’ve partially returned to my roots in cross racing this winter. I came 3^rd in Baldock, behind the super talented Hugo Robinson and Jack Clarkson, and two 5^th places in the Notts and Derby league since. There was a 30something in there as well after a crash and puncture on the opening lap. That’s just cross racing though. The efforts paid off as I successfully defended my BUCS cyclo-cross title last weekend in Durham. I’m not one to dwell on my victories (we won the team prize as well), but my friend Chris has written a blog all about it, so I’ll leave this one to him:

http://bikeminded.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/cyclocross-or-the-story-of-how-iwrestledabearonce/

What he fails to mention is that when it come to cross the best rider always wins. Obviously. It’s just the result I needed to live off for the next year. Back to back BUCS champ. That’s got to be worth something, right?

 We also had the BUCS hill climb at the end of October where I finished a frustrating 4^th, half a second behind 2^nd place! Importantly I beat my brother Andy by 2 seconds, who spent the last 3 months telling me of his inevitable victory. Nob. Chris sums it up again beautifully here:

http://bikeminded.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/bucs-hill-climb-annual-agony-day/

I now realise I’m just hi-jacking another blog, and need some time to invent more reasons for not winning. And anyhow my postponed meeting in the pain chamber is drawing close. Still, with the imminent hurricane, an afternoon staring at a blank wall in a cold garage seems pretty appealing right now.