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James Hepburn: Cycling Tribe Blog
Hi readers and thanks for reading my first blog entry on cyclingtribe.com. I'm James Hepburn, a 20 year old cyclist in the new Virgin Blue- RBS Morgans Cycling Team. It's a brand new team put together by Chris White and Pegasus Racing, the man and company behind the Fly V Australia Professional Cycling Team. It's a team made up of a bunch of talented guys, and with an average age of about 20, and it's definitely going places. Last week the whole team came together in (sometimes) sunny Brisbane for a week long training camp. Everybody had a blast!The first night of the camp coincided with the official team launch. We all met at our accommodation, introduced ourselves to each other and headed into the the BMW showroom in The Valley for our launch. As well as providing us with the best cycling team cars in Australia, BMW gave us the use of their showroom for our grand launch. We were there a couple of hours early which gave all the guys a chance to sit around, have a few coffees and get to know one another. The launch itself was a great opportunity to mix with sponsors, supporters, friends as well as some very well known journalists from TV, Magazines and Newspapers. Despite the amateur status of the team it was clear to all present that the team was going to be run in a very professional manor.
The rest of the week was spent getting some quality k's in the legs. Our "long" ride of the week turned out to be a 240km epic, taking over 7 and a half hours, and climbing over 3600m. As one of the local guys from Brisbane I knew the proposed route was pretty long and had some pretty solid mountains along the way. What started out as a ride expected to be 180km ended up being a 240k monster loop. By the end everyone was physically and mentally drained, and the image of us rolling into the accommodation spread out over a minute or so was a stark contrast to when we rolled out that morning in a very organised double line. Despite the long day, our sports director Pat Jonker, himself a guy who's finished 12th in the Tour de France was proud of every single rider's efforts.
So that was the highlights of training camp. For now I've got a pretty easy week on the cards with a bit of time getting used to my Merida Time Warp TT bike before this weekends Mersey Valley Tour. It's the first race on the National Road Series calendar for 2010 and everyone is going to be keen to get some results. Hopefully Virgin Blue- RBS Morgans will be right at the pointy end.
James
5 comments to "James Hepburn: Cycling Tribe Blog"
Good effort heppy
best blog i've read so far!
james congratulations on the big chaiebement mate, keep up the good work and bring home some big wins this season! Toyne
A great read James and looking forward to the next blog. Enjoy Mersey Valley and ride hard!
james...ur my hero..i wanna ride for virgin one day..it's my dream