James Hepburn: Cycling Tribe Blog

 

For me July also means university holidays. With a whole month off it makes for a pretty good training block. I've so far resisted the temptation to stay up late every night watching the Tour (or just fallen asleep) in favour of a nice 8 o'clock wake up. This has been followed by a coffee or two, some breakfast, Tour highlights and then finally out the door to go training. When you've been training in the early hours of the morning, through a cold winter there is nothing better than rolling out the door at 9 o'clock with a jersey and knicks, not even arm and leg warmers. A good afternoon is spent relaxing around the house, watching some more of the previous nights stages until its time for bed. It's a great time of the year, but it'll be tough when I have to go back to Uni and crack out the alarm clock and lights on my bike.
 
All this training is leading towards a pretty busy National Road Series in Australia. It kicked off in Toowoomba a few weeks back. I had a pretty good tour, finding myself in the early morning break on each of the road stages. Unfortunately the breaks didn't stick, but it was  great to help out my teammate and roommate  for the tour, Pat Shaw, who took out the overall GC on the last stage. It was a great win, and Pat and the entire Virgin Blue-RBS Morgans were stoked with the result. A special shout out has to go to another of my team mates, Cam Peterson for his epic ride on stage 3. He went solo with30k to go and was able to hold off an entire team swapping off to bring himback!

The NRS continues with Tours of Gippsland, Geelong, Murray River and Tasmania. Add in a few one-dayers and a bit of racing up in my local Queensland and it's going to be a big few months, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.
 
Gotta roll, big mountain stage to watch. Enjoy your riding.