This year

As I have started this blog a bit late, I'll just quickly say what's happened so far!

Started my winter training in November, mostly walking, running and a little bit of cycling. Did less running and walking in December and a bit more cycling, still not much though. In January I went with my friends from the Forme cycling team to Calpe in Spain for a couple of weeks to get in some solid training in the sun! I went back home for one week before getting on a one-way plane to Milan...

Even though I was planning on moving away for the longest I have ever been, I didn't really think about what I was getting myself into. As a result I didn't prepare myself too well, and ended up packing my bags the night before I left, which wasn't ideal...

Once in Italy, I quickly became aware that living on my own in a foreign country, when you don't know anyone and can't speak the language, is actually not much fun... At the time the weather was really bad, there was no racing and I had also crashed badly on a dodgy descent, so things weren't going well. I wanted to go home pretty badly!

Thankfully, I managed to move out of my original place and into the house of the team's, main sponsor and DS, the Giani family based in Ispra. This along with the weather improving and racing just round the corner helped a lot! The first races came as a big shock to this system, a combination of not so great legs and the Italian way of racing. So far I have been slowly improving as the season is getting underway, so hopefully I can start to look at getting some results in the next month of racing.