Well I'm sure that you have noticed that I haven't written in my blog page for a little while but I would have to put that down to not much going on really. However it's always so good to be home again after you spend some time away. The funny thing that I do is when I'm away from home I get all these brilliant idea's about what sort of renovations that I can do to my house or what can I buy, so it's busy times ahead if I get time and have the energy to do all these things. In my defence though I did build a outdoor timber deck in January and I needed to put a pergola over the top which I did and now I just has to be plastered inside to finish it off and I'm all set for outside entertaining. 

Now to the racing. When I returned in June I had a very easy week training and recovered from the intense month of racing and training. Not to mention that I had to travel across America before heading to Australia so it was very tiring month. Now I'm back into it and preparing myself for "Superweek" which starts the 10th of July. Most of you would know that the criterium series is the biggest in the world and they race for 17 days straight and their all 100km each. Last year I won the overall series but didn't manage to win a stage so I hope to change that this year. Fly V are rostering on myself, Bernie Sulzberger, Ben Kersten and Curtis Gunn. This will be a change for me as for I had to race with just one other team mate last year, so we are confident in another victory. After Superweek the team will compete in the Elk Grove stage race which is also in Chicago from the 31st of July through to 2nd of August. Post that for me I will return back to Australia and race the Tour of Geelong and remain here for the season.

 

Safe riding :)

 

Jonny 

Hello to all. Sorry for the delay in posting any kind of a blog but I have been on the road for a month now and its very hard tp find the time to update it.

 

So for the past month I have been living on the East Coast, like Atlanta Georgia, Fayettville Arkansas and just last week in Philadelphia for the big bike race. When I returned to the US at the start of June I have raced 22 times and I'm starting to feel the pinch, not to mention that the team had a 6 day training camp throwen in there so I have been busy and clocking up some good miles.

 

The Philadelphia Championship bike race is one of the worlds biggest one day races of all time and now one of my personal favourites. A lot of you are probably wondering how did this criterium sprinter get around a 260km road race and climb up the infamous "Manyunk" wall 10 times with some of the best Pro Tour teams? Well I was wondering that myself when I heard the bell for the final lap of the course on Sunday. I had trained specifically for this race and I had the best team around me that I could ever ask for. My team mates layed themselves on the line and gave up there chances of winning for me and I can never tell them enough for how gratefull I really am.

 

So the race.......I recall sitting under our race tent before the start with the rest of my team and we were having a pre race talk and I looked down at my heart rate monitor and it was 78bpm which is around 20bpm to high for just sitting around, so this ment that I was as nervous as hell. This race for me last year did not go so well and I knew what I was in for, so nervous is probably an understatement. My race plan was to sit in the bunch for the majority of the race and to make sure that I was up the front as we headed towards the 'wall' so that I had good position and didn't get caught out behind the front group and wouldn't be able to get back on. After the wall it has a very fast descent and its sometimes hard to see let a lone reach the front of the peloton again. So 9 laps to go, 8 laps to go, 4 laps to go and I was feeling great. I totally believe that if you set your mind on something nothing will get in your way. The race climbs up the ''wall'' 10 times and then finishes on a smaller climb called "Lemon Hill" which isn't that hard but after 250km anything is hard. I knew after we had finshed the big laps that I was in for a shot for victory and i was totally ready for it. My team rode on the front for the majority of the race and now it was my turn to repay them for their hard work. Coming into hte final kilometer I was sitting behind my team mates Bernard Sulzberger and Charles Dion who were leading me out. As we approuched the last round about the 3 of us were sitting top ten position just behind the Columbia train when a Kelly Benefic rider came around the right hand side of the us and he stupidly looked around to see where is team mate was and ended up crossing over the wheel in front of hoime and taking down several riders. This happened right in front of us with only 600m to go. The 3 of us pulled on the brakes hard and lost all momentom that we had and got passed by around 20 riders. Not nice after you raced for so long and some idiot crashes just before the finish line. So after all that I manged to use my sprint to catch back up to the Columbia train but had nothing left in the final 200m and ended up finishing 14th. Still a good result for me in a UCI 1.1 category race and don't worry I'll be back next year.

 

I head back down under tomorrow for 3 weeks to see the family and some rest before coming back to the US to defend my "Superweek" title. Good times :) 

Tulsa Tough criteriums in Tulsa Oaklahoma City.

I finished 4th on Friday nights criterium ( stage one) 2nd in stage two and 6th in stage three. Team mate Bernie Sulzberger finished 3rd in stage two and 3rd in stage three. We rounded out the podium for 2nd and 3rd overall. Good job boys :)

  

Another criterium series win for the trophy room. Tour of Atlanta was somewhat small compared to what lies ahead in racing, but it was great preperation for Tulsa Tough and Philadelphia.

The guys all rode really well and we won 5 out of 7 stages and in the 2 that we didn't win we placed 2nd and 3rd respectively. Fly V placed 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 9th overall so you could say that we cleaned up.

Tomorrow we head to Tulsa, Oaklahoma City for 3 criteriums worth around $85,000 and then we head over to Philadelphia for Pro Tour 1 day race.

What a start back to racing after the team training camp by winning 3 stages in a row and I still have 3 more to go!

The first stage was a 2km prologue and I actually rode well considering I'm not renowned for this kind of event. I ended up placing 7th. That afternoon we had our first criterium and a group of around 12 formed at the very start of the race which fly V had 5 riders present. We tried to break this apart and get away from having so many guys up the road but the course was to fast. Bernie (again) lead me out perfectly and I won the stage.
The next day was a double stage of 1 hour criteriums, one in the morning and the second at night. The legs were feeling great so I decided to launch a few attacks during the race and with 15 minutes to go a chose my moment perfectly and managed to get away with only one other guy following me. We quickly got a 30 second gap and the race was in the bag. Stage 3 was on the same course but with a different finish line but unfortunately it rained down hard all race and I was not happy. Anyway again the boys did a great job to take me to the finish line and I did my job.

2 more crits today and then a road race on Monday. I'm in yellow now with a few points up my sleeve.