2011 season round up.
My 2011 racing season is now over. I have had a great year on and off the bike travelling around the world with some great results.
This year did not really start as I had planned, I picked up a finger injury in January and was out for three months. I felt that this set me back a great deal in my training as it was a very key time in my program. As a result, I missed the first round of the World cup series in South Africa. It was a very disappointing start but come April my injury was all sorted and I was back to training. Being very close to the start of the racing season and I decided that my time was best spent on two training trips to Sam Remo in the north of Italy one with some top UK riders and the other with my new team, Team Abarth MTB.
I was lucky enough to get on a great team this year and their support definitely made training and racing allot easier. It was a great experience to be part of a team with a big name sponsor and ride on Saracen bikes. It gave me a great insight of what being a professional athlete is like and I really feel like I have learnt allot of skills about how to publicise myself.
I was very disappointed to have missed qualifying this year at a few of the World Cup rounds, very frustrating to be out by 0.03 of a second in La Bresse, France. But I have some great results as well as placing 68th and 66th at Mont Saint Anne and Windham and a 62ndat the World cup finals in Val Di Sole. This was good but my goal was to be a lot more consistent in my finishes and place in the top 80 throughout but this is something that I aim to fix for the 2012 season.
Some other highlights for this year have been 4th place at the Nissan European Cup race in La Bresse, France and just last weekend winning the overall Elite title for the Pearce Cycles race series. I goal I had set myself coming in to the year.
Check out this great edit from Morzine between World Cupshttp://www.pinkbike.com/video/214481/.
I would like to thank all my 2011 sponsors and everybody that has supported me during the season. Your support is appreciated and I definitely couldn’t do it without you.
