Quick update

Hi guys, after the hustle and bustle of TDU, Lisa's Mum has been packed off to a sunlounge in the Carribbean and I'm back. Phew. Let me tell you, wrestling the keyboard off Mum was no easy matter. She'll be back soon but for now I thought a brief race update might be in order.

In just over a week's time I'm off to NZ for the Tour of NZ, a 5-day, 6 stage tour in the North Island. Following the nationals road race I was invited to join the national talent id/development team for the tour. I'm pretty pumped and the team looks pretty darn awesome. The last 6 weeks or so since nationals have been a lot of hard work and I'm really pleased with where my form is at. It'll be a tough tour and there are a lot of top class riders going so I'm looking forward to it.

My race calendar after that will depend on how NZ goes, but it's likely I'll take it easy for a week or so to recover before starting on the domestic racing season. There are some good races coming up early in the year like the Baw Baw Classic and the Aust mtb marathon champs.

In other news, the lovely Andrew is being sent to Canberra for work for the next few months, and so from late March-ish I'll be doing a fairly regular weekly commute between Canberra and Melbourne to spend as much time with him up there as possible in between work. I haven't done a lot of riding up there yet and I've heard it's great, both for mtb and road. I'm looking forward to checking it out and catching up with the Canberra cycling chicks who are still in town.

Thanks, as always, to the sponsors whom I'm looking forward to representing for another year, in particular major sponsors Fitzroy Revolution, Australian Sports Commission and High5/Fastgear. I've been trying out some of the new High5 products - in particular a newbie called 'Zero', a zero sugar electrolyte tablet, which has been fantastic for Summer training when you need to be hydrated without taking on too much sugar. My other favourite of the moment is their Energy Bars, which are basically pressed fruit. They've just changed their recipe and they are AMAZING. And they don't melt in your pocket or break your jaw. Winner winner, chicken dinner.

And finally - today in training, I headed out with some of the TE bunch to do the 'crucifixion' in the Dandenongs - 4 major climbs over 5 hours. We did almost 2500m of vertical climbing and don't my legs know it now! I'll keep most of the stats for the mathematicians but we did a 15:20 up the 1 in 20 which is a PB for me by a fair way. At one point we were sitting on 38.5kph on the false flat section - I had to look at my speedo twice.

Stay safe and stay pedalling
Gunz