Ayup everyone, seen as it's Christmas time and approaching the new year, i figured it'd be a good time to reflect and let you know what i'm up to, what's planned and all that. looking back on this year it's gone quickly, i was lucky to end up in a nice town and be surrounded by great, helpful people. Issoire gave me some memorable times and there i met some people i'll always remember. It was a great experience living there and the area of Auvergne is a beautiful place that i will definitely visit again. However, after seven months i was chuffed to be home and the last few weeks have absolutely flown by. Straight after my last race, i took around four weeks off the bike, the first of which i did a camping trip around France with some friends. We visited the ardeche, where we did a 30km canoe trip down an amazing gorge, before visiting st tropez and montpellier among other places. It was great fun and nice to relax after being focused for so long.
I'm back on the bike now and have been for a few weeks, getting the pedals turning for what will be again a tough season next year. I've just got back from lanzarote where i was working very hard to get a kick start into shape ahead of a lot more training for next season. As for where i'm going to end up next season, i have sorted a deal with an Italian team called Sc cene Valseriana. They are a good team based near Bergamo, close to where my brothers team is based and so me and Josh will be sharing an appartment in bergamo and will be riding an almost identical calender starting in mid February.
The new team are on Scott bikes and i'm happy to be continuing to race on a Scott after they were a fantastic sponsor this season, along side Eureka cycles and Eureka cafe. They helped me this year by giving me a Scott addict r2 to ride, it's an amazing bike and i'm very grateful that they gave me the opportunity to ride one this year, so thanks very much to keith and Anne Peek at Eureka and to Scott UK! please follow the links on the side of the page to any of the sponsors that have helped me this year.
Thanks for reading, and i'll update again soon, hopefully with some pictures of interesting happenings while i'm out and about on the bike. Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year!

Now then, it's been a couple of weeks or so back in france now and since the last post i've done three races. They were all criterium races, so two fast hours on the bike. And they were all quite eventful despite the boring courses they were put on. The first took place on the most uninspired course i have ever done, a triangle of long, straight, wide roads. I tried to get away and make a race of it the best i could but it ended in a bunch sprint where feeling fresh i thought why not have a go eh. It was a bad idea, i'm a bloody useless sprinter at the best of times, and this was a particularly dangerous sprint. I sat back with about two hundred meters to go and watched the crashes in front of me from a distance, unfortunately harry had managed to land himself on the ground somewhere in them final meters, and smashed his bike into a few bits.
By the time the next race came around Harry was still healing and was training a small amount on an old bike he borrowed from our good friend Domi "the coach", so he sat this one out. I was motivated however to not end in a bunch sprint, and with a slightly tougher course it was possible, and so i set out early and rode out of my skin in the first hour to get 13 away. Then in the second half it chucked it down, and i was going crap round the corners. Better than five other guys however who chucked themselves on the wet floor leaving 8 of us to contest the finish, two lads got away and then i was third in the sprint, but i was happy to have not gone down after sliding round every corner for an hour.
Next up was Harry's grand return, and in our adopted home town of Issoire. His new bike was ready for about an hour before the start, but this was a very easy race to sit in the peloton, on a course where the are no corners it is like a 1200 meter track round the boulevards of the town. There were a lot of attacks and short lived breaks, sometimes i was in the them, sometimes i wasn't. After a while 9, i think got away and i went in a chase group of six i think. I was working hard to try and catch the leaders, while most of the other lads in the group didn't seem that bothered, so with a lot of work i held them at a minute at 50kph for about an hour, until they eventually they gained a lap, dragging the rest of the peloton with them. That meant all that work was for nothing, the peloton had sat on the break and caught us with two laps to go. i was a bit annoyed and so went for the sprint and was about tenth man back in the peloton.
And that's it, other that i've been training hard and have got a bit of speed after these criteriums. With a few good races coming up, with a bit of luck i should go well...

Ayup, well there's a bit to catch up on. First thing after my last blog was that i got ill and it was bloomin awful, i was stuck in bed for 5 days and it took me another week to recover after that. Still not sure what it was, but it's gone now, so who cares. But it meant two weeks off the bike a short while before one of my big objectives; the national championships.
I did however manage to fit one race in before my return to England, it was a pan flat race and i struggled round, but somehow i made a lucky split not far from the finish and got third from a group of 5. So this gave me a bit of confidence even though my fitness was lacking after being ill.
After this race i crammed in a hard week of training, before heading back in the car from issoire to Leeds which is a darn long way but i was with two friends that had being staying with me for a week, so at least there was someone to talk to. I then had a couple of days before the Otley town centre race, i love this race as it's only a mile or two from my house, and there is always a large crowd with lot's of family and friends on the roadside. The race was a bit frustrating this year though, with the first real break staying away from near the start and every attack from me and my brother being chased by a team mate of the riders in the front. I did feel good though and was never in difficulty so i was happy enough.
The national championships was even more frustrating. I started the race quite far back, and after the neutralized section, the race stayed neutralized by team sky until they decided they wanted to send a few guys up the road. On the small roads and the speed low i was struggling to move up and so didn't see the break go, i then never saw a time check, didn't know how many were up the road, my dad couldn't hear me asking and everyone i asked didn't know. It was a strange race and for the whole thing we were riding slowly and i didn't know what was going on. I left there disappointed, and with my brother in the same situation plus breaking his chain and so not being able to finish it was a rubbish day.
But i am writing this from France and am back concentrated on racing here. I am back training hard and hope for a good second half to the season when i have a new English team mate,Harry. He is a former triathlete and is a very good climber who could do some good things on the hard climbs, we'll see.
The tour de france heads to issoire next weekend, and so i've got a race on friday before a weekend of watching the tour, i'll hopefully get some pictures and put them up here.

Ayup, i'm useless at this blogging! sorry for the inconsistency. It's been a good couple of weeks though, on and off the bike. I've had a few visitors with my brother, his girlfriend and my friends Tom and Harry, we had some good times with bbq's, pedalo boats, and squeezing 5 of us into my small apartment for two weeks! it was good fun and the weather was top notch for pretty much the whole time, so smiles all round.
The first race i did was the stage race organised by my team, i was a bit disappointed at this race because i felt average all weekend, but with 6th,20th and 10th on the three respective stages i managed to come out 4th overall, my third 4th place in three races. The following weekend however was a race that suited me down to the ground; it was a very hard course with 7500ft of climbing in 110km. I felt great on the day and after a flat first half hour or so we reached the first climb it was a hard 4km climb and i went over the top in a group of 7. Eventually after a few hard little climbs, i was away with one other rider and we reached the final climb together. It was a tough one with the first three kilometers at over 17% gradient, and the last 5 kilometers at around 5%. i rode the whole climb alone, and won the race by over two minutes, bagging my first race win in france. I'm pretty chuffed, and with a race that climbs two cols this Sunday i hope i can do a good ride again.
Thanks again to Keith and Ann at Eureka cycles and Scott sports uk, having a great bike that i can rely on has made all the difference, cheers guys!

Ow do! it's been a while; just like when i try to read a book, when i write i have a tendency to feel like falling asleep, so it takes me a while.
Thanks and merci for the comments Joel and Benji. If you fancy reading better written blogs than mine then Joel (joeldavisonracing.blogspot.com) always puts down some good words about his exploits in Belgium. And Benjamin (benjaminolivier.blogspot.com) who is a strong bike rider (that speaks better English than me) from the town of Issoire, and writes about his racing in France in french.
The last couple of weekends were damn good weather and so i went through a few bottles and got some bad tan lines. The races were a little frustrating but went quite well; the first, last weekend, i was in a break with my friend Sebastian and we worked together in the final with him eventually taking the win and me getting killed in the sprint to finish 5th.
This weekend i felt a little better again as i start to get into good shape; and so saturday there was a breakaway of 6 which included my teammate William, so i stayed behind in the peloton, eventually as i felt good, i thought i'd try to bridge the gap after a small climb without bringing too many more riders with me. It took a while with two other riders, but eventually we caught the breakaway; however by this time my friend Sebastian, who is in good shape, had escaped alone and won the race around 5 seconds ahead of my group, where i finished 3rd in the small group sprint, so 4th in the race.
Sunday i felt stronger again and so from early in the race i was in the winning breakaway, and although i tried very hard to escape from the group of six, i couldn't and so was again killed in the sprint to finish 4th, again.
So two weeks and a 5th and two 4th's, although it's not the best places to finish, i feel very good and soon i hope i can win my first race in France (maybe i'll work on the sprint). Next weekend is an important race for my team, it is organised by them and the sponsors that support the team. It is two days with a stage saturday, a time trial on sunday morning, and a stage on sunday afternoon. I've checked out the routes for all the stages and saturday is tough, but the stage on sunday afternoon is very hard with a lot of climbing and so it is here where i hope that i can do a good ride. So there you go, the forms coming good, there are some good races coming up, and on wednesday my brother Josh and his girlfriend Penny are coming to visit for a week, lot's to look forward to!
Also congratulations to Scott who won the lincoln Gp this weekend, looks like he did a cracking ride!
a bientot!

Now then! busy last weekend with the three races back to back, but it was good timing to get me back towards after a week out with a nasty stomach. It started with 130kms on saturday, on mostly flat roads with 4 or 5 steep little climbs and a not too shabby field of riders. It took a while on the rolling roads for a break to get away and so the first half of the race was very quick, eventually it did split and i was driving in the front for most of it. But after around 120kms i hit a wall and blew spectacularly, for the last 10 or so kms i rode with the team car next to me; constantly handing me all the supplies of food and drink they had left, and finished probably a while down on the 20 or so that were in the front.
The following day i had recovered nicely, and started a criterium; that took place in a town centre and was 100 laps of just over a kilometer circuit with 200m of uphill ahead of the finish line. I attacked a lot of times as i usually do and ended up in the front with 8 guys; we lapped the field of 80 quite quickly and annoyingly many of them stayed with our group and were working for their teammates in the breakaway, chasing down everyone of my attacks. It was bloody frustrating and so i ended up sprinting in on the little hill for 3rd; a tidy little result coming back from illness.
The race on monday was a similar situation; a criterium which goes round a circuit so many times you worry for your mental health afterwards. This time i missed the break, but with an attack on the last lap i bridged to it alone and caught the group of ten on the line to finish 11th.
All in all i was happy; i felt better as the weekend went on, i got another podium place, i won some money for the rent in intermediate sprints; and after the weekend i recovered very quickly and feel stronger. I've done some good training these last couple of days coupled with a lot of sleeping, and the good form should eventually have chance to build, i'm trying anyway.
Next weekend i've been told there is not a right lot on, just sunday and a reet long drive to get there by the looks of it. So perhaps i'll take the weekend off and get some training in the mountains done for some of the races more suited to my characteristics in May.
On another note i have seen the time i set on the "steps" climb for eureka cycles has been bettered; well.... i'll be back!

Ayup sorry it's been a while since my last post, there are two main reasons for this; the first is that i have been lazy and the second is that i found a link to watch "the boat that guy built" and so watching this has taken some of my possible blog writing time. Poor excuses i know, but here it is anyway. The weekend before last was the last race i did, and it was a first category race, two hours away on the other side of the mountains to the west. So it was a bumpy drive in the team minibus a bit like the end of "the Italian job" maneuvering a bus round many hairpins with cracking views most of the way. When we set off at about 11 it was 30 degrees and blinding sunshine, however the other side of the summit at super besse was bloomin freezing and raining hard. So we arrived in a miserably wet town which i can't remember the name of and lined up along side 130 other guys who i think were also hoping for better weather judging by the faces, shivering and lack of warm clothing. We all soon forgot about the weather however and got on with the job which took place over 120kms on a 10km circuit, and coming towards the line for the finish i was away with three others with the peloton now split down to about 30 riders about to catch us. i was feeling good this day and i try not to look back at it too much because it's very irritating, but i(because i'm an idiot) thought there was still one lap to go and so didn't sprint (until i saw the lap board with about 20m to go) we were just caught by the peloton and i finished 8th. So we'll forget about this race.
The drive home however was as lovely in the other direction, and of course once we passed super besse on the way home it was 30 odd degrees and blinding sunshine! bloody typical.
The following week was much colder, and maybe it was partly this that led to me getting ill towards the end of the week. Whatever it was i had a few days laid in bed which unfortunately forced me to miss a very good weekend of racing, but woke up on tuesday feeling fresh and ready to hit em hard this weekend.
So there it is, three days of racing this weekend saturday, sunday and monday so plenty of trophy winning opportunities! and plenty to write about...

This week the weather has been awesome, i've been out on the bike tanning in 30 odd degrees every day. Can't complain really, training seems much easier when the weather's like this. At the weekend i had a first category race on Sunday, and with no elite cat race anywhere near, the field was large and a good quality. The first 50kms or so was absolutely pan flat, and so holding position was difficult in a big field but my team mates helped to keep me near the front for this section. A break of 10 or so riders went up the road very quickly but i was in good company with most of the favorites still in the peloton ahead of the five stiff climbs in the last 80kms. On the first climb, which was around 5-6kms all of the favorites were watching each other and one team was setting a moderate pace on the front, so i decided to attack and by the top i was with around 15 guys.
Now i told you that i did a bit of reconnaissance in the week, well i clearly didn't remember the route very well! as we descended there were a few attacks and i was a few seconds ahead with four other guys and the motorbikes who normally do a great job of directing the race, didn't do a great job. And so me and the other four missed a left turn and continued down the decent in the wrong direction for around a kilometer. i was pretty pissed when the guy on the motorbike told us this, so i had a good shout at him and got on with trying to get back to the peloton, it was a fair task, but i was on a damn good day, and after climbing back up, doing the decent( and having to stop after almost going wrong again) climbing the next 5km climb in the big ring alone after i'd got rid of the others, the team car came back and gave me a tow back up to the peloton which had regrouped behind the break of 10. At this point i was pretty stuffed and it was less than a kilometer to the next 5km climb, but i managed to hang in with the front group here and we were closing in on a break-away which was depleting in numbers. after this we had two steep 2km climbs which i was managing to feel better on and so gave an attack on the last climb, we separated to 5 guys over the top but a large amount of rain had fallen on the decent just ahead of us, so we were forced to crawl through the last 5km and it regrouped a bit. In the end i came in just behind the 5 remaining breakaway riders in a group of around 20 and ended up 16th.
It was frustrating as i felt good, but it must be difficult for the motorbikes to cover every turning and obstacle in a point to point race and so like everyone they will make mistakes sometimes, i just wish they wouldn't affect me.
Ah well same again next weekend except the course isn't as challenging, but i'm starting to get some form so i'll give it a good dig.
a bientot!

Fatigué

This week i'm mostly doing very little other than eating and sleeping which i've been very busy with, after last week which was a very hard week of training followed by two races at the weekend. The first race on Saturday was the gp st. etienne which is about as bigger race as you get as an amateur in France in the elite catagory, so i had expected it to be hard as well as pretty hilly. It was hard and it was pretty hilly, there were a lot of attacks on the climb which was done four times, some of which were done by me, but nothing stayed away and so it ended in a bunch sprint won by a fella called Yannick Martinez. i felt ok though and so went home content with how i had ridden although a little disappointed. it was however nice to see some other English guys at the race in the shape of My good friend Jack Kirk, and Kieren Frend who i haven't raced since first year junior, it proves it was an unlucky day for the English, when both of them withdrew after crashing or being caught behind a crash, which i can understand after what was a very sketchy race.
The following day was a first rather than elite category and so the field, although still a good level with 140 riders was not a demanding as the day before, and it took place on a rolling course so not usually the kind of terrain that would suit me. But as luck would have it i ended up in the right place at the right time and was in the front group of twelve after a hard section where the race split to pieces. unfortunately it was the work of one team which caused this split and i ended up with seven of them in the front group, and with no real climbs it was difficult to split it up. Never the less i tried and eventually after a number of rain soaked, wind swept kilometers i was in front with two riders of the same team who persisted to attack and counter attack me all the way to line, and i ended the race in third. It was disappointing not to win, but i finished the weekend happy that i was getting into fitness ahead of some of the more mountainous races which i have targeted a bit further into the season.
But for now i'm a little tired and so am watching lot's of my favorite show "how i met your mother" while outside it seems to be getting all the rain for the rest of the year out of the way as i do that, perfect.
Just the one race this weekend a first cat which comes close to where i live, so i did a recon yesterday with some local guys. The last half of the race is pretty lumpy with some tough climbing near the finish, hopefully i'll be nicely recovered for that one.

the season begins...

..a little later than planned as There was a problem with my application for a racing licence, but better late than never. There has also been a bit of time without a blog as my new apartment didn't have internet and that took some time to sort out.
But here it is my first blog from Issoire, and so far it's been great here the town is right in the mountains of the massif central so training here is great, there are a few good guys to train with and it has been great fun exploring a new place and finding new roads to ride on. The team is great as well, they have all tried to make me feel welcome and on Saturday we had our first race together.
The race was an elite category race with a 5km climb which we climbed 5 times. It was hard work and i made a good race of it and was always on the attack on the climb, but my fitness isn't quite there yet, and there was a headwind on the climb which made it difficult to separate the group and so i ended the day around 15th.
On Sunday i was at it again, this time in a criterium, a 2.2km flat circuit done 40 times. This kind of race is never great for me, but was perfect as training to get into race fitness, and again i made a race of it always racing aggressively, but couldn't prevent a bunch sprint and finished in the peloton.
Not a great weekend for results but i got a lot from the weekend and am continuing to train hard. Next Saturday is the GP St Etienne elite race which looks very tough, so i'm hoping to go well there, and the following day is a mostly flat first category race, so that should help get me to top form.

Whats new....

Sorry it's been a while, but it's been busy and exciting times in the Edmondson household, i promise future updates will be very much more regular than they have been recently. Since the last post training has gone well and i am getting close to being ready for the new season. Also me and my brother have been lucky enough to be sponsored by SueMe, who have provided us with some great casual clothing which has been excellent. You rarely spot us without our (very warm) SueMe hoodies and very comfortable t shirts, and of course i never leave for a bike ride without a buff around my neck and usually under my helmet, they cannot be beaten, an excellent product. I'll get some pictures up soon, until then follow the link on the side of the page and check it out.

Eureka!!!!!

Most cyclists in Britain have heard of the Eureka cyclists cafe in Chester as it's been running for over 77 years and as far as cafes go it's pretty awesome. But yesterday i visited the cafe for the first time, and it lived up to it's legendary status. Owners Keith and Anne are great guys and were kind enough to spend the day fueling me on toasties and excellent coffee before taking me for a bike ride in the surrounding countryside, and for a tour of their bike shop; Eureka cycle sports. The shop was as great as the cafe and had a great stock including Scott bikes, which i am excited to say will be my bike sponsor for this season. I am looking forward to my partnership with Eureka Scott and hope you will follow the links at the side of the page to check out the great things they have to offer. Throughout the season i will post through this blog events that we will do together and updates on the Eureka bike shop and cafe.

Happy new Year!!

Welcome to 2011 and to my new blog, this year i will be based in Issoire for the racing season and will keep you updated with my progress throughout the year.
My training got off to a good start in December after my winter break, when i spent 10 days in Lanzarote getting in the miles with some top guys and my brother, who were all staying at club la santa, which proved to be a perfect destination for chilling out after long days in the saddle. We came back to again face the challenge of training in the snow. So most of the days in the close run up to christmas were spent freezing my ass off on the mountain bike. Fortunatly, i just happen to live in The awesome Yorkshire valley of Wharfedale. And so with the combination of a great selection of off road trails, beautiful scenery, and great people to train with, such as my brother and the Brownlee brothers, the snow passed pretty quickly.
This led me up to christmas, which was spent at home with the family, relaxing, and eating....alot.
And so now, the snow has pretty much melted so some good Yorkshire Dales miles have been done, and preparations for 2011 are going well,so lets hope for a good year all round.