Where am I really , and the first race of many

Illness never seems to pick a good time and boom there it was just as things where getting to the point I get to finally race, two ways of looking at it, one - it's the first time I've been ill all winter so it's a bonus since we have been pushing me hard and building strongly , two - I get to plan a stronger comeback when I'm fully better and do some of the bits I just haven't found time to do.

First race is ment to be Sunday the 22nd on the lumpy U17 , a course that doesn't suit me really but a good test course and a good time to see where I am.

Where am I is a great question , we have been changing so much it's hard to tell until we finally get out there and get racing , the training has been going great it's something that is in the back of my mind really as I know if I hit the sessions set that side is very well covered so it's a good place to be on that , 

New bike , which we haven't had any setup time on so will be really good to get some ride time in and really start hitting training on the tte.

So as for where I am it's a pretty unknown , we know what I can do in training , what the potential is but it's still got to be all put together , but this is what early season racing is all about ,finding my feet and getting everything in place for the rest of the season.

So my flo cycling front wheel made its trip over the water safely and I'm very impressed with it , it's very obvious that a lot has gone into the wheel , it has a shape that really shows how the newer wheels have moved on , the bulge mid way down the rim smooths off to a rounded inner rim , gone are the harsh sharp edges , the hub is pretty minimal and the bearings very smooth and spins brilliantly , the coolest bit is something I think was just done as a design choice which is the black braking surface which looks really smart and I prefer that over a carbon surface that can be a tad jumpy in the wet , 

The veloflex record 22mm clinchers fits perfectly on the rim and gives a very smooth transaction between tyre and rim, I really want to test the new specialized turbo cotton 24mm but I think the veloflex will take some serious beating .

I'm writing thinking there are a million things I'm forgetting, seems so much is going on at the moment and I'm super keen to just get my head down and race , nutrition with jwnutrition is going great , today it's at 77.5kg which is the lowest I've been at since I started racing 3 years ago and I've never felt better, we are recovering better and hitting sessions stronger , I'm still making a few mistakes with nutrition but Ive improved massively from where I was and getting better all the time.

Fingers crossed that the TTE is here Wednesday which will give us basically 3 days to get it set up and tested before Sunday's race but I'm sure we can get it sorted ( again fingers crossed ) using Di2 will be pretty cool but I will be running it with mechanical shifting for a few reasons which I will go into when we are fully set up , will be a race without a power meter as well as I'm waiting to sort hopefully a set of Rotor  power cranks , so the first race will be a crazy one but hey I will just go out and give it everything and see what happens :) 

The mission now is to get better and try not to miss anymore training , this is probably the busiest week of the winter coming up,so much to sort and get ready , you wouldn't think I've had about 4 months to get ready for the first race :)