GB pursuit rider on recent results and room-sharing with a legend
Saturday 2 January 2016 14:32, UK
The first phase of the 2015/16 track cycling season is now over and it’s fair to say we’ve had a couple of ups and downs in the men’s team pursuit.
It started with us winning the European title in Switzerland last month, which was a hugely satisfying result, but then unfortunately we missed out on a medal at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Colombia a couple of weeks ago.
There's no escaping it: finishing fifth was a disappointment. However, if you look closely at our performances and results, it's easy to see where we went wrong and realise that, despite the outcome, we were possibly the fastest team there.
In the qualifying round we decided to take it steady and that backfired a bit. Lesson learnt. Then in the first round, we went out really hard and were flying, but we weren't able to keep up that pace and cracked in the last couple of laps. Again, lesson learnt.
That left us in the race for fifth place and, this time, we got it absolutely spot on. We rode so well that we were on world-record pace for the first 2km and ended up catching our opponents, Germany, in the last 1km.
If we hadn't caught them - and consequently completed the full 4km - our time would almost certainly have been faster than any of the four teams who contested the medal finals, so that was a massive positive.
So too was hitting world-record pace. We're aiming to break the world record at next summer's Olympics and the World Cup proved to us that we have it in us to do that, even nine months out from the Games.
After Colombia, we headed home for a few days but have since flown out to Tenerife to train for a couple of weeks.
We're based at a hotel halfway up a mountain and while some riders don't like it up here, I quite enjoy it. It's quiet, the weather is decent, the roads are good and you can really get stuck into the training.
The only downside is the Wifi is terrible, so unless you download plenty of boxsets to watch before you fly out, entertainment is a bit thin on the ground.
I'm not sharing a room with Sir Bradley Wiggins this time, but I did at the Tour of Britain in September. That was a surreal experience.
I watched him winning gold medals at the Beijing Olympics back in 2008 when I was just a kid, so to be sharing with him seven years later is bizarre.
He's very meticulous, as you would probably imagine. All of his stuff is neatly folded away and in its place and nothing is a mess, whereas I'm much more a floordrobe kind of guy.
We have also got Mark Cavendish with us on this camp. He is obviously a massive name and a huge personality, but just like when Brad joined back up with our team, he has blended in seamlessly and is just one of the lads. The team bond is really strong and he has only added to it.
We're all now building towards the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in London in March, which will be our next race. There are two more World Cups before then, in New Zealand in December and Hong Kong in January, but we won't be going to either of them due to the fact that they are such long-haul trips. It's in our best interests to stay at home and train instead.
London is a big target, though, and we'll be working hard over the next few months to make sure we're back among the medals in front of a home crowd.
