Hi Guys, Dan here. It’s been a fair while since my last post. But not without good reason. Things have been busy over here with some interesting projects on the go, some hard work in training and a holiday stuck somewhere in the middle.

As I sit down to write this it’s Sunday evening and the Tour de France has just finished. I think that it’s fair to say that this years Tour has been a vintage one with some negatives, but even more positives and a result that went all the way down to the wire.

First and foremost, the team at Chain Therapy would like to offer their congratulations to Chris Froome and to Team Sky. Although the pundits and commentators were talking about him having wrapped up halfway through the second week it seemed clear that no one at Sky were resting on their laurels. And it was probably just as well, how impressive was Quintana in the last few mountain stages?

We can’t forget of course that the women also had their turn on the Champs Elysees before the Tour came through with the La Course race, won by Anne Van Der Breggen after a courageous solo attack in awful conditions.

I won’t go in to too much detail here, after all this isn’t a race report and I certainly won’t be talking too much about the negativity that seems to have followed Sky and Froome this year throughout Le Grand Boucle all I will say is that I’m not altogether surprised. And I think it puts in to perspective the degree of damage that a certain American has done to our fine sport. It’s going to be a long time before that is forgotten and wins are taken on their merit.

Enough about that. What’s it got to do with where I’ve been? Well, i headed out to France myself at the beginning of July, and along with getting some fantastic early summer miles in with a friend, topping up my tan and eating very well we went to watch the end of stage 7 in Fougeres, the only stage this year that was won by Mark Cavendish. And what a win it was! I’ve been watching Cav since he first started winning major races and I think that I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve seen him THAT determined. No one was beating him that day.

As well as being a holiday, the trip was also training for the Prudential Ride London event which I have somewhat foolishly signed up for. I’ve got 7 days now before the event. I should be ok, hopefully! I’m doing it to raise money for Leonard Cheshire Disability, with whom I have been fundraising through work since April.

I have a justgiving page set up. It would be fantastic to step closer to my £700 target.

A 160km sportive (180km if you include the ride from and back to the car) is a bit of a departure from my aim of Crit racing over an hour or less at the beginning of the season. I’ll be returning to that post Ride London. I think it’s fair to say that I got a bit of a wake up call at my first race, so I’ve been training hard so that I (hopefully) don’t get shown up so badly in the future. More of that next time.

Anyway, that’s enough of me for now. My next update will hopefully be after my triumphant completion of the longest ride of my cycling career to date. Next Sunday. Maybe.

Keep your eyes peeled.

Dan.