Pre Tour of Friendship

Sitting down on my bed of the race hotel room, I still couldn't quite believe I'm going to race the tour of friendship this year. After missing out on the pass few editions due to school exams, and almost not being able to come this year because of management reason, here I am ready to start the first stage prologue, which is a 7km individual time trial, tomorrow.

The journey here wasn't at all pleasant as we couldn't find the pick up at the airport where the organisers had arranged. Instead, Raymond and I took a cab which cost us a total of 1500 baht. By the time we reached our hotel it was already 2am. We decided to order room service as we were feeling hungry. We finally got to sleep at 3plus. Hopefully this doesn't really screw up our biological clock too much for the next few days. Woke up quite early today as the sun was shining in straight at my face. We went down for breakfast and saw Dirk, Robert, Boi and a few others. We decided to go for an "easy" ride at 9.30am for a small loop around the hotel. The easy ride turned out to be a fast ride. Clearly everyone was in great shape for this race and were all impatient to show it off. After that Dirk, Raymond and I went to Platinum mall for lunch. It wasn't a very good choice as the journey took us 2hrs and 400baht, just for a meal. Race briefing in the evening started 1.5hrs late and we wasted our time waiting. Hopefully this doesn't happen too frequently in the next few days. There are quite a number of big teams in the open category and I will be racing alone against them.

Though preparations for this race was shared between my preparation for school exams, I feel that I've done what I could and I am definitely feeling good for this race. I am giving nothing short of a 100% for the next few days. I have talked the my coach Adrian few days ago and he had given me the motivation and encouragement that I need. If I want to go serious into cycling, I would need to start showing some results. And this is the kind of race that I should already be doing well in. So he and I have both agreed that I should be going for the overall win. It might seem like a daunting task, but I am certainly up for the challenge! Whatever happens so be it. But 1st is what I'm going for! To do that I would need to race smartly and ride safely. I believe I can, and I will not let the past few months of efforts and sacrifice to wasted. The time has come for me to prove myself....