Steady going and some successes.

Training has been good lately. I've managed to put down solid sessions one after another. My legs are starting to feel more and more tired, but for a good reason. I'm quite happy with the current status of my training as I can do and recover from series of hard training sessions.

This weekend, to spice up the training, I rode in the national omnium championships. It consist of six different disciplines; three of those are ridden against the clock (for my liking) and three of those are ridden man against other fellas (not quite my thing). I got my first Omnium medal finishing second after two days of racing. A good friend of mine, Mika Simola, took his first national champion's jersey today – many congratulations Mika! My performances were reasonable and steady in all events. I tried to ride my ass off in every event, in which, I think I succeeded. I didn't skip one turn in the front during the weekend! Although, the real deal for me was the timed events, which as well were ok if not good considereing the current training load. Maybe I seemed to underperform timewise in the flying 250m in comparison to my earlier efforts, but as some great athletes say: ”This is just part of the process”.

The 4k individual pursuit was the most important event for me this weekend. It turned out to be the most technically solid performance I've ever ridden. For the first time I nailed the set timetable just as planned, which was a real joy for me. The time was okay aswell. The last discipline was the kilo, which was tough as hell, but still flat 69s was a good performance to wrap the weekend of racing up. The silver medal was a really really nice bonus for the weekend!

Ok then, say something about the bunch races... Well, the first target was to come out alive from each of the races, which I managed. Secondly, in each race I finished in top five, which pleased me. Thirdly (and most importantly), I rode my ass of in every race. ”Not bad”, I would say as a conclusion.

No time for a break now though. I'll keep on training hard and next weekend is the national champs in pairs' time trial and right from the finish line I'll leave for a ferry to Sweden to race in U6 stage race (six days of racing).

More success was last Tuesday, as I got the final results from university. It was probably one of my proudest moments to find out that I got First class degree (meaning an average of A overall) and an A15 from my dissertation. I can't really say how good it felt!