After a year of hard racing, I finally reached the end of my first year racing overseas, and slipped down a notch into 'off season' mode.

  The 'off season' refers to the time at the end of the racing season in which a cyclist will not ride his or her bike at all. Instead they will partake in other activities, if anything at all. In this instance, I did nothing at all for three whole weeks! Some cyclists will take anything from three weeks off, to an entire month.

The off season helps your body recuperate both physically and mentally. In fact, the mental recovery is by far more important than the physical part in my opinion. It gets a bit hard to get onto your bike and train, if mentally you don't want to. After all, your mind controls your body! So I've really tried to relax as much as possible over the past three weeks. But my rest has come to an end, and I have now resumed my training.

Starting off with some short social rides, I intend to build up to an appropriate level of fitness before I start my proposed training camp in January with the Konica Minolta Squad. From then on, the intensity of racing on most weekends will take care of the rest of my fitness, which I will compliment with some gym and core strength work throughout the year. It sounds ideal if everything goes according to plan....