Roger the Dodger.

My life - who I am, where I live, where I studied, what I do, has been influenced by a man I don't know, have never met, and yet have aspired to be like since I was a teenager. It's a funny thought, that if not for a chance meeting with his former coach I probably wouldn't have ended up being who I am today.

Roger Hammond was a professional cyclist with the Garmin-Cervelo team last year. This year he fell between the rungs of the cycling career ladder and hasn't secured a contract to race for any team. Most articles I've read seem to accept this as his unofficial retirement, a low-key fanfare-less departure from his sport from a quietly respected man. When I was 15 Roger rode for the Collstrop team, a tiny Belgian outfit who occasionally surfaced in the classics, and over the winter he was the UKs big name star at cyclo-cross. To me, he was the coolest guy on wheels - I might have been the only teenager in the world training in my replica Collstrop-Pallmans jersey and pretending to be him as I hit the 30m stretch of decorative cobbles in my town's high street. Both times that I've ridden the Roubaix Sportive I've imagined it's his wheel, not Cancellara or Boonen, that I'm fighting to hold on to.

When I was 16 I decided to reduce my training load and increase my study so I could aim for a decent university. One day this old chap took me to one side at the Eastway and said "You should go to Brunel, my lad Roger Hammond went there and he got a degree and has a career as a cyclist". Later that day I raced the last road race that I consider with a sense of pride, finishing at the front of the bunch a half wheel behind another of the Essex boys, and I went home, put my head in my books, and focused on the future (mostly...).

Meeting this guy and talking about where to study and the idea of a work-life-cycle balance changed a few things in my head. My hero-worship for Mr Hammond moved from aspirational to inspirational, and I began to follow the path from teenager to adult. I studied at his former University, trained on the roads he grew up on, and eventually grew into the man I am today. Lots of people have impacted me and the direction my life has gone, but none in such a passive, yet enormous, way.

These days I don't ride bikes much; I have no storage and work more hours than seem appropriate. But I still live in area I moved to back then, and I still follow Hammond's career with interest. Every so often the newest issue of Rouleur magazine drops through my door, and I devour the photos and stories about cycling greats of yesteryear. It was with excitement, but also some sadness, that I saw this issue's article on Roger Hammond. Ned Boulting's article is great and reminds me of why I thought Roger was awesome, but to my mind British cycling will be losing an incredibly important rider with Hammond's retirement. I might no longer have my yellow, maroon, and green replica jersey, but for me he will always be an integral part of British cycling's rebirth and modern success.

Of all the cyclists I have cheered on, Roger Hammond is the one I'd most like to grab a beer with. Not just because he's been successful and is awesome, but because he seems genuinely interesting, hard working, and honest.

Wheely good time

Today is the day we've been waiting for. After a winter of stories about the Blue Egg, twitter photos of sunnier climes, and British Pros thinking about the weather, it is finally time to get going with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the first of the classics (look here for twitter updates).

So, the first cobbled race of the year, the first Belgian hilly race, and the first race where we can start to see the real form of the Pros that will be taking victories this April. So, here is a brief run down of my predictions for today's race:

Tom Boonen.
Tommeke has been quiet for a few seasons now, he's been off form to what we all had grown to expect, and even with respectable finishes in the Classics he's been doing less than he wanted. In Qatar we saw than Boonen is back - two stages, and two jerseys won mean that Tommy is riding like himself again, and I hope that today will show him.

Heinrich Haussler.
I don't know what this is actually based on, but the buzz is that HH is riding again too. His name has appeared on my Twitter feed increasingly, despite a relatively quiet and low profile off season, and I am pretty interested to see what these rumours can do. Inrng have him down for a sprint win, if it comes to it, and I think I'd like to see that.

Juan Antonio Flecha.
The eternal nearly man in the classics, Flecha has spent most of his career looking wistfully towards to podium's top step, but only occasionally gets to stand up there himself. Another off-season with Sky where he has trained himself into the ground, and now we get to see if this year maybe it's all paid off. I hope it has.

I am so excited!

Clenbutador

Alberto Contador won the 2010 Tour de France. It was also the last Tour of French rider Christophe Moreau, the last (I believe) survivor of the Festina Affair to be racing at the top level. Yesterday Alberto Contador joined another list with M. Moreau as he was stripped of his title and given a drug ban.On the rest day of that Tour his urine showed traces of the drug clenbuterol, precipitating a drawn out inquiry by the Court for Arbitration in Sport that cycling really didn't need.

Food contamination was the official line that Team Contador peddled for the last 18 months. But the different theories that have been used have told the world plenty about the state of cycling since a car bearing the logo of a French Watchmaker was found to be filled with drugs in 1998.

• Contador ate steak that was contaminated with the drug. He was innocent of any wrongdoing but a farmer out there somewhere let questionable meat into the food chain and our protagonist was unlucky to have eaten it and to have been drug tested afterwards. He's a victim.
  
  Or...
• Contador has been taking clenbuetrol as a bronchodilator or decongestant. Sure, there isn't a huge amount of gain to be had from the small amounts found in his urine, but as the Team GB aerodynamic wheel-nuts have taught us, a few tiny benefits really add up at the very top levels of the sport
  
  Or...
   
• Whether it was his own blood in the off season or someone else's they shouldn't have taken clenbuterol so soon before it was removed. Because the body is so slow to remove this particular drug there was still some left when his rest-day transfusion went through.

I don't know which scenario is most accurate, or most likely, but CAS weren't taking any chances. I don't really like Contador, there's something about him that I just didn't believe. But I'm willing to accept that I don't know and not write a little hate campaign here. So for now let's accept. Contador is a remarkable talent, who rode fastest back in 2010 and whose ban lets him back on the road this season.

Yesterday I didn't give much attention to that. The day before Tomeke won in Qatar and I couldn't be happier to for the upcoming battles in Flanders and that suburb of Lille.

Last Days, First Days

Tomorrow I finish work at my job. Since last autumn I've been working as part of a small team at a cargo handling company.

On Monday I start my new job - a 3 month placement in a children's accident and emergency department.

There will be more than a little bit of a difference between the two jobs, but I'm hoping that four month spent auditing accounts, identifying revenue leaks, and writing reports that will potentially change the operating procedures. My new job will be days and nights of helping whoever walks through the door whilst trying to learn as much as possible and get the hang of new skills and techniques.

I haven't been writing much lately, because before I get back into my real life I'm working full time to earn some money to fund my travel, food, and coffee bills. Very soon I hope to be writing more again, and I'll be discussing work and life and all that stuff.

So, I am sorry that I'm not actually meeting the definition of "A Blogger" right now but I'm sure I will soon. For now, I give you the song that I am most likely to be humming to myself when I leave the hospital after a shift:

A brief break

Dear startling plentiful readership,

I have been having some sad problems of late, and they have been making me less productive and less Bloggy than normal.

I am hoping that with exams out of the way and some actual life to be living I will return to normal soon, but if you're wondering where I am, then this is the answer!

So, I will leave you with this completely awesome photo directly stolen from the awesome CyclingTipsBlog's coverage of the TDU criterium apptly entitled Welcome to Radelaide, and we'll speak soon.