After 13 years out from full time racing Simon West made the decision to get back in the saddle and have another go at racing
Simon is sponsored by CycleSense in Tadcaster where he works as a mechanic and showroom manager. Cyclesense in partnership with Koga kindly sponsored Simon with two bikes, one Koga cyclo-cross bike and one Koga road bike.
Having been the under 23 National road champion and an under 23 County mountain bike champion Simon was keen to give cyclo-cross a go.
Simon knew Cyclo Cross would give him good race fitness for the road season ahead while other riders were just doing the long steady winter miles. Simon scored many top fifteen results in the cyclo-cross league and as the road racing league began , he was in good shape and he went straight into the top fifteen in the road racing. Being a competitive chap, Simon still wanted to do better.
He set himself three goals to achieve before mid-season.
Move up from a 4th category to a 3rd category rider, the second was to win the overall in the Yorkshire circuit race championships and third was to win at least one race. By the time Simon got to round 6 of the championships which was the final he had moved up to a 3rd category rider and he was 2nd in the championships. Simon knew he had to get 5th place or better.
Simon gave it everything he had and took the lead coming into the last corner, sprinting all the way to the finish to take 1st place amd 10 more points to take the overall for the series too.
Simons says " I'm really chuffed that I have achieved my goals so far, this is just the start for me, I'm going to keep this up and conquer some more challenges."
His next goals are the Yorkshire summer series, York City Centre circuit race and the T.L.I National championships.
http://www.cyclesense.co.uk/