Jennings also spent some time in Gent during his world tour (Image credit: Cameron Jennings)
In his newest diary entry Cameron Jennings recaps the travel odyssey he had with his Irish team Pezula Racing just getting to China for the Qinghai Tour.
Well, last time I wrote I was sitting patiently in the Heathrow airport waiting to see if our Plan G, by this stage was going to work. Dublin airport had been shut down the day before due to radar malfunction and our flight to London and then China had been canceled then subsequently missed.
Our flight was then changed to the following day and phone calls were made to all the right people and we landed in Xining, China 8pm Friday evening, missing the prologue, but allowed to start the first stage the next morning. Was tired that night and eventually slept well, but the idea of racing the first stage of a 10-day Tour at 2200m with the finish of the stage being at 3300m, accompanied with jet lag and the fact we had been sitting around hotels and airport lobbies for almost three days before the race kept me uneasy. Not recommended
So we turned up at breakfast the next day to a range of bewildered looks from the other riders. Met a few of the old friends in the form of Matt Rice and Rhys Pollock and headed back to my hotel room that I had just acquainted myself with in a matter of hours before and got ready.
I knew from previous editions (fourth time to Qinghai) how my body was going to react and how long it needed to feel anything like close to normal and that was usually five to seven days at this altitude. So with this in mind we all headed out on the first road stage from Xining to Qinghai Lake Hotel via 40km or so of climbing...
Well, first day down and we all got through. Apart from feeling completely void of any strength and some dizzy spells some five kilometres from the top of the climb I found my group along with Martin and Willy and got to the finish. Ciaran and Kieren had a better day and finished only three minutes down on the front and Morgan and Derek lived to fight another day. For the next couple of days I just continued to go through the motions and get to the line each day. Doing a little bit here and there, but nothing more should or could have been expected of us.
