Dani King: Living the dream and ready for Manchester

• Tuesday, 15 February 2011
• Cycling Weekly
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Dani King wins again in Belgium

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20-year-old Dani King is one of the brighest talents on the British cycling scene, with a national criterium and madison title to her name. The Horizon Fitness rider will be blogging for CW over the course of the season.

Following a pretty busy road season, things haven't gotten any quieter for me. Since November I've been training with the Great Britain track team in Manchester. 

I've been focusing on the team pursuit which has been not only a fantastic experience, but also a huge opportunity to move forward in the sport that I'm looking to grab with both hands.

There's a group of eight riders in the team pursuit group working together with Paul Manning.  Ultimately we're all working towards London 2012. 

Recently I've found out that I have been named in the squad for the Manchester World Cup so that is my next goal. If selected (I could still be a reserve) to compete this will be the biggest competition I've ever taken part in on the track.

Although I'll be nervous I'm also really excited to see how fast we can go! We're going really well in training and I hope we can transfer that into top class competition in front of a home crowd. 

Initially I was travelling up to Manchester weekly to take part in two track sessions a week; however, since Christmas I've been living in the Academy flats based four miles from the track with the other GB cyclists. This helps a huge amount with being able to relax and recover after training. 

I've been "living the dream": everything has been about cycling and I've really been able to focus 100% and recover properly in order to get the most out of my training.

Among all of these track commitments, I've also been settling into my role with Horizon Fitness RT who I'll be with for the next two years. We recently got a majority of the team together for a seminar on Nutrition at CNP Professional in Manchester. 

As well as learning a lot, it was great to be with the team and be able to make plans for the road season ahead.  This helps me feed valuable information to my coach Courtney Rowe. 

When I'm not on the track he helps me on a daily basis giving me advice and guidance which is great as he knows me so well as a rider and person. If I'm worried that I'm not feeling great he'll reassure me that it's ok and the next day I'll be flying.

As well as my winter track focus, I have plenty of ambitions on the road for 2011. After the World Track Championships at the end of March I'll be joining straight up with my road team in Italy for the first team training camp of the year that Horizon Fitness Racing Team are doing.

It'll be a great chance to see my old team mates again and also get to know the new members of the team. We'll also be working with Jamie Burrow at the Mpire Cycling Centre who'll be passing on a lot of racing knowledge to us all. 

So fingers crossed I'll come away with more skills to help me improve on my results from 2010 and also help the team to have another successful year.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog with Cycling Weekly and look forward to you reading about my journey in the near future!