Good legs, nowhere to go.

The temperature finally hit the big 30 (that’s degrees, not Fahrenheit or Kelvin) and in most ways it was much appreciated. It’s nice to ride around in the sun, very enjoyable indeed, much better than riding around in the snow. The problem is living in such temperatures. As we are situated in a roof space apartment, the sun shines in all day heating the place up like an oven with me and Tom being a couple of turkeys in for a roast, all be it skinny ones with not much meat (well I know I’m built like a train but Toms more like a stick). This means we spend most of time our walking around wearing as little clothing as possible and breaking a sweat under the lightest of exercise, quite an image I know but don’t get too overwhelmed. It also makes sleeping rather difficult, sheets definitely aren’t necessary, a fan would be more appropriate. You wake up at some ungodly hour with your pillow and sheets soaked, peel yourself off, roll over and try to get to sleep again. This is one of the few downsides to the weather being good and if it stays like this, I’m willing to put up with it. In other news my resting heart rate finally dropped below 40 to 38 for the first time ever, be it after much deep breathing and only for a couple of seconds. But it was the first time I’ve ever seen my heart rate in the thirties so I considered it quite an achievement.

The legs felt great riding this week and I was really looking forward to the racing knowing I had something there. Some form usually comes after about 3 weeks of a stage race for me and it had been 3 weeks since the Essor Breton. The first was a local crit of about 80km run off as a points race, the second a short rolling road race at 120km. Me and Tom were determined to do well in at least one of these races as we both felt ok and so coming into the weekend we were both “mega psyched”. On the Saturday the crit was just under and hours ride away and because of this, we decided to ride there... On the way we passed a temperature gauge that told us it was 30 degrees, 20 minutes later we passed another that told us it was 22 degrees. The temperature had dropped 8 degrees and it was getting windier, in the distance we could see a dirty great cloud that was obviously spilling out rain in the direction we were going. I started to see flashes of lightening in the distance and it began to get darker. Perfect. It hadn’t started raining when we arrived; it only started doing that 10 minutes before the depart and boy did it rain...and thunder....and lightening, not necessarily in that order. They delayed the start by 10 minutes and the rain started to relent, my shiny white socks were still ruined after 7 seconds of riding though.

We started fast; Tom decided to attack from the gun and stayed away for a few laps. I countered a few times when it came back together but not much happened. The race had sprints every 10 laps with points for the first 4, Tom managed to get up there for the first one so I decided rather than riding around finishing nowhere in the sprints I’d help Tom try and win it. This involved chasing down many an attack and making it tough coming into the sprint so no one tried to get away. Luckily I had the legs to do this and Tom managed to get up there in most of the sprints. Unfortunately there was a particularly strong German that insisted on ruining it for us. The rain eased off and the race dried out making the course nice and fast, but with three quarters of the race down I was starting to get tired from all this chasing and working. Tom managed to get up there in the final sprint and ended up second overall which was a relatively satisfying result for all involved, although we all wanted the win.

Sunday was my target though, I had great legs on the Saturday and was hoping I could carry it through and pull off my own good result, I knew it was possible. I wrote down the GPM points on my hand and remembered where they all were in relation to the finish as it was an “en ligne” race rather than laps. I studied the start sheet meticulously, scouring the past weeks results and comparing names, noting anyone I thought might be dangerous. I tried to prepare myself as well as possible to give myself every chance. Once the race had started I could feel my legs from the day before, but this was to be expected. They were still good legs and coming into the first and hardest climb of the day I was well positioned at the front of the bunch with a small break just up the road. I followed a hard attack, but not all out, I could see this hill was going to go on for at least another kilometre so I saved a little. It helped as I caught a few people who had killed themselves to go with the move, a few of the better climbers were riding away though and going over the top I was towards the back of the front group. A few people sprinted past me over the top and I wanted to follow, but that was a damn hard hill I had just come up and I didn’t want to sprint just yet. If only I had, a small group formed just ahead (and I mean literally 50 metres) after the climb and that was it, race over.

Obviously I didn’t know this at the time as for a long long while it looked like it might come back, as is the way in bike racing. But also as is the way in bike racing, it stayed away, much to my annoyance and disappointment. At first I made many attempts to try and get across sometimes with others, sometimes on my own, but was continuously chased by teams with riders in the break. After a while I decided it was pretty fruitless and sat in which is about when the Kazakh “Olympic (junior) academy” started chasing as they had failed to put a rider in the front group. Unfortunately they weren’t particularly strong and although they held the gap at just under a minute they couldn’t pull it back and eventually many of them blew. My group split up a little towards the end as the last third of the race was spent trying to form a group that might jump across in the closing stage. Unfortunately this was everyone’s idea and every time I went people were determined to follow. After a while a small group formed ahead of us and we were getting towards the end of the race, although I had no idea how close we were. Then suddenly we turned right and there was a 300metres to go sign. Were the hell did that come from? Not even a 1km to go flamme rouge, let alone a 10km to go sign. Our group carried out its hasty sprint for the minor placings, but at this point I wasn’t particularly fussed where I finished, I ended up 29^th. Tom had managed to get in the break and finished a good 5^th.

I felt pretty annoyed with myself after the finish, but probably because I expected a lot out of the race and didn’t get it. It’s even more frustrating knowing you could have done better than having done your best and still been used to wipe the floor. Oh well, I’ll know better than to expect a result next time and take the race as it comes.

Until the next time,

Näkemiin