Well. Haven’t blogged for a while and I’ve been up to a lot over the past few weeks!
I’ve spent the majority of time at home training hard. Mostly in the cold and wind, but got lucky with the weather towards the end of last week. Even managed a 5 ½ hour ride in 25C degrees!
The training was all leading up to a big week of racing. My first races with U23 National Team! The first was to be the U23 Tour of Flanders. Shortly followed by the Cote de Picarde and the ZLM Tour.
It’s now late Sunday afternoon, I’ve been on a 2 hour spin and I’m trying to recover as best I can before Wednesday. Yesterday I competed in my first ever U23 Nations Cup, the Tour of Flanders. Nothing like starting with a bang and what a tough day it was!
We had some luck with the weather. The day started at around 18C but I reckon it could of easily been in the mid 20’s by the start of the race. We had all been informed of a 2km stretch of cobbles, after only 10km of racing. This made for fast nervous racing with everyone fighting for the front of the race. There were 2-3 crashes in this short space of time and lots of sudden braking and dodgy manoeuvres! After a few more crashes through the cobbled stretch, it wasn’t really anything to be worried about. The peloton made it through intact and fast as ever! I managed to keep myself up in the front 30 rides for the first 30-35km and even got off the front in a small group whilst trying to move up. But when the gap was down to 1-2 seconds I sat up and the group ended up going away! Probably for the best anyway, as the wind was pretty strong.
The race passed over some steep climbs in the next few km’s and this continued right until the end of the race. I was pretty knackered after the 60km mark, so I was trying to get some recovery towards the back and stopped worrying about moving up. Bad move. When we reached the first tough cobbled climb I was positioned really badly. In the last 20 riders of about, at this point in the race 100 riders. I made it over the climb, working my way past some of the guys losing contact, but then the cobbled descent was where I came unstuck! Followed a Ukrainian who let the wheel go in front, only by 5-10 metres but at the bottom of the descent it was lined out. I was literally flat out, and wasn’t able to close the tiniest gap you’d usually probably not even consider a gap usually! Over the space of a couple km’s it gradually grew meter by meter until eventually I was screwed!
This was about 115km into the race, so only 50km left!! I was pulled out when I came into the finish circuit with one of the GB lads. Gutted to have not finished, but it could’ve gone a lot worse! I was really nervous coming into the race, as I had no idea how I’d cope at this level of racing. I’m pretty satisfied that I’m at an ok level for a first year U23 and it puts me in a good place in order to build on my strength and endurance!
The other Irish lads, who were part of the team got on well. In the mix of the racing for the whole day and Sean was in the front group coming into the finishing circuit but punctured!! Really disappointing but means there’s good legs ahead of Wednesday’s race in France! Looking forward to it big time and I hope to complete the full distance with hopefully the main bunch!
We’ll see how it goes and I’ll try and keep this updated!
Thanks
Ciao
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