After a month of solid racing I now have a chance to catch my breath in Switzerland for a couple of weeks training and 2 elite Swiss races.
The first was a one day 2 stage tour on Saturday and the other is a one day race I have coming up in a few days.
The first race was called Gp Gansingen went quite well you could say ;). It was pissing with rain but still a good 20 degrees so wasn’t so bad on the legs. The first stage was a 12 lap circuit race with a 1.7km hill which was really steep. The group stayed pretty much together besides a few little attacks for the first 4 laps. Just before the hill on the 5th lap myself and 3 other riders broke away and had a 10 or 15 second buffer going into the hill, and with the 4 of us working well together we held them off and put time into the group by the top of the hill. The next 6 laps were pretty standard, 4 riders came across to us a couple of laps later and we all worked well together and established a big lead on the peleton. With the winding wet roads I knew holding the peleton off was going to be easy. I won all the primes for the king of the mountains jersey with ease and I thought my biggest competition would have been the Columbian rider form the UCI team but he seemed to be dropping every time I put a little acceleration in, which was great for my morale.
Coming into the final time up the hill my plan was to hit the hill right from the bottom full gas and try and drop everyone as I seemed to be the strongest rider on the hill. Coming round the corner before the hill started I was 2nd wheel on the Columbian. He started to accelerate on the flat and this was perfect for me because it strung us all out before the hill making it even easier for me to drop the riders. I did however; never get a chance to attack because I spent the next 1.7km sucking in air for dare life as I tried to hold the Columbians wheel. He was so strong and after only 500 meters of the hill everyone was gone and it was only he and I left. Now normally when someone attacks they go hard for 20 or so seconds then you can see them start to die and this is the perfect time for a counter attack because they are hurting however this never happened. He didn’t look back once, ask me to lap through or even seem to be hurting. I could hear him breathing like crazy or maybe that was just me.
At the top of the hill we had a 10 second gap to another 2 riders and after that no one was in sight. We started the nasty gravel descent with the hopes of holding the other two off but I later found out one of the guys has been national champion for cycle cross for the past 6 years running so he and the other rider caught us very quickly because of the technical aspect he had over us on the corners. We attacked and counter attacked each other until 1km to go where the 4 of us slowed right down and waited for the sprint. It was slightly up hill and a bit of a head wind. I decided to go 4th wheel as then I could see everything happening and although this might have been a tad far back considering there was only 4 of us I thought it was probably best. The sprint started at maybe 250 meters to go, I was on the Columbians wheel and kicked right with him when he went. He had nothing the cycler cross rider quickly got a bit of a gap, I kicked passed the Columbian and had enough speed off him to catch the other rider and take my first win of the season.
At the end of the first stage I had every jersey and the stage win, what a start to the day. The afternoon stage was 40 km Criterium/ Points race. In Switzerland they have sprints every 5 laps and the person with the most points in the end wins the Crit. The tour was done on points also and I had 120 points from the morning stage with a 20 point lead over second place. We thought beforehand that if I finished in the top ten in the crit I would win the tour so the plan was to take some early points and make sure 2nd and 3rd didn’t pick up to many points. I grabbed a 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the first 3 sprints and after that my team mate broke away with one other person and stayed away for the rest of the race taking the stage win and all of the points away from the other riders. I finished the stage in 6th place and although the guy who was sitting on 2nd position form the morning finished 3rd I finished 10 points ahead of him with 150 – 140 points. I ended up winning all the jerseys and the tour and my team mate won the other stage. Couldn’t have been a better day for the team!!!
Now hopefully I can get another result this weekend before building up to a target tour I have at the end of the month.
|
