3 Races 3 Days

3 Races in 3 Days, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Saturday and Sundays Races were in Galicia a province of Spain around 700+ Kilometers away form Pamplona, thankfully due to the Autopista we were able to do this in around 5 hours.

We had a pretty awsome Motel to stay in, in a little village just out of the city of Ourensen around where the two races were to take place. Saturday and Sunday were pretty big with peletons of around 200 riders, I have never raced in a peleton of this size with guys all pushing hard and wanting to be at the front. And I can tell you it was pretty daunting and i was fairly nervous.

SATURDAY

Unfortunatly due to the travel my legs were pretty smashed and swollen and the first hour or so of the 144k race was spent on the back holding on for dare life. Not the greatest thing when the Peleton stretches out to over 500m long. Fortunatly the first climb was around 40k in and by that time my legs had loosened up and I was able to use the climb to move my way up. I spent the next portion of the race looking after myself and getting through. At around the 80-100k mark we hit the 2nd last of the big climbs which came off a nice wide main road to a super skinny almost 1 laner. YOu can just imagine how hard squeezing 200riders through there was and i found my self again near the back. So there was nothing else to do other than grit my teeth and go for it. Powering up past riders i managed to go over the top with a bunch of team mates. We had 1 rider in the days break but the rest of us were in a small group together which meant on the front and pull some laps which was pretty much how the rest of the race panned out for me. Pulling turns on the front. Fortunatly Mauricio Muller our team mate stayed near the front and finished in 5th. The rest of us were quite a way back and i ended up around 80th somewhere. pretty pleased to finish such a big tough race and i must say i was pretty destroyed afterwards.

SUNDAYS race was a shorter affiar at around 120k and finishing up a 2k climb. Unfortunatly for me my legs were pretty tired after the previous day and again the first 30k was spent dieing near the back. Luckly it was the same first 40k as the previous day so I new what was coming and when I needed to move up. Again I used the climb to move forwards, however unfortunatly on the decent the bunch tore apart and I was caught on the wrong side of the split. With the high speed and presure on there was no coming back, and so the rest of the day was spent as a hard training ride. Brad however finished the race strongly in 21st place. And our manager also delivered some awsome news that Mike had won his race in another area of Spain

MONDAY was by far the highlight for me. Due to a mess up with the licences myself and Brad only were able to start the race with 5mins to spair so there was some rushed number pinning happening. Todays race was a bit smaller with around 90riders starting. I made sure I was right on the front when the race started and was driving hard attacking and following attacks. I wanted to get a good result as I no I have it in my legs I just need to be in the right place. Due to lack of warm up my lungs and legs were screaming and after 15k I faded out to the back of the race where I suffered till perhaps the 60-70k mark to ride myself back in to the race. Unfortunatly due to this i missed the days winning move. Not alot I could do in the start I was though. However I grit my teeth and rode myself back in to the race and at around 70k was back up front following attacks to try and bridge up to the front. With 20k to go I skipped across to a group of four riders and we went across to a group of around 6-8. A few of us were keen to drive hard and i pulled some pretty solid turns. The peleton was closing down on us inside the final 5k so I through down a couple of hard attacks to keep us clear but inside the final k I just about bottched it as I was on the back and with 500m to go the road went to 1 lane beacause of road works. I took a few risks and smacked it up the inside and started sprinting to take 3rd from our group. It meant I finish 18th and took my best result here so far. Pretty pleased to finish 3days hard racing with a top 20 and it shows my legs are slowly getting used to the hard and fast euro racing.

My next goal is to go for a top 10. Not realy sure whats up next but certainly the next few days will be taken pretty easy to recover for the next hammering

Till then
JOSH