Tuesday 24 May 2011

Royal Smilde Olympias Tour - UCI 2-2

The latest race i have competed in is the Royal Smilde Olympias Tour.
On paper this race could look quite an easy race! Pan flat everyday except for a hilly final day, but no we are in wind swept Holland. 
The race started of with a prologue around 4,7km course, quite technical which could suit me fairly well,  but with me going of early in the day and the soaking wet road drying up towards the end of day, my time of 6.20 didn't look to pretty! The winner Luke Durbridge, (who was 167th rider to start compared to me being 3rd rider off) did a 5.53 and put a whopping 27" into me!


 Over the next few days i set about trying to help Luke who had put in a good time in the prologue. Over the next few stages not much happened really, breaks went and came but all stages ended in bunch kicks with Luke contesting and picking up vital bonus seconds, the last day changed all of that with the route taking in some of the climbs used in the pro race Amstel Gold, with the terrain much more suited to me i tried to save as much energy as possible on the 50km before the first "berg", once we hit the first climb the it was a witteling down process, i managed until 162km before we had to ride on the front as we had missed the break, with Me, Luke and Andy the only riders from GB left me and Andy set about trying to bring the break back, this took its toll as now with riding on the front i was missing the recover time between climbs and after a few more bergs i cracked and slopped back into the convoy, although i did get back on after a few km's my race was done and the next climb saw me be shelled out the back! Luke finished 8th overall and once again i felt as though i helped as much as i could!

Thats all for now then but ill be back with a report from my next few races, although i don't actually know what races i will be racing, it is a busy period in our program so hopefully i can get a good result!
ps. check out my Twitter for more regular updates!!

Simon

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