Never seen so much Di2

On Saturday 16th March we had our Team/club Presentation. Basically this consisted of a lot of blokes getting changed into lycra in a more than uncomfortably small sized room and having some snaps taken out in the freezing cold. Not my idea of fun, but what was, was what followed, the team is sponsored by a cake and biscuit factory, this was where the presentation was held and so afterwards we were taken for drinks and cake, a lot of cake!!!  Everybody loves a bit of cake.....

Ok, so last Sunday and this Sunday just gone I had 2 Elite National races. The first of which was "la Fleche de Locmine". The race was a 100km big loop arriving back in the same town as we started, followed by 8 tough finishing circuits taking the overall race up to 160km, or for you oldies, 100 miles. The race was pretty nippy averaging around 43kph over fairly tough rolling terrain with a few tasty longish drags. The race pretty much stayed together all the way into the 4th finishing circuit and began to split on the finishing hill. My team mate George Moore got in this move and went onto to claim a very respectable 9th and 1st "2nd cat rider".

Now you maybe wondering why the blog name, well with a starting field of 160-170 riders and 102 finishers  you can imagine it was pretty brutal on the finishing circuits. Not many riders were dropped on the big loop but when it came to the windy rolling finishing circuit riders were going backwards like no tomorrow. After the finish line the road opened out and was very windy. I can say my head was almost in my spokes at times and staring at the chaps rear mech infront was a regular sight lap after lap. However towards the end I found something, and managed to move up to get 56th from 102 and around 5th in my category. Overall I was happy with my race and just saw it has a good 160km in the legs.


And so on to this Sunday just gone. I had been assured that my race this weekend would be a hard one with over 150 1st category riders taking to the start out of 200. The race was les Boucles Guegonnaise, it was mainly on big open roads with a lot of wind, very stop start and to be honest my race wasn't good at all. I felt to have good legs but my head let them down, poor positioning in the bunch when it really mattered left me in the back half of a split peleton which then blew to bits and left me fighting for a number of kms to regain contact with others. I did manage to get back on but this was short lived and on the next fast open windy down hill stretch I just couldn't keep up, really I needed a bigger gear!!! I fought desperately with others but there was no chance.  I don't know how far this was into the race at a guess I said maybe 80kms, I rode to finish and still felt strong, but it was my head that had done the damage. But it's a learning experience and it's not even the end of March so I'm not going to beet myself up about it. Next weekend I have 2 races to look forward to so a good week of training and I'll be as keen again as usual.

That's all for now. Hamish