tour du chablais

Finally had a race that wasn't raining this weekend which was very nice for a change. Felt like I hadn't raced for ages as last weekend the race I was supposed to do was canceled because of bad weather. Anyway the race this weekend was an elite national and on some hard parcours which started on the edge of lake geneva in town called Thonon-les-Bains. Was a really cool place with the sun shining and looking across the lake to Switzerland. The race basically went up a mountain, down to the valley then back up and down to the start again.
The first 50 km were flat before the climbing began and my plan was to just sit in for this section. Unfortunately a large break of 15 riders got away here and once again our team had nobody in it which I didnt understand because we had 13 riders on the start line and for 9 of them their job was to get in the early break... this caused a huge fuss and our team were the only team chasing and the DS was not a happy chappy.
At the first climb I was pretty much attacking all I could but unfortunately I seemed t have a problem with my chain it was so stretched it was slipping every time I attacked which was less than ideal (I had planned to get changed after this race, obviously a little to late). this sort of screwed me up a bit but I just dealt with it and stayed active for the next 80km.
By the final 20km there were just 15 left from the peloton and we had swept up all but 4 riders from the early break. From my team there was still me Sebastien and Jeremy. I was really hurting from all my earlier efforts and so was sebastien a bit and jeremy had just been sitting in so we decided to help him out. We set jeremy up pretty good for the last climb and he got away with 4 others. They didnt catch the 4 out front by the end and Jeremy got 8th. I arrived in a group sprinting for 11th place and I came in 20th place.

I felt really strong and was a real good hit out before Rhone alpes tour next week (uci 2.2) and the results were more reflected on tactics rather than strength so I'm happy with how I went, I had planned to attack more from from further out than wait for the final.