This was an elite national tour, raced over 3 days, 4 stages on a super hard hilly course, and I'm pleased to say I am starting to come into some good form with some really promising results this weekend.
So Friday morning I headed up north to a place called Creusot only about 2 hours drive away. We were greeted with an amazing lunch put on by the tour organizers and also unloaded our gear into the hotel we were staying in, which was really nice! The first stage of the tour was 140km on a hilly course and with temperatures in the 20's it was going to be a hard day. As always it started with a lot of attacks with nothing getting away until about 50km in. It wasnt until about 85km when the break had a gap of about a minute, I went with an attack of one of the main GC contenders on a climb and we managed to bridge across to the front with 3 other guys. I did a lot of work on the front hoping to stay away but just before the last hard climb 15km from the finish we were caught by about half the peloton, and on the climb I was to stuffed to go with attacks and I didn't make the front group over the top. so in the end I finished 25th and about 40 seconds down on the winner.
Stage 2
The next day had 2 stages, so the first in the morning was 90km and hilly again but with some real steep nasty climbs. The first hard one coming at 35km was where the action started, straight away the steep slopes narrowed the group down to 20 odd riders and then with a second straight after the bunch was whittled down once again, although we were driving it hard in the front group a long flat section after let a lot of riders rejoin us. The Final climb before the finish at 10km to go proved to be the decisive moment of the stage and I made the front group over the top with 20 others. Then at the finish I had a shocking sprint finishing second to last in the group in 20th place. So now I had moved up to 13th on GC(stands General Classification for anyone who isn't up with the cycling lingo) and 3rd Under23 rider.
Stage 3
This stage was in the afternoon after stage 2. The stage was 80km long and had 2 hills right at the start which lead to me being in the front group of 30 and it was only 15kms into the stage. The rest of the way was just undulating and a 4guys got away and finished 50 secs ahead of my group. I also moved up to 12th on GC and 2nd U23 rider.
Stage 4
Last stage was probably the hardest, it was 160 km with just under 2000m elevation gain. After 20km when the breakaway was established the pace settled down and the GC leaders team controlled the peloton keeping the breakaway within 2 minutes. I made sure I saved as much energy as possible for the final climb which was 7km long. with the bunch mostly still together coming into the climb it was a mad fight for position at the front of the peloton for the 10km leading up to it. right at the bottom we had reeled in the breakaway and I was in a good position at the front, the first 4km weren't so bad but the last 3km was just crazy steep and to make it eve worse it started pouring with rain so every time you would stand up the rear wheel would slip. I had a look at my at my speedo after the race and i was going between 7 and 10km/h. Anyway over the top there were 4 in front and was in the second group of 7 with one of my team mates(who i forgot to mention before was a few places ahead of me and leading the young riders jersey for 1st under 23 (i was in 2nd))So after a super slippery decent I managed to avoid all the crashes and also a couple more stragglers from behind joined our group to make 12 of us. I got the call from the team car to work on the front to try bring back the front guys so that was fine as I was feeling strong. In the end we didn't pull them back and I finished 16th on the stage and moved up to 11th on GC and kept 2nd U23 rider and my team mate was 8th on GC and was first U23 rider.
So pretty good weekend for the team and real happy I'm getting some good form and another plus was my legs felt as good on the 4th stage as they did on the 1st.
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