Hi everyone, well today was my 4th race day of the season at as you can probably see it was the Des Hanlon Memorial Classic in Carlow. Watching the Milan-San Remo yesterday gave me a bit of inspiration, great entertainment and what a win by Matt Goss of HTC Colombia.
Ok onto today, I woke very early this morning 6.30ish I think it was. Did all the normal things people do I don't think I have to explain. We decided to take my car today and all the gear seems to fit perfectly and still leaves lots of space, which is extremely handy! We set off at roughly 7.45 but I wasn't driving, Mammy was - Awww! The reason being I'm only driving a week or so and needed to relax before the race etc etc.. We arrived in Carlow at 9.30 just in time for the opening of sign-on, and we were one of the first there which is always good. After having a good chat and catch up with some of the guys I got ready did a small warm up with some of the guys and the racing eventually got underway around 12. The first few kilometers through the town were neutralized and when we were left off everyone was racing and there was a few very optimistic guys attacking straight away. The first part of the race was the pretty much the same as Carrick the way it was always hard to stay towards the front. Few near misses and touching of wheels! Well I guess thats expected in a bunch of 140 guys.
Things got a bit better when we turned off the main road at Castlecomer and started climbing. Quickly enough it was lined out and splitting a bit. Surprisingly enough after the first lap over the hill or mountain should I say, the group was rather large and didn't seem to split much until we started the second loop. Here, I got a fright! When i went to change to the small ring the derailleur decided to stay where it was and the chain go a different way, causing the chain to completely lock up. I had to stop and fix this and luckily enough I caught back on very quickly. The rest of the race was very difficult and especially going over the climbs for the second time the legs were definitely hurting. There was a break-away at about 1.15 from pretty early in on in the race which nobody could pull back. Coming over the top of the last climb there was a group or around 30-odd and a group of 3 managed to creep off the front in the final kilometers. I stayed close to the front on the decents to try and keep out of trouble as much as possible. With roughly 6km to there was an oil spillage on some narrow bridges which we were warned about before and during the race. So that slowed things down a lot! In the final kilometers of the 108km race my legs were cramping, so I went to the very back and rested up as much as possible. Attacks started going with 1km to go and my legs came around enough to sprint and I managed to get 7th and pick up a few points. No prize this time but the points are more valuable to me, and considering I wasn't planning on sprinting I was delighted to win the bunch sprint.
Overall, a great and very hard day on the bike and I hope there'll be plenty more like today! Next on the schedule is the WattBike testing for the Irish Squad and the Ras Luimni at the weekend. The WattBike test consists of a 10 sec max rev test, 10 max power test and a 3 minute power threshold test. Sounds fun!
Ok thats it for today, stay tuned during the week for some more updates!
Eoin
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