Go to 3.06-3.07
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| Trying to get away on stage 1 |
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| Bunch Sprint on Stage 1 |
Stage 2, 6.4km TT:
This event is vital in stage races, it basically decides the GC if no breakways get away or no splits occur. So I tried my best to get my head in the right place. We arrived at the start of the TT a good hour and a half before my start time of 11.09. Good to get there nice and early in order to get everything together at your leisure and get a good warm up in! I started my warm up roughly 25 mins before my start and the "Foo Fighters" new album "Wasting Light" was playing to try and get me in the mood. Savage stuff! The course wasn't too bad a slight headwind and 2 small drags. The second one really killed! So I went pretty much flat out and got in at a time of around 7.46.. which is around 46/47 km/h average speed. I ended up 24th which I was pretty happy with considering I was on the road bike. Although I did have clip-ons! I've attached a video, go to around 19.30 on it, I'm the very last rider.
Stage 3:
Stage 3 was a 4 lap race of 25km circuit around Gorey. The course is pretty much flat with one KOH every lap and a few drags on the main road each lap also. The race started off pretty quick and a few attacks were flying as usual! A few riders had gone clear early on but they didn't last too long before getting swallowed up. Close enough to the half-way mark 6 riders went clear but roughly 10-20km later they were caught again, but as they were caught a group slipped away, and further into the lap another few riders had joined up with them. throughout the day I had been following a lot or attacks but had no luck getting away. At the finish, it was the same as stage 1 - Madness! I nearly got pushed it the gutter a few times and it was too fast for me to move up with my junior block, never mind sprint! I finished 27th on the stage on the same time as 5th. 4 riders had stayed away and had a 30 second gap.
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| Rollout on Stage 3 |
Stage 4:
Stage 4 was a 91.5km road race back up to Blessington, well to be exact 5km on the other side of Blessington. The race itself was fast but didn't start to split up any bit until the 40km after Tullow. 4 riders got clear and got a gap of 50 seconds to a minute. Through Rathville, Conor McIlwaine (2nd place overall) made a move to try and bridge the gap and myself along with 2 others tried also but we didn't last too long. We got over halfway up to the leaders we just couldn't close that last bit! The leaders were finally caught about 10km from the finish on the long open roads to Blessington. On the road into the finish a lot of people were trying to escape but everything got brought back and it was going to be a sprint finish! Staying near the front was getting very dangerous, I was nearly involved in 2 crashes which was quite frustrating as you get moved back the bunch a lot. After all my work staying near the front, some stupid lad crossed over infront of me about 500m to go and sat up completely almost bringing me right to the back of the bunch. I ended up having a very strong verbal argument with him and believe me I was not a happy camper after the stage, thankfully I didn't meet him as it might not have gone down well! Worst thing of all, I had good legs! Brendan Whelan of Lucan went on to take the stage.
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| Through Rathville, right before I attacked. Video to follow: |
In the general classification I was 25th and I was pretty happy with this, it's an improvement from last year's 67th! So, thats my very quick run down on Gorey and I've finally finished this blog post. Have to run now! Got stuff to do!If your looking for GC sheets and result sheets, more pics etc.. have a look at:
Stay Tuned
Eoin
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