Been in spain for a couple of weeks now and had the first hit out yesterday...Things are taking a little time to settle in, new bike, new shoes, change of pedals and crank length, so the body hasn't been giving me many great signals and this got worse as i started one of the most important spanish cups for the year.
The course was a fairly brutal 163km, with 7 reasonable climbs, 2 of them with a solid gardient, the hardest of them coming at 30km to go.My job was to look after the team leader all day, he was sitting 2nd in the points classification for the series. Rolling through neutral my rear wheel let out a hiss but was changed easily and i rejoined the group no probs, the race started fast, real fast, there was alot of 'junk' on the road and i was just waiting for a crash to happen, 10km in and i was the one sliding down the road after hitting a stray bottle...a little shaken and a hard chase put me back in ok, now was just a waiting game. Staying out of the wind but close enough not miss anything dangerous was the go for the day, we hit the penultimate and hardest climb all together, i went to the front to keep things together for my team mate, after a km or so i looked back to see he was struggling, easing up allowed others to now attack, i followed initially then went back to help our leader but he gave me a wave and told me to just go. Cresting the climb with 2 others at the front of the race was a good place to be, we were joined by 2 others then later 7 more on the final climb, as much as i tried i didn't have the legs to get away solo, then was unfortuantely dropped with 2km to go having to settle for 12th.
A good result considering and it looks good for the season coming up, Brad(the other kiwi in the team) had a reasonable first day also, finishing 56th at 4mins down or so. Next up is another Spanish Cup in 2 weeks, Bring it on!
Cheers
Mike.
