The Ned Flannagan Memorial is a new
race on the Irish calendar one week earlier than the usual start of
the Irish road racing season. Fortunately, bright blue skies welcomed
us as we lined up for the 70km race around one of Ireland's flattest
counties.
After a winter of training without
racing you wonder how the legs are doing. For me, training has been
going really well, I feel happy, healthy and the problems that
plagued me last year are gone. This is all good to know when you are
out training – but still, we train to race... How will I feel
racing?
Several weeks ago I spent a week
training with the AnPost Sean Kelly team in Calpe, Spain – they had a
great setup and spending many hours on the road training with the
team (a very highly regarded UCI Continental team) – I was
confident that the season would start well – still, you need to
race.
The Ned Flannagan was been run as a
handicap race with the lower categories getting a head start – the
A1/A2 category would start last and (hopefully) chase down the
rabbits before the finish.
The race started without much
collective urgency to catch the leading groups – we were a large
group (about 50 riders) with about 70 already ahead of us – but the
long straight road and slight headwind blunted the groups appetite to
ride hard.
I knew after about 18km we would make a
turn that would send us up a slight drag and give us a cross wind. I
waited until that point to make my move – after several attempts, a
break of 8 of us got away from the peleton – we worked well
together and quickly caught the lower categories. Once there, we all
moved to the front and continued pushing the pace.
Another few kilometers down the road, a
small group of us now forged the lead break. Unfortunately, coming
into the town of Athy – a wrong turn was made. I reacted first and
got back on the correct road quickly but the damage to our break was
done. They were swallowed by the now 100 strong peleton – I was
still off the front and I saw a rider bridging. With almost 40km to
go, I decided to wait for him. As he got on my wheel, I realized who
it was, Robin Kelly – one of Ireland's strongest sprinters.
We worked well together in the road and
built up a good gap on the peleton. I felt good the whole way in and
could see that Robin was tiring. Not wanting a sprint finish, I made
several attempts to get away heading into the finish but
unfortunately, without a huge distance or any drags/climbs, it was
hard for me to drop the strong sprinter.
We sprinted into Monasterevin, he won,
I came second with the peleton coming in a minute later. I picked up
the prime in Kildangan, but unfortunately no win.
A well run event, in sunny conditions
raising money for the charity Rehab – sure what else would I be
doing on a Sunday morning in February?
