Sunday, March 04, 2012

2012 Cycleways Cup

A very quick report for now...

In 2008, this was my second road race - Peter Hawkins won that day (I was somewhere in the mix around 10th). Today, IG Markets/Sigma Sports rider Peter Hawkins won again.

Things were going fine, a break got away that was dangerous, but I and a couple of other riders (yeah, there was a huge peleton but not much interest in riding - but they were strong, it could have come back to being a bunch sprint!) pulled it back - I made my first tactical mistake of the season a little later when another break left without me. Lots of chase groups, but not enough overall commitment (the break never got more than a minute... a committed peleton, or even a single strong team that didn't have any representation in the break, and there were a few of those, could have pulled it back).

With an hour of racing to go, I gave up on there being a concerted effort and put a lot of work in to pull it back - great training... With 15km to go, I rode off the front of the peleton and made a solo effort to catch the break (46 kmph for final 15km - side winds) - I got within a couple of seconds of them, but it was not enough. I finished 4th... Well, better than a slap in the face!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Well done, Jonny Bellis was training on Cruagh road there last friday afternoon -he flew by me - met at top at junction doing splits.
tis a small world.
Mountaingoat

Ryan Sherlock said...

Jonny was on Cruagh?!? - must drop him an email