Thursday, February 7, 2008

Tour of Wellington

Tour of Wellington
30th January-3rd Febuary 2008

5 days, 7 stages.
3 Road Stages, 3 Criteriums, 1 Time Trial

Starting on Wednesday afternoon with a 1 hour criterium in the hot Wellington soon was a nice way to start this UCI tour. With most of the 90- odd starters finishing in the bunch with 3 guys taking a minute on the bunch.

Stage 2 was mostly flat with just a couple of climbs towards the end of the 140km route to split the bunch. A group went away on the big climb of the day before it split again on the last climb with 10km to go. Fortunately it all came back together in the last km so i ended up finishing in the front group of 30- odd.

Stage 3 was 185km finishing up Admiral hill which is a 12km climb coming after 5 fairly tough hills throughout the route. after making the front split over each climb i lost contact up the 2nd to last climb which was rather steep to say the least. A group formed over the top and it was a ride to the finish. I ended up 16th. Which put me 11th on GC.

Saturday was going to be a busy day with 130km in the morning followed by a 1hr criterium that afternoon. The morning stage was a nice stage with the bunch maintaining a high speed for most of the journey and pretty much the whole bunch finishing together. Still 11th on GC. 1hr Criterium after 130km was always going to be hard with lots of guys having tired legs but thankfully no spills and the bunch taking it a little easy with 15min remaining after the break had gone away. Unfortunately for me there were a few guys close to me on GC up the road where i ended up dropping a spot to 12th on GC.

Sunday, final day of the tour and another double day. 12km Time Trial in the morning followed by a 1hr criterium in downtown wellington in the afternoon. Well for me the Time trial went well. Finishing in 14th place and making up enough time to move to 10th on gc. Unfortunately this wasn't to be for long as the 1hr criterium turned into a bit of a slog and when the bunch is going 60kmh and you have to be doing 65kmh to move up the bunch making it pretty much impossible. So i ended up getting lapped out after 40min which dropped me to 15th on GC.

Overall i was happy with the tour and it turned out to be a good week for racing with only rain on 1 stage. I now look foward to taking a wee bit of form into the European opener on the 1st March for my new team.

And lastly a big thankyou to Denise, James, Josh, Simon and Kate for all there support and feeding when i called on them at the last minute because my team was manager-less.

So 12 days till i fly out.
Until then
Ryan