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Just a quick post to let you all know what I have been up to.

After what was one of the most crap races I have ever done, I was ready to drop the bike and go home. To put it simply, I had nothing. No answer. No excuse. No self belief.

I came home for a day then Soren and I headed down to Spain. We have a friend in Girona which is just a bit under 3 hours from our apartment. I had no race for 2 weeks so it was a good chance to get away for a bit and step into some training with Roly and friends which beats staying here and slogging it out against myself everyday.

It was a good week. I started to work on my short power which turns out to be the answer to my question above. I have none. My threshold is good but the accelerations are hurting me like nothing else. So hopefully in a couple of weeks I should be on the right track. To me it just didn't make sense. I have hit a new fitness high on training peaks (for those who don't know this is a programme which keeps all power files in order and shows graphs of different sorts. One of which is fitness) but something wasn't clicking and now I hope I am onto a winner.

Lately, I can't help but think back to a few years ago when I backed myself, when I could convince myself I was better than anyone else in the race. I am trying to bring that belief back. Europe is a hard place to be racing at the best of times but when your not performing, you have a lot of time sitting around looking for answers in ones head which in turn makes for a lot of stress and pressure.

I really believe I am not that far away from where I need to be to start getting results again. It has been far too long between drinks! I can't even remember the last time I performed to my own expectations in a road race and it was Club Nationals last year since I won a time trial.

So for me, it's getting back to basics. My fitness feels good. I am already starting to feel the benefits of these short power efforts which is even more encouraging and I hope things will continue to look up from here, because god knows it's getting closer and closer to crunch time.

I hope you are all well. I will try to get up quick post up after this weekends race.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan