GP Baranton

I think spring is finally here in Flers. This morning I woke up to the sound of birds chirping, and yesterday was my first day wearing regular, short finger gloves as apposed to lobster claws! (Okay, I didn't really need lobster claws before). I must say, this change in weather has made me one happy guy though, and the racing this week has been going well too.

As the title suggests, we were at the GP Baranton yesterday, which is a town not far from Flers. The course for this race is somewhat deceptive, it doesn't look that tough, but there is also really nowhere to recover, and it sucks the life out of you. As warned by everyone I talked to, it wears you down and by the end it's only the strong guys who can do anything. With this knowledge, I figured the first half of the race I should try to conserve as much as I could. On top of that, I was going into this one with a tough week of training behind me, so the legs were a little flat. They weren't horrible, but did take a little while to get firing on all cylinders. Basically, the combination of trying to conserve energy early, and not having much energy early, meant I watched a big break roll up the road and didn't join them. I knew I would have suffered a lot the whole day by joining them, and if this meant I missed the winning move, that wasn't that big of a deal. Instead, I hung out in the pack trying, somewhat in vain, to stay sheltered.

After a while, the legs started to come around, but at this point the group was well up the road. It didn't look to good to get across to them, but then another large group got the ball rolling. I bought a ticket and boarded the train, quickly distancing ourselves from the rest of the pack. We were cruising, and I could tell from the excitement of everyone in the crowd that this was a good move. Pretty quickly we saw the original escapees in the distance, and a while later we merged into one huge breakaway. I'm not really sure what you would call it actually, since it was almost as big as the main pack! That didn't last too long though, as with only 40km left to race, nobody wanted to sit tight in a "break" of 40-50 guys! Attacks were coming left and right, groups forming, riders cracking: it was complete carnage! It was a big mess of confusion and almost impossible to keep track of what was going on! When things settled down a little and I was able to figure out what had formed, I found myself in the biggest of 4 groups that formed out of the break. There were 2 small groups of 3 guys each in front, then us, and then some stragglers. Soon enough, the 2 groups in front merged, and it was looking good for them. In fact, with a lap to go, I was certain this group was the good one, and not so certain anyone was going to jump across the gap. I decided I might as well try though, so with a last minute kick I jumped out of my group and started to make up some ground. With about 5km to go, I caught on to the leaders, but at this point one of them had gotten off the front, with two of his teammates sitting on the back, and the other three just looking at each other. I was cooked too, and knew we were racing for 2nd at that point. We all still gave a few punches, trying to jump across to the leader, but I think it was more for pride than anything, nobody had any juice left. In the sprint I managed to get 2nd, so that put me in 3rd overall, and best junior. All in all I was really happy with how it went, and can't wait to race again next week!