RYAN SHERLOCK
It is now six days into the Rás and it is plain to see who put in the long hard miles in the winter and who has been living off adrenalin these last few days.
Now more then ever, it is important to stay near the front as many riders are both mentally and physically tiring from their efforts, dropping wheels and even sometimes causing crashes.
Today was the second longest stage of the race at 172 kilometers going from Blarney to Tramore.
There were lots of categorized climbs enroute, but none where particularly long or steep.
My typical day in the Ras starts with an alarm clock at 7:50am.
With an 11am stage start each day, we like to have our breakfast around 8.
After that, depending on the distance to the stage start, we return to our rooms, relax a little and pin on our numbers onto our freshly cleaned jerseys.
With four numbers to be pinned on, it is actually a pretty time consuming process!
Once we are all packed up and dressed, we travel to the race start to be there for sign-on at 10am.
After sign-on, we head to our home away from home.
Throughout this race, we have been super fortunate to have the luxury of the SportActive motorhome – it really is the best setup I have had, especially considering the consistently, cold, windy and rainy starts we have had this year.
We then fill our jerseys with bars and gels (I take one or two bars, three gels and a caffeine gel – just in case) – get a warmup massage and we are ready to roll out.
I was feeling good yesterday evening and this morning I was motivated to be in today's break.
Our whole team rode aggressively to get away, all of us being in groups that looked like a “sure thing” but everything was pulled back.
Eventually, 80 kilometers into the race a group of favorites escaped – there were still other riders motivated to make that move and I tried many times to bridge across – eventually, I saw my ex-teammate, David McCann, go with a few riders and at that point, having just been pulled back, I didn't have the legs to follow.
The lead group was gone for the day.
But the racing didn't finish – as there were no county riders in the lead group, and both the county rider and team competition was still up for grabs, the racing remained aggressive.
The international riders looked on with bemusement as attack after attack went (they assumed that all the real racing was taking part several minutes up the road) until I explained the race within a race to them.
A group of ten riders would get a few seconds, and be brought back, then another group would go and be brought back – this happened for about 40 kilometers until a group finally went that had the right mix of county riders.
Initially, I wasn't there but when I saw my teammate from last years Ras, Conor Murphy, making a break for it I decided to tag along.
It took us 15 minutes to get across while we average 49 kilometers per hour – a high speed considering we also went over two categorized climbs!
The final 30 kilometers of the race brought us up and down along the coast – the sun was out, the wind had died down – it would have been idyllic except for the fact we were still racing hard and not getting to enjoy the surroundings.
Eventually, we made it into Tramore for the uphill sprint finish. The town was 'buzzing' and there was a fantastic atmosphere.
I really have to applaud the AnPost organization with how they have promoted the event this year – world class.
Now – my feet are back up in the air resting.
I still feel pretty good – my legs are sore but I have good motivation for tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/unnY8qzfyuE/post.aspx
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