With the World Championships on TV to race home for today, I was revved up to do a bit of racing myself.
Left as usual a little early and warmed up by myself.
Just after a toilet stop I could sense the peleton homing in on me. Unfortunately, they found me with still a few rolling hills to go.
Luckily as they caught me a red light stopped us all. Ohayo!
Then the pace picked up and over a few hills until we got to the rice paddy wind swept flats. 3 guys took off and 3 of us tried to catch them. We didn’t work too well together though and it took us a few kms to get to the leaders right at the drink stop.
But hey! The 3 in front kept going as the rest piled into the car park. Well, I was going to have none of that and chased after them. I got close a few times but once they got on the river with the winds at their backs they started to pull away from me.
I went into TT mode but knew I had to conserve as well as look out for the chasers who may creep up behind me.
I figured there were 3 traffic lights to negotiate before the home straight and if I was to get a few greens and they were to get a few reds I was still in with a fight. No idea how they faired but I had 2 short stops at the reds and the last set, I snuck across as it went orange.
Back on the tone canal road now and I could see them ahead. I had them in my sites and locked in at a steady pace.
I caught them right on the Edo river turn with 7kms to go. I’m sure they didn’t know I was following but I could sense a bit of surprise that I had got back to them. We dropped one here and the 3 of us took a fairly brisk pace of 35 to 43kph to the finish line with nobody interested in line honours by this stage.
A good work out. Was red in the face at the end. Pushed myself hard! Felt great.
Today: 71.84 km (plus 8.84km not recorded last Sunday…)
Yearly total: 3819.45km
Daily average:?
Daily average goal: 33.71 km
And what a great Wordl Championship race it was.
Cadel rode with pride like he has all year and was in it till the end even though it was going to take a miracle for him to win.
Yukiya Arashiro of Japan showed how good he is to be in the main sprint for 9th place.
Allan Davis who I thought may have the win in the sprints with the home court advantage just missed out too with 3rd.