Hi Team!

Here is my first update for the road season, from here in Europe.

IRELAND

On the 19th of May it was time to jump onto NZ2 for the beginning of my time with the NZ Track Cycling Squad's campaign in Europe - with the first stop Ireland. Here it was a couple of days to gap the jetlag before getting straight into the 8 day FBD Ras Tour of Ireland. The total distance was 1240km over the 8 point-to-point stages, covering a fairly large portion of scenic Island. We raced through a large variety of conditions, roads, and terrain. The best being dual carriage ways in 25 degree sunshine at 60km/h in solid tail winds early in the tour, going into the hard of pot-holed climbs, up through the rough Irish mountains.

The team for this tour is pictured below.

Named left to right: Back - Marc Ryan, Tom Scully, Westley Gough, Shane Archbold, myself, Shem Rodger, Steve Connell (Manager), Front - Jerry Stock (Mechanic / Comedian), Stuart MacDonald (Coach / Directeur Sporftif) and Mark Mathews (Physio / Soigneur).

And the stage plan was as follows:
Stage 1, May 23rd, Dunboyne – Dundalk, 149 kilometres
Stage 2, May 24th, Dundalk – Carrick On Shannon, 155 kilometres
Stage 3, May 25th, Carrick On Shannon – Oughterard, 171 kilometres
Stage 4, May 26th, Oughterard – Tipperary, 169 kilometres
Stage 5, May 27th, Tipperary – Carrick On Suir, 175 kilometres
Stage 6, May 28th, Carrick On Suir – Gorey, 127 kilometres
Stage 7, May 29th, Gorey – Kilcullen, 154 kilometres
Stage 8, May 30th, Kilcullen – Skerries, 140 kilometres

The tour was really well organised and ran pretty smoothly, however there were still some pretty big dramas. The first of these came in the 2nd stage when 5 riders were plowed through by a 4x4 round a blind corner on a decent, leaving some of the riders rushed to hospital, luckily with nothing fatal - but there were a couple of fingers to be re-attached and some broken bones... - and the remaining 50km of the stage neutralised with the bunch to ride to the finish together. The next incident came the following day when during the sprint finish, team-mate Tom Scully got caught up in a bit of argie-bargie with about 200m to go, and ended up in the rare leg vs. power-pole scenario, resulting in bad injuries to his knee's ligiments and so has returned home on a road to recovering to get back into knocking it up as soon as possible.

My turn to crash did come, but luckily not nearly bad. While sitting near the front of the single filed, fast moving peloton, the guy in front of me clipped a wheel and hit the deck, and it was too late for me to do anything other than run straight over the top of him, and consequently over my bars. Luckily, landing half on top of him and half on a grass bank. I got up, spun my wheels up as a quick check to see everything was still ok, and so began the chase to try and get back on with a group of about 15, after the crash had clogged the road and left the bunch in taters. They were spending a lot of time looking at each other though, so I ended up riding off the front and eventually catching another group further up the road, which I ended up finishing with. It was just a cruise into the finish from there, with the exception of a spoke in my front wheel going *PING* which had been pretty buckled in the crash, so a quick change from neutral service for a boxy wheel and I was able to get back on and finish the stage.

Our best results in the tour game from Novie (Archbold) who claimed 3rd in the 6th stage with winning the bunch sprint following a break of 2 riders, and Dream (Ryan) who climbed to 6th place on the 5th stage as part of a break on a hill top finishline.

It was my first tour at elite level, and I came away from it a much smarter and stronger rider. I began to feel better and better and the stages went, and picked up 11th place on the final day.

Novie (Shane) and I, happy chappys after the 8th and final stage.

So a few pints of Guiness and some more potatoes (which seemed to appear on our dinner plates in at least two different forms every night!) and then it was on the plane early the next day to head to our base in Belgium.

BELGIUM

A couple of easy days were required to let the body recover, but not too long as we had a big Interclub race in Belgium, the Phil van Conningsloo Memorial, in just 6 days time. We decided to prep for this with a Kermesse two days before it, which is the main form of racing in Belgium. They are 110-120km in distance, around a circuit of a town. The lap distances, and so the number you do, can vary, but generally they are in the range of 6-12km. A break of 6 riders left the bunch (with a bit of "team" tactics from the local Belgies) coming into the last lap, which was a bit frustrating as I was feeling good and managed to win the bunch sprint, but only for 7th place.

Out checking out a cobbled course in Belgium

Unfortunately, the interclub didn't go our way at all. After perfect weather all of our days in Belgium so far (and even the morning of the race!) the weather gods decided to mix it up a bit with rain as soon as we assembled on the start line. This turn the roads into a slippery nightmare, with the first crash of the day involving a few riders happening in the neutralised zone before the race had even started. We had ridden the course two days earlier, and knew of a rough downhill cobble section early in the race, but didn't really expect what hit us. I was sitting about 50th back of the nearly 200 starters and saw a big group come down in front of me. A rider to the left of me - without even touching anyone else - then hit the deck, and before I could even finish thinking "what the heck are you up to mate..." I was joining him in a slide on our backsides (along with half of the bunch) down the cobbled hill. Shane, West and George Bennett (who joined us for this race as a NZer based in Europe racing with a French team) also joined in on the slippery slide action, where the road did a pretty good job of removing skin. West unfortunately also fractured his forearm (he's back into it now though!) which put him out of racing with us in Germany. And, Novie managed to give himself a massive bruise on his arm which is still changing colour on a daily basis now after almost 3 weeks! This left only Shem and Ruaraidh McLeod (another kiwi, but based with a Belgian team. On an interesting note he also managed the feat of 4 punctures before crossing the finish line!) in the race, who managed to finish up with the dwindled peloton.

I didn't have long to recover from the crash, with the tour in Germany just around the corner, so Shem and I went and raced another Kermesse not too far from home in a town called Neiuwrode. The place could definitely have done with a bit of a sweep before the race, with how filthy we managed to get in the drizzly weather. It did the job of opening up the legs again to some more intensity though, and even a few photo opportunities.

A tad dirty after the race - I'm still finding bits of Nieuwrode in my helmet now...

Afterwards it was back to the books for a bit more cramming, as Shem and I both had two exams to sit the two days following before packing up and setting on the road to Germany.

GERMANY

This was a big tour for all of us, and the main race of our campaign in Europe. Michael Vink was called in to take Wes' place in the tour due to him being out with his fractured forearm. Ruaraidh also rejoined the gang, and Jason Christie flew over from his team in the UK to complete the 6 rider squad. The tour started on 15th, so on Saturday the 12th we loaded up the Skoda and the Iveco van and set off on the 6 hour drive to the first of the German race accomodation (which was stretched out a wee bit with a detour half way into the Netherlands thanks to the outdate software on the GPS...). Upon arrival, we were pretty shocked by the Auckland winter-like climate we stepped out into with 10 degrees and drizzle, after leaving warm Belgium. This was because we were in a mountainous nature park in the central German region of Erfurt, with ever-changing weather. The 3 hour ride the next day was also a bit chilly, but come race day the sun was out and we were back into summer again. The stage distances and locations were as follows:
1. Etappe, 15.06.2010, Sparkassen Mannschaftszeitfahren Bleicherode, 23.7 km
2. Etappe, 16.06.2010, Bleicherode - Wasungen, 148.0 km
3. Etappe, 17.06.2010, Wasungen - Brotterode, 159.7 km
4. Etappe, 18.06.2010, Rund um Bad Berka, 142.5 km
5. Etappe, 19.06.2010, Masserberg - Masserberg, 138.9 km
6. Etappe, 20.06.2010, Hermsdorf - Hermsdorf, 145.7 km

The first stage being a 23.7km Team Time Trial, which we were all a bit unsure as to how it was going to go, since the day before while checking out the course was the first time we had ridden together - and it wasn't exactly smooth! But we were pleasently suprised, and had a solid ride, where I'm sure all the years of TTT's at Grammar payed off for me, with us setting a time of 29:12, only 1 minute behind Trek Livestrong who had fellow kiwi Jesse Sergent and Taylor Phinny in their ranks, 2nd and 1st respectively at the World Champs in the Individual Pursuit earlier in the year.

Lined up with 20seconds on the clock until the start of the Team Time Trial

The following day was a bit of chaos, with all the Euro's all over the place in a very panicy fashion.There were riders hitting the deck left right and center, so it was a bonus for all of us kiwis to stay up right. I finished with the main bunch, with only Jason and Ruaraidh getting caught out by a split which occured in cross winds after a long and fast decent.

The following day would have been close to, if not, the hardest day I've had on the bike. Early on a large kiwi-less break went, which after a "time out" (also known as a piss stop!) call was made got a decent time gap on the bunch. After a couple of attempts I then managed to slide into a group of 6 that attacked off the front of the bunch, where we managed to also collect another 3 early break-ies, on our way lapping through up to the break. We were also join by Shem in a small break group of his own to make a total of about 25 riders now all together off the front of the bunch. The group was too big to be organised enough to stay away however and the race ended up eventually regrouping. From here however, it wasn't long before the climbs kicked in. This ended up being the tour deciding day, and you may be able to see why in the below stage profile.

Stage 3 Profile

I managed to hang on to first finishing bunch of 28 riders, after a break of two who went on to place 1st and 2nd in the tour overall.

Stage 4 was relitively low key, with one minor hickup where I was caught up in a crash 15km from the finish. This time it was just my luck to be taking a drink from one of my bottles when the riders in front locked up their brakes and a few hit the deck. I was sitting on the outside of a german who decided to turn right, off the road, into a grass ditch, leaving me no where to go but to join him! In the end this worked out as a pretty good option however, with no damage done, apart from that to the legs of having to chase back through the convoy of team cars to rejoin the peloton.

Stage 5 was another grueling day, which was really the last chance for the GC (General Classification) placings to change. But as I've already spoiled earlier, no one really managed to get away from the bunch for very long. There were just a few seconds of change here and there as the hilltop finish (which we had already done 2 laps of as it was the finishing circuit!) was a real killer stretching everyone out a bit. If you didn't give the climb absolutely everything it would've been easy to lose a minute or two on the last time alone though, so I really had to go deep into the hurt box!

Stage 5 Profile - notice the nasty finishing circuit and how fast the first 45km were!

As expected, the two leading teams Thueringen Energie (Germany) and Trek Livestrong (USA) weren't going to leave much to chance on the final stage. Michael managed to get away in a break which stuck for most of the race, but the bunch was just too fast over the final 40km of the race. I cruised in across the line, happy with how the tour had gone for me, finishing 16th on GC and 9th in the young rider classification, as well as top for New Zealand.

I now have two big tours in my legs, so am looking forward to putting the miles to good use in the two big one day races we have coming up, along with some more Kermesses, back here in Belgium.

Thanks for reading, and for those interested the next update wont be as far away!

Cheers
Aaron

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Contact me by email at: aaron.gate@gmail.com