European Wrap-up (Part II)

So, right after the Tour de Borgougne and a six hour drive back to Nice, I had to get ready to leave again. The next day I flew out of Nice to Paris and then drove to Conches in Normandy with Jacky Hardy. There I met with the rest of the National team for the Trofeo Karlsberg in Germany. The team included Guillame Blais-Dufour, Guillame Boivin, Jamie Riggs, Garrett McLeoud, Neal Gregory, and myself. Another 6 hour drive, two days later and we were in Germany. Germany for me was not a success as I was fatigued upon starting and really just off my game. I had a great time in Germany, but my results were poor at best and I was not riding near my potential.

The race was amazing. The courses were demanding and well planned. There were also 14 National teams including 2 from Germany, Nordic countries, Central and East Europeans, Kazakhstan, Canada, and others. In the first stage, there was a 3 km cobbled climb with a 1 km of that at about 25%. Despite the race being amazing, I was not doing well and managed to get dropped in every stage other than the time trial. The time-trial was my best result of the race as I finished 45th, but this was still not a result I was impressed with. When I was dropped in the final stage, I pulled myself and watched from the start/finish with Neal who had pulled out a day earlier, and Guillame Blais-Dufour who was pulled a little after me.

The next day I was on a flight home from Paris. I didn’t even really mind stopping in Toronto. I was just glad to be back on Canadian soil.

European Wrap-up

Ok, so I am officially done high school after 2 weeks of hard work to finish the course and complete exams. I still have one left, but I finally have some spare time. I thought I should probably update my blog since I have no information on the last two races I did in Europe.

 Tour de Borgougne was the last race I did for the Sprinter Club de Nice. It was located in center of France about 50 km from Bourg-en-Bresse where a stage of the Tour de France starts and finishes this year. Anyways, the race is rather big and has huge exposure in the region despite being only Category 3. Teams come from all over, and many of the riders obviously deserve to be in Cat. 2 or higher. The area is hilly and windy making for tough racing when paired with the level of competition. The first day was 118 km with the most KOM (king of the mountains) climbs. From the gun it was exceptionally aggressive and I really just held on, trying to work my way up to the front and avoid danger in the pack of 150 some riders. At about the 30 km mark, a break was a little off the front and I was feeling so-so, but it was a good time to attack, so I did. I bridged across the gap with 2 other riders at 60 km/h. That is a bit difficult in junior gears. The break we joined was now about 15 riders with 3 of us from the Sprinter Club. We worked hard and brought the gap up to 1 min 30 seconds with teamates blocking in the pack. The break lasted 70 km with only about 6 of us doing any real work. We hit a climb and the group separated a bit. On the descent, people sat up, expecting to regroup, but the front guys were trying to open the gap. I pushed hard and caught the front guys on my own on the flats. There were maybe 6 of us now and we were really pushing the pace. I was never able to recover in the group after my bridge effort and on the next major climb I dropped back to the next group of about 3 guys including my teamate. We were caught with about 15 km to go. My knee before had really started to ache with the force I was putting on it and I was in pain. I now just prepared for the sprint. I was second junior in the sprint and that put me second in the white jersey competition at 3 seconds back. The next day we did a long, hard warm-up on the way to the course and now my knee was really bad. I couldn’t put pressure on it without it causing a reflex in my knee and it would kind of give out. This problem had plagued me for over a month, and I was not about to let it mess up my Germany trip or potentially Nationals. I rode through the first part of the race and then when the pain became unbearable, I pulled out.