'It?s a split second decision, do I sprint or do I wait in hope?'

 

By Brian Canty

It’s that time of night now again and this latest dispatch will be brief I can assure you!

The tiredness sets in and affects your decision making process. You’re more laboured and indecisive.

Climbing stairs is a chore and going down stairs requires the use of hand-rails. My legs are hammered after three days of riding but the good news is, there’s just one more day to go.

It’s hard to put into words how this race affects one mentally.

The key to surviving a stage race like this is energy conservation. Some guys are stealthy enough at it, others waste energy and it’s that look that people give each other, ‘is he mad’ (‘why is he standing when he could be sitting’)...Call me obsessive but I was in bed last night and I could feel a thirst coming on (the radiator is on in the room), but I even wondered will I go downstairs for a drink because those steps will kill me!

I drank bathroom water because it’s the same level as my room.

Anyway, you get the idea, breakfast this morning and Donncha’s ‘Rás stare’ was obvious from first glance, he’s looking at me but not really caring what I’m saying!

It’s that five mile stare where one almost looks dozy. Oh how we’d kill for a few hours more kip!

But we’ve a 50 minute commute to start our days work in Waterville and that, is 142 kilometres over six climbs and this stage, personally, was created by the angriest of men on his worst day in my opinion.

The stage winner usually has to get tested afterwards to see is he made out of sheer granite or just some sort of composite material.

That man today was Connor Murphy. Chapeaux to you sir. Murphy is a man with far more stage racing experience than my whole team combined and was a very popular winner today.

I’m still a novice when it comes to this race and today, I got a painful lesson and I’m struggling to find words as to where and what and how went wrong.

But all I can say is, it could have been worse and for some, it was a lot worse, but that’s clutching. It could have been better and more importantly, it should have been.

Success for me this weekend is doing all I can on each stage.

Not having one joule of energy at the finish constitutes a good day, even if that is last on the road, so be it. Friday and Saturday I was happy, because I rode hard all day and with a little more training, I could have been much higher.

But today, the short answer is, I was badly positioned going into the first KOH somewhere near Ballinskelligs, the bunch lined it out, somebody let the wheels go on front of me, the gap is opening and my window of opportunity to jump onto the tail of the bunch is closing.

It’s a split second decision, do I sprint and try to make it or do I wait here and hope to catch them on the descent. I went for the latter because this is only 20k into the race and if I sprint to get on, blow up further up the climb, then I have gone into the red and will have 120k to the finish struggling to recover.

What did I say about energy conservation?

So a bunch of 15 or so rode tempo home, over every climb. And As I’m p***** off I’m entitled to a rant so it goes like this, why would anyone in a small bunch that has lost 30 minutes to the leader attack those around him on each climb and race like there are KOH points on offer?, and then complain of having cramp further down the road and then not being able to ride through at the front so we can all get home quicker and end this misery? That’s all I’ll say.

As regards the other guys on my team, again Bryan Long and Dave showed they’re up there with the best and finished in a group less than two minutes behind Murphy while Donncha and Ryan were in the next group at 16 minutes.

Thanks for reading!!

 

Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/SSbvNjs8SLg/post.aspx

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