A good race, but a bad finale

Second stage today, and the first course en ligne after yesterday’s TT. On the menu: 168 km, mostly rolling. On paper, probably the easiest stage of the race.
Before the start, my plan was simple: don’t spend unnecessary energy. In the past I’ve experienced multiple times that, especially on the first road stage when everything is still “open”, I waste far too much energy trying to get into the break. Energy that doesn’t just disappear for that stage, but also for the days that follow.

As we rolled out, I deliberately sat near the back for the first 15 km. First road stage, everybody fresh, local riders wanting to show themselves to the home crowd, whilst not necessarily being the strongest riders. That’s a recipe for kamikaze.. You’re either at the very front, ahead of the trouble, or all the way at the back where you have room to ride around crashes. I chose the second option. Ten minutes after KM0 the first riders hit the deck pretty hard, but I could ride around it without any problems.

I didn’t expect any meaningful break to go on the first long N-road with a headwind. Honestly, I only moved up after one of my teammates got slightly annoyed that we weren’t all at the front. “It’s not going to go here,” I thought. Nevertheless, about five kilometres later I moved up after the peloton folded itself. Mostly for positioning. Once I was there, I decided to stay there anyway. Again: you should be either all the way in the front or all the way in the back.

Once more a few riders got a gap: this time around 10, and I immediately noticed most of the bigger teams were represented: Vorarlberg, Vendée U and Aarco. Better jump across then. A 20-second effort was enough to close the gap. And it actually stuck.

Once both the break and the peloton realized that all the important teams were represented, the race settled down. It took us about thirty minutes to build a two-minute advantage, which later grew to almost six minutes. Atom6 was the only strong team not represented, so they ended up doing most of the chasing. After the stage I heard from my teammates that they worked pretty hard, especially on the cross-tailwind sections. Later they got some help from Vorarlberg, who probably realized they didn’t have their GC rider in the break.

Collaboration in the front group was okayish. We were with 13, bit too many actually for the best collaboration. Like most breakaways, it slowly gets distorted by riders who stop rotating once they become tired. That only gets worse as the race progresses. Around 50 km from the finish the attacks started. Mostly because cooperation had disappeared. Riders tried to reduce the group, but the course simply wasn’t selective enough to drop the weaker riders. Especially not if those weaker riders hadn’t been taking turns for the last hour anyway.

Those situations always frustrate me a little. Riders stop working, then still manage to survive every attack because everyone else is doing the work. My favorite little trick is to deliberately leave a small gap to the rider in front of me, one that I know I can easily close, forcing the non-rotating riders behind me to come around and contribute. 9/10 it works.

Anyway, with about 20 km to go the attacks became much more serious. Multiple riders had a go, including me. Unfortunately, my timing wasn’t great. I attacked just after the Vendée U rider had closed another move. He was incredibly strong by the way. I don’t think his tactics were ideal, because he kept closing attacks without launching one himself. My attack came immediately after a left-hand corner, straight into a headwind. Not ideal. It didn’t stick.

After me the Vorarlberg rider attacked. Again, closed by Vendée U. Then Charrois from Embrace the World attacked. Perfect timing. Nobody responded and he was gone. Behind him there was some cooperation, but nowhere near enough. He rode the final 10 to 15 kilometres solo and took a very deserved win.

Behind that I tried to salvage the best possible result and attacked several times for second place. In hindsight, I probably tried too hard. In those situations you’re usually better off committing to one move rather than attacking over and over again. In the final kilometre I finally got a small gap with two riders on my wheel. Neither of them wanted to pull through. I was in the worst possible position: either keep going full gas and hope for fourth, or sit up and accept the sprint. I chose the first option.

The gap came back with about 250 metres to go and by then I was completely cooked. So the finale wasn’t great. Wrong decisions at the wrong moments. Still, it definitely wasn’t a bad day.
I finished 10th and currently sit 3rd in the general classification, just 9 seconds behind the leader.

Oh, and one final highlight. We rode to the start, which also meant I forgot to bring any clothes to change into afterwards. I didn’t particularly fancy spending lunch and the bus ride back to the hotel in a soaking wet cycling kit. So I bought an entirely new outfit in the local village.
Problem solved. 😄