June

Côte D'Or Classic 🇫🇷

My month started off with the French UCI race, Côte d'Or. The three stages in the Côte d'Or region made for hilly and attritional racing.

Stage 1 was all about positioning to make sure I wasn't caught behind any splits in the peloton. With only 90 km of racing, it was full gas from the start, with the hills coming almost immediately. After around 60 km, we reached the finishing circuit, which is where I started attacking as I could sense the other riders were getting tired. Unfortunately, the early break of six riders stayed away, and I sprinted to 13th place from the bunch.

Stage 2 was a team time trial, which was always going to be slightly tricky as we hadn't trained together before the event. Despite this, we still managed to finish 14th out of 25 teams, which is a ride I think we can be happy with.

Stage 3 was the hardest of the road stages, featuring 1,500 metres of climbing and a brutal finishing circuit. An early split in the peloton meant the group was reduced to around 40 riders, which made positioning much easier in the latter half of the race. I made a few mistakes during this stage, including missing the break again, but lessons have been learned. I'm now finding it easier to identify dangerous moves and recognise the moments when I need to follow riders. I finished 18th on the stage and ended up 30th overall on GC. Not a bad result, but I was hoping for a bit more in a race that suited me quite well.

Yorkshire Classic

I'm not even sure what to say about this one. Ten laps of a super tough circuit and with over 2500 metres of climbing in the race, I was clinging on for dear life and never really in a position to attack. I was proud to come away with 8th place and to stay in the front group for the entire race, alongside only around 13 other riders.

Unfortunately this year Acht Van Bladel was cancelled due to the heatwave, so nothing to report from there. 

Roosdaal Kermesse

Instead, I raced a kermesse in Roosdaal. Only 80kms and with one main climb per lap. The lap was technical and luckily I managed to slip away and make it to the leading group. I crossed the line 6th after being the victim to some Hot tubes team tactics and a big early on effort to get myself into that position. 

I am now based in Belgium for the next 3 months of so. This means I will be doing lots of quality racing and training.