New Zealand Cycle Classic, five stages, five days and 690 kilometres. It finished on the 24th of January and it’s now a couple of weeks past that. Mum gets on at me after races to update the blog on what happened because it’s “fresh in peoples minds” and because it’s otherwise forgotten. She’s got a point, sure, but the vast majority of people that read this blog come from the emails I send out through the subscription service (click HERE to subscribe), so forgetfulness and timeliness is less of an issue. When I’m over in Belgium smashing out three races a week, then a weekly update is more essential, but when I’m at home and the racing is less frequent, it’s probably less of an issue. With regard to this blog being timely, yeah sure I could probably bang something out in a day or two, like some riders do, but I feel that it’d lack depth and a lot of personal insight, which I feel differentiates my blog from a lot of others. I’d rather put something out late that I’m proud of, than something rushed that later down the line I wish I’d have added to.
So to the race, New Zealand Cycle Classic. I was invited to join a team under the name of one of the races sponsors, ‘Seasucker’, a company that do vacuum mounts for pretty much everything, including bike racks for your car. The race ran from the 20th to 24th of Jan (Wednesday to Sunday), and I was told I had to be there by midday on the 19th, which would’ve been a bit of a mission leaving at 6am to drive six hours the day before New Zealand’s highest profile stage race, so the travel began on the Monday with a stop overnight in Hawkes Bay and then a cruisy drive down to Masterton the next morning, only to be told I didn’t really need to be there at midday, but instead could’ve been there by 3, oh well, I managed to get a ride in and stock up on food ready for the week ahead.
The general layout of the days whilst we were down there seemed to go as follows:
Breakfast (provided by the hotel) at 0700 and back to the room by 8
Chill out for an hour and start getting ready
Meet outside hotel room with team members at 0915 for warm-up and sign on
Race starts at 1000, suffer for a couple of hours.
Back to the hotel mid-afternoon for a shower, food (our own)
Head out to the laundromat to wash the kit for the next day
Get back in time to watch the finish of Tour Down Under for the day
Dinner and dessert (provided by the hotel) at 1800 and back to the room by 7
Chill out, rest up then sleep till the next morning
Repeat for 5 days straight with marginally more suffering each day!
The meals at the hotel were killer, can’t go wrong with a buffet dinner for a plethora of hungry cyclists!
To the racing, and day one started out very different to what I’d expected. We set off from the hotel for 5km of neutralised before the flag dropped and the speed rocketed up. It was flat out from the get go, with the course being mainly flat, consisting of a ride out, three laps and then back into town. On the way out we were ticking along at 50+km/h, a cruisy speed in the bunch. I was feeling happy with how it was going until part-way round the first lap. We were approaching a left turn and everyone in the bunch seemed fairly chilled out, as we started going round the corner I noticed that JLT-Condor, a continental team from the UK had all gone to the front. It was about two seconds later that I noticed it was a solid cross-wind from the right and about a second after that it was one of those moment as I realised I was too far back and this was about to get really hard. Luckily for me, I wasn’t the only one to be caught out, and the peloton split faster than a Kardashian marriage, so at least I had people to work with. We pedalled hard, we rode fast, we did ALL the suffering and finally got back onto the bunch, right at the bottom of the only climb on the laps. I was stoked that we’d managed to get back on, but this feeling didn’t last long as I had another one of those moments as the front of the bunch rode away once again. It was back to the pedalling fast, heart racing, fast speeds game and we were back on. Just as we caught the bunch, a break of four or five riders escaped off the front, where none of the major teams were represented. The next lap and a half were at a decent tempo with it not being anywhere near as full on as the first lap. With about 30-40km to go, the big teams in the tour started riding the front to pull back the break that was at about three minutes. With the race in the gutter most of the way into town, I was sat behind Alex West, my teammate and probably better sprinter than me as he moved further and further up the bunch. We hadn’t really put a plan into place prior to the stage, and looking back it might’ve been a good idea, as we probably could’ve set him up for a better result. However the nature of our team, and who was in it, lent itself to more individual rather than teams racing. In the end Alex and I ended up coming in 17th and 19th respectively, not bad considering the field.
Stage two was probably the easiest of the tour, with a ride out to Martinborough and nine laps of an eight km circuit, sort of like a Belgian kermesse, but with a 70km prelude. It was fairly steady all the way to the line despite one or two pinches in cross winds, the bunch mostly stayed together and it was lined up for a sprint. With a semi-technical lead in, I was trying to move as far forward as possible and stay there around the corners prior to the finish. I ended up coming in 17th, another top 20 which I was happy about and somehow up to 14th on GC.
Stage three was undoubtedly the hardest stage of the tour for me. 10 laps of 12km with no respite anywhere, a great course to crack you mentally. The course was rectangular shaped with cross winds on both sides and the pace being hot in the short tailwind directly after the crosswind. It was a stage spent in the gutter hoping for some respite or some draft, and that kind of racing takes it out of you both physically and mentally. In the last 25km a group of 14 slipped off the front and took 1:40 out of the peloton. I managed 11th in the bunch sprint for 25th place, my worst result in the tour. The stage was probably made harder because it was a course that did not seem challenging from the outset and I wasn’t expecting it to be as hard as it was. However stage four was expected to be hard because of the hills and length of the stage. My numbers were roughly the stage between stage three and four, however I was absolutely shot after the third, but felt significantly better after the fourth.
The fourth stage was a bit of an epic, with 153km of racing with 2200m of climbing, with a 10km long hilltop finish that gained 400 metres. I knew it was going to be a hard day from the get go, but it turned out way more manageable than the day prior. I kept near the front on the climbs, rode smart in the bunch and tried to conserve myself. It was on the second to last hill, a 2.5km monster at about 8% that had me struggling. The bunch split up, and I was going fairly hard to even stay where I was, putting out slightly below my best 5/6 minute powers. The front guys weren’t too far ahead, and as we crested the top, our group lay down some MAD SPEED and caught the bunch before the bottom of the descent. Because we’d caught on, we were already positioned at the back, and when one of the big teams laid down some crazy power on the lead into the final climb, guys that were really feeling it started pinging and leaving gaps, which put me on the back foot going into the climb as I was already a couple of seconds back on the front group. Looking at it realistically, I was never going to win the climb, but I definitely think being up the front at the bottom would’ve left me in a higher placing by the end. So up we started going, I rode a fairly steady tempo, caught some guys that were dropping and just kept tapping at a suitable pace. The main brunt of the climb was about 20 minutes long, and if you’re numbers inclined (pun intended), my average power was around 5.2 watts/kg for the end of a pretty brutal stage. I ended up crossing the line in 17th, 3:30 down on the winner, and leaving me in 19th on GC and 6th U23 rider with one stage to go.
Stage five did not go to plan. I didn’t really have a plan, but the plan I kind of had didn’t happen. I somehow managed to miss the break of twenty that went, primarily due to one of those ‘wrong place, wrong time’ moments. There were 20 guys off the front, all the big teams had guys in there and the ‘peloton’ was now just cruising along, coffee ride tempo. I was pretty annoyed at this, the fact that I’d missed the break and that I was going to lose my top 20 GC placing because of it. Rather than sit in the bunch and kick myself for the next fortnight after the race, I decided to try and minimise my losses. I hadn’t really thought it through, so when I rolled off the front with 34km to go, I was semi- expecting everyone to jump on my wheel, or at the least only last about 5km. Once I’d been away for about 5km, I had a good look back, and then it hit me, this was going to be a lonely run-in to the finish. I put my head down, rode a steady tempo and just kept chugging to the line, classic ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ style. You can even see my power (pink) and heart rate (red) on the graph in the last photo above from the stage. It rises, levels and stays constant all the way to the end. I knew that it was highly unlikely I’d catch the leaders unless there had been a crash or they’d all sat up, but at least I expected to catch someone, which I never did. From when I left to when I crossed the line, I saw no-one, not in front or behind. As I got closer and closer I started ramping it up a bit and gave myself a good thrashing to the line to try and further minimise all my losses, and it worked! I ended up coming in 22nd on the stage, seven minutes down on the winners, but six minutes in front of the bunch I was with initially. I ended up actually moving up to 18th overall on GC, but down to 9th in the under 23 classification. The winner of the final stage finished 7 seconds behind me on final GC, so every second of my break counted! If I’d come in with the front bunch, I would’ve finished 15th on GC, if I’d have come in with the bunch I was with, I would’ve been all the way down in 26th, so it was definitely worthwhile for the result.
All in all I was pretty happy with my result, I possibly could’ve done better, but I rode extremely conservatively throughout the tour, as I had no idea how my body would’ve held up over the five days of racing in my first elite level tour. I think if I’d ridden less conservatively, I could’ve easily cracked the top 10 GC. To do that, the only thing I’d have had to have changed was making the split on stage three and stage 5, which would’ve catapulted me nine minutes up the leaderboard. But it’s all experience, and as one of the youngest ones in the tour, I’m happy with the overall result and the experience it’s given me. Next year I’ll definitely be aiming for that top 10 or higher, we’ll see.
It’s now only just over three weeks until I leave for Belgium and the borderline freezing cold (literally) temperatures. Before then, I’ve got the Rev Cycle Race, another UCI ranked event this Saturday, followed by some testing at Massey University. Should all be fun! T.W.C