Niedersachsen Stage Race, Germany

Last Weekend (July 25th-27th), I was part of a GB team that went to race in the Junior UCI ranked Niedersachsen Rundfahrt, not far from my last race in Munsterland. The trip was quite long so we stayed over in Duisberg for the night and made the rest of the trip in the morning.

The first stage started on the Friday night and was only 66K however the course was quite challenging with lots of technical areas and narrow lanes. It was almost inevitable that a break would go away and our job was to get 2 GB riders in it. After a nervous start in the town of Wallenhorst (the whole race was run from this town), the race commenced. GB were good at tagging the moves with all the team following wheels. Luke Rowe got in the break of the day which Mark Chrsitian then jumped across to. A few teams missed out including the Norwegians. There coach wasn't too happy as we could hear him screaming each time we passed the start line. Luke was 3rd in the sprint and Mark 4th. I came in around the middle of the bunch.

The next day we had a time trial. My legs didn't feel as good as yesterday and my head wasn't with it. I finished a solid but unspectacular 28th. Erick did well finishing 2nd behind a Norwegian and Luke gained enough time to get yellow.

The 4 of us who didn't get in the break on the 1st day were now domestiques as the break gained 1:30 over the bunch. We had to protect Luke's yellow for the 96k race along similar roads to yesterday. Me, Erick, and Andy Fenn did a lot of pulling coming to the finish and Mark clipped of the front with 1 other rider and got 10 seconds. This moved him into yellow and Luke into 3rd

The final stage was longer at 130k and was very hot. It was up to GB to keep the race together and protect Mark's lead. We managed it by 1 second! We also won the team prize.

I ended up around 35th on GC but my work as domestique was pretty satisfying. For the rest of the week after I had food poisoning so have been out of action for a bit. Hopefully will have recovered by National Road Champs.

Comments

Lazy Blogging..

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Grain of Sand

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