Track nationals

Resultswise it was perfect. Three starts, three gold medals.

On Friday I quite tense about the kilo, but managed to perform pretty well despite it felt the most awful I've felt for a good while. I died badly at 700m and struggled to the finish line just in time. On saturday I rode the 4km Individual Pursuit. In the qualification round as I was in the last pair, my only target was to qualify for the final ride, which went as planned. In the finals I improved my time a bit and won the second gold medal of the weekend.

The main day was Sunday. The day of Team Pursuit, which we really wanted to do well in. We had had solid training session earlier and the plan worked. Our team, me, Juhana, Niklas and Mikael, performed to the plan and the gold was our. It is such a special feeling to ride in a team and succeed in a team, especially with guys like that. We had good time in training and in the race. Big high five, to Niklas, who actually did his first turns on track two weeks earlier and learned to ride team pursuit inside three training session. Not everyone can do that, amazing!

The weekend was good, although the times weren't quite where I would have wanted them to be. No worries, as the reason behind it is clear. The illness and flu after the stage race affected my training pretty much. On the two week lead up to the races I managed five partial training sessions, which isn't optimal I dare to say. I didn't feel particularly strong so I'm more than happy to wrap up national season up with these results. I'm confident that as the autumn goes on and there are some opportunities to improve my times, I'm able to do it.

Some photos will follow later on.

The team spirit crew

Ok, this is ridiculously exaggerating as a header. Last Saturday we had the NC for three disciplines, only one of which I was in. The decision not to ride anything else was rather clear as after the U6 in Sweden and the illness I hadn't ridden my bike barely at all. I did two standing starts on Friday and completed my man two duties in the team sprint (or spirit?) on Saturday.

We had a good laugh doing the team sprint with three enduro blokes, and being the only with experience in team spirit at all. Our man one, Hiski, you notice him by his hugely muscular stature, did his job more than well. Well, not quite as muscular as some may imagine, but what the heck. Me with my sprinters (or chicken?) legs, as man two due, had a bit of a struggle with the illness, but at the end it didn't hurt such a short performance as much as I was afraid of. So there I delivered our man three, Mikael, to last leg of the rides. Mikael, with greater endurance and time trial abilities, was a natural pick for his role and therefore he was our strong finisher.

In the morning, I was sure that we will ride a straight up final, but it soon was apparent that there will be finals and qualifiers. We qualified third for the bronze final, which was fair enough. Our first team scored a national record by margin to the second team. Placing in top four was a good one for us, as it was the very first team sprint for us as a team. In the final we managed to improve our time from the qualifiers notably, as we managed the technical performance a tad better after one practice ride, and won a bronze medal, which after all coughing felt pretty good. It was first elite medal for Hiski, and first sprint medal for Mikael. I was all too glad to get a bronze and ride solid rides.

As a conclusion we could have done a bit better times, by practicing more together without adapting our training programs much, but we would stand no chance with the guys who train sprinting. All in all, this was funny project ending nicely on podium in third spot. Thanks boys!


Also, Juhana won his first jersey in points race! Congratulations, I'm proud of you!

U6 stage race

U6 Cycle Tour

Hey, I'm back home and I'm alive. My first experience in stage was a nice one – well mostly. Now that I'm home tired and caught a bit of a cold I can sum the trip up stage by stage.

Prologue

It was 3.4k ride with a hill to finish it up. I had absolutely no idea how to ride the hill, so I ended up sparing power for the misery of a hill climb and figured 200m before the finish line that I had plenty left in the tank. The ride was not a bad one, yet I was tad disgusted with my tactics. I finished 18^th and was ready to tackle the coming challenges.

Stage 1

I woke up to a hellish rain and summed the day pretty much up in matter of seconds: 147km + rain + gravel road is not gonna be such a beautiful day on bike. However, I was surprised how easily I was able to hang in the bunch and even closer to the end got into a small breakaway attempt, which at the end went nowhere. Then the misery began, I lost the nose piece of my glasses and all the mud, sand and everything went into my eyes and it caused a temporary blindness for the rest of the evening. An experience I don't wish have again, and after visiting local hospital I got some antiobiotics to the scars and bruises in my eyes, which helped. And oh, at the end of the day I got stuck behind a crash and was dropped. Such a good stage, ehh?

Stage 2

The longest one of all. It was 171km including a bit of a finish hill. In the morning, luckily dry and bright this time, I was yet unsure whether I was in a form to ride or even to start as my sight was kinda blurred still. We decided to give a go by hanging in the sun deck (end of peloton) and for my luck the breakaway of the day went quite quickly away and all the strong teams had their riders up there. At one part the gap was more than 10 mins and the peloton speeded up for quite some time getting the gap somewhere around 5 mins. At that time I still had no struggle, which I was more than happy with. Then there went some more breakaways up there and we just rode to the finish hill safely. There I decided to show up what a trackie without any capabilities can do. Honestly, it wasn't very much, as many can guess. I tried a long finishing sprint from somewhere around 600m away and died during the last 100m totally just trying to avoid causing any crashes.

Stage 3

My beloved criterium was on at Wednesday. Not much to say about it. I quite don't like it and hanging at the back in criteriums is a suicidal move in such race, but it is exactly what I did. I could hang in there for some time but then dropped back down to wait the bunch catch a lap. Yet somewhere in the middle my left crank got stucked, which certainly didn't help. I could say, that a top three would have been realistic without the crank issue – but it would be a lie and a bad one. I commited a suicide criterium-wise and got caught by that.

Stage 4

Hillyish and shortish road stage (75km) consisting of ten laps with a finishing hill. Tiredness started to feel and again I decided to hang at the back, which worked fine until last lap when the group was blown in the crosswinds. I decided to roll home easily and lost some time. I wouldn't like to mention the weather, but it wasn't on our side and now I'm sick.

Stage 5

Time trial with tired legs is always funny. We had an ambitious plan, which worked up to 10km mark, but the time trial still included four more kilometers so I died quite spectacularly. I got my best individual stage placing however and in terms of time differences it wasn't so bad afterall.

Good trip except the illnesses I got.

Giddiap boyo!

Despite the increasing fatigue and saying that I'm more of a track cyclist, one still has to go out on the road and try things out. These are the times when one has to try different things out – I mean cycling and trainingwise, not just different things, you know. Therefore in addition to the intervals that I always do, I'm riding the national pair's time trial champs tomorrow, and then it is time for some seriously new things to test in my training. I'm heading to Sweden to ride a six day stage race, U6 Dagars in Tidaholm.

I strongly believe that such a hard week of riding will empty my legs at first place, but also boost my form after recovery. Well, the first part is rather clear, but second objective remains to be seen. There is, anyway, two weeks to recover and adapt to the track. Also, it is something completely new, so there is far more to gain. Yet, my form ain't nowhere near ready for the summer, that time shall come after the trip to Sweden. I also really like to shake things up and see what works for me and maybe what may not. Then one day I don't have to be guessing between options as I pretty much know what's good for me.

After the trip, I'm back to track and my beloved intervals, but more about that after the U6 Dagars.

Steady going and some successes.

Training has been good lately. I've managed to put down solid sessions one after another. My legs are starting to feel more and more tired, but for a good reason. I'm quite happy with the current status of my training as I can do and recover from series of hard training sessions.

This weekend, to spice up the training, I rode in the national omnium championships. It consist of six different disciplines; three of those are ridden against the clock (for my liking) and three of those are ridden man against other fellas (not quite my thing). I got my first Omnium medal finishing second after two days of racing. A good friend of mine, Mika Simola, took his first national champion's jersey today – many congratulations Mika! My performances were reasonable and steady in all events. I tried to ride my ass off in every event, in which, I think I succeeded. I didn't skip one turn in the front during the weekend! Although, the real deal for me was the timed events, which as well were ok if not good considereing the current training load. Maybe I seemed to underperform timewise in the flying 250m in comparison to my earlier efforts, but as some great athletes say: ”This is just part of the process”.

The 4k individual pursuit was the most important event for me this weekend. It turned out to be the most technically solid performance I've ever ridden. For the first time I nailed the set timetable just as planned, which was a real joy for me. The time was okay aswell. The last discipline was the kilo, which was tough as hell, but still flat 69s was a good performance to wrap the weekend of racing up. The silver medal was a really really nice bonus for the weekend!

Ok then, say something about the bunch races... Well, the first target was to come out alive from each of the races, which I managed. Secondly, in each race I finished in top five, which pleased me. Thirdly (and most importantly), I rode my ass of in every race. ”Not bad”, I would say as a conclusion.

No time for a break now though. I'll keep on training hard and next weekend is the national champs in pairs' time trial and right from the finish line I'll leave for a ferry to Sweden to race in U6 stage race (six days of racing).

More success was last Tuesday, as I got the final results from university. It was probably one of my proudest moments to find out that I got First class degree (meaning an average of A overall) and an A15 from my dissertation. I can't really say how good it felt!