From stage racing to track.

Again a relatively long break from blogging, but relatively productive block on bike. After the road nationals it was a week until the U6 Cycle Tour in Tidaholm. That period I spent just getting ready to roll from the first to last stage.

The race itself clearly itself provided me with definite highs and lows as well. The highs included prologue, first road stage and especially last road stage. The criterium and second road stage were the lows and the finishing time trial landed somewhere in between being neither good, nor bad ride. In the prologue I was 10^th with a solid but shy overall performance. The road stage was quite nervy, but I managed to get through with no problems. Second road stage was simply terrible. Cold, wet, and even colder – I ended my race shivering at around 115km. The criterium next day went at the beginning from break to break until I had to gasp some air inside the bunch and during that period I locked my brakes and destroyed my rear tyre and was eventually flagged out.The last road stage was good. I was in the first break and rode actively. Some nervy moments inside last five kilometers, however, cost me a chance for real good stage result. In the time trial I gave my all, but the active road stage made a notable difference and I just wasn't hitting the right watts and ended up being 18^th.

After U6 Cycle Tour it was time for a two-week track cycle to complete the nats. In the mean time, my training had made me slower and slower and actually the only idea of the two-week cycle was to get at least some speed to my legs. It worked okay in the end. On Tuesday before I rode a solid kilo in almost perfect conditions. Come Friday and the national kilo champs my time was enough for fourth, meaning that the sprinters had got the better of me– as I expected, but managed to forget at the time. My sincere congratulations go to Juhani for his first jersey. You really deserve it, wear it well buddy!

On Saturday I had two disciplines in my schedule – individual pursuit and match sprint. Individual pursuit to win and match sprint for fun. I qualified fifth in the match sprint in the morning and first in the individual pursuit with a controlled ride, despite my too quick opening. In match sprint I was dropped by my friend Antti and then solely concentrated on the pursuit final and especially starting calmly. The final was good for me, and I even got to enjoy the last three laps of the race. It was my third, but still felt superb. The day on that was getting only better and better when I watched Antti riding like a boss in his first ever proper sprint competition. At the end of the day, he was crowned the champion. Congrats Antti! On the last day we had the team pursuit in the program. We rode it safe and got gold to wrap up the weekend. Then it was time to enjoy the rest of the competition as a spectator.

Good couple of weeks are now bagged and I'm looking forward to the future.