Tour International Des Hautes Pyrenees.

Not a bad race. I wasn’t sure how fit I was going into this. Having done a BIG week in the mountains as training a little under a week before this stage race, and having caught a bit of a cold during that big training period… also not sure if I had any real “punch” in the legs of just good endurance.

Training on the Specialized sporting the Cycling Center shorts in the Pyrenees. Over 900km of mountains in 1 week. Is that enough to get ready for the Tour International des Pyrenees?

Stage1: 98km

The stage started off fairly flat and it wasn’t long before I was thinking that maybe I would quit the sport. Cycling is a hard sport and I really wasn’t feeling too good. I wondered why I was bothering with all this and was feeling like I would last too long in this race. Then we started to hit some hills and I was seemingly able to hold my own. The finale saw us climb a pretty long climb about 20k from the finish. Come the top of that climb I was feeling a little better. There was a group off the front, but at the top of the hill I attacked the group and got some pretty good king of the mountain points. Then we had a good downhill followed by a steep 5km climb to the finish line. With a couple km to go we could actually see the breakaway a little ahead of us. So with 1k to go, I attacked and tried to catch the breakaway group on the line. I caught a couple of the guys, but there was a Spanish rider 2mins up the road already. So I finished 5^th and got a few more Mountain points.

Stage 2:

The Yellow Jersey group up the Aspin

Day 2 had us doing 165km. The first part of stage 2 was around the valleys, then we hit the Col d’Aspin where things got interesting. I found myself in the yellow jersey group up starting the Aspin with a few guys from the early breakaway up the road. The attacks came thick and fast. The yellow jersey group got wittled down to 4 or 5 of us. The attacks kept coming and I eventually had to let 3 guys ride away from me. I caught one of them pretty quickly, but 2 french guys and the Spanish yellow jersey stayed up away. By the top I had caught all but one or two of the early breakaway riders and crested the summit of the Col d’Aspin in 6^th place alone. I hit the descent pretty hard and had 25km of valley road before a 3km uphill finish. According to my director in the team car, I rode most of the valley road at 70kph, and after a long, hard and lonely chase, I caught a 3 man group ahead of me. The yellow jersey was further up t road. Come the finish I we sprinted it out and I got yet another 5^th place on the stage. Moving me up to 4^th overall on the General Classification, and 6^th in the Mountains Classification.

Stage 3 was 97km back out of the big mountains towards the foothills of the Pyrenees. We had done some calculations and found that even if I took all the remaining Mountain points I could not take the jersey. So I totally gave up on that idea and focused on keeping my place on GC.

The stage was pretty nervous. I hated it. Small roads, wet and damp roads, lots of ups and down but no “real” hills. We had a guy in the break all day until a short climb 5km from the finish. The guy in 5^th overall attacked the yellow jersey on this climb but it didn’t go anywhere, so I countered in the hope of getting a little time to consolidate my 4^th spot overall. Over the top we all looked at eachother too much and the the group came back together. We almost caught the remains of the early breakaway on the line. Sadly for us we didn’t quite catch them as our sprint took the field sprint for 5^th only a couple wheels lengths behind the breakaway group. I finished not too far behind him and kept my 4^th place overall.

So overall not a bad International Tour of the Pyrenees. 4^th place overall and… actually I’m not sure where I ended up in the mountains classification.