Tour d’Worcester

Saturday was the flat Tour d’Worcester. No wind and no real climbs. I marked several attacks but otherwise took it relatively easy until just before the dirt-road section.

We didn’t know what to expect with the dirt, but I realised it was coming when Francois rode off the front. Shortly thereafter the road kicked up a bit and I thought I’d take the opportunity to string the bunch out a bit. I carried it through the first quarter of the dirt before my legs gave in on me and all the contenders came flying past. 9 riders got away whilst I managed to hook in with a chasing group consisting of most of the rest.

With only Paul from our team in the group of 9, we didn’t fancy his chances, so we proceeded to chase. We tried to get the group working nicely, but a few individuals spoiled the chase by coming through too hard. Then we had the marshalls that tried to stop us to let through some slower groups. WTF!?

In the end we finished less than 100m from the lead group. Paul went on a flyer with 3km to go, but was caught with 100m to the line, leaving Shaun Le Roux to take the race and the yellow jersey.

My numbers for the race were ok, especially considering my heavy training week. We rode for another hour afterwards and my week ended up just short of 800TSS, which is my biggest week in a long time.

We’re going to have to try something a little different next week if we want to get Paul ahead of Shaun.

Comparative power stats from Peter at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pvzhpTQNrhxbyrtpVXSkUEg&gid=1