Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Georgia...done and dusted...time to get back to reality

So after a slightly disappointing finish to Georgia...my 12th place in the last stage....no thanks to 2 flats in the last 25km which wasted a lot of the team on getting me back and saw me hit a big wall with 100m to go, when i could have been a legitimate shot for 3rd on the stage....it is time to get back to reality...and that means regular races.

So we had a couple of crits this weekend which were dominated by Toyota. We rode ok as a team of 5 without really setting the world on fire. A couple of top 10's for me and 4th for Teddy in Roswell was about all we took out of the weekend...but more important than that, were the lessons we learnt as a team. Toyota and Health Net gave us some schooling in the risks that need to be taken in tight and fast criterium racing and i hope that we will move into the future as a better, classier unit.

Kate and her team stepped it up a notch in Switzerland over the weekend and raced hard to put Judith into 2nd spot and with that, the World Cup lead. I imagine that she could extend that lead in the upcoming Montreal WC...a race that she has done well with before. Not forgetting Chantal B, who came in 4th and moved herself into 4th place in the WC standings with that..So congrats to them all for what has been a stella season so far.

Have to give a shout out to the rest of my team...who flogged themselves in Gila and got some awesome results. 2 stage wins, the leaders jersey for 2 days and 2nd on GC to finish the tour. But for those of you who had not seen...Zirbel came down hard on the last day, while leading the tour and broke a rib and his hand....so GET WELL SOON TOMMY Z....

Next for me and the crit team is the Joe Martin...2 top 10's in the last 2 years has me heading there with some confidence that we can challenge for the overall win. With a team of 5 it is going to come down to some savvy tactics and smart racing, but we have the boys to get it done, so i am thoroughly looking forward to it. Ill try and keep you all posted.

Until then....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good to see another update Rich. Don't you just love flat tyre's, yeah right. Hope you and the team have a successful Joe Martin. Caitlin played the panio at school assembly last week, she did an awesome job. Have fun, Marls