GP Pino Cerami
As we awoke to a fairly standard grey foggy day in Belgium where the temperature was no more than about 4 degrees, it brings back all the feelings and emotions of Belgian racing.
I felt a lot better going into the race than last week at Route d’Adelie where I was still recovering from my efforts in Spain. Monday I had a great 6h ride in the mountains behind Monaco, just really enjoying riding my bike. With at least 5-6 cols, there’s no need for efforts as the roads and the time in the saddle does it for you.
So after a couple days easy riding to freshen up the body I felt ready to attack the race, and have a real good blow before Sunday.
190km with 3 finishing circuits of 15km it was going to be a tough race even though the field was not such a high quality. As so often happens with a lot of smaller teams in the race, the attacks started and never stopped. There was basically no real breakaway just attack after attack. We hit the finishing circuit which included a 200m cobbled wall and a couple other little pinches and the peloton started to diminish quickly. Attacks kept going but in the end we lined up for a bunch sprint, I did my best get our boys into position but in the end it was a Slovenian rider who took the sprint. We managed fourth with Anthony Geslin, but really it we should have won after a strong showing during the race.
Next up Paris Roubaix reconnaissance…
Cheers Tim