Fleche du Sud

Last week we went to Luxembourg and did the UCI 2.2 Fleche du Sud. It had a prologue and 4 stages. I was hoping for a good ride at this race as it is one of the hillier races that our team does. However, as usually the case, the prologue ended up being more decisive then most of the mountains.

The prologue was 4.2 km on a technical course with some narrow off camber turns, but also some long straights that definitely favored a TT bike. I basically suck at prologues, they are the opposite of what I am good at. But I knew that I needed to do a decent ride if I was to have any hope of doing well on GC. I took it a little too conservative in the corners, but I still averaged 45 kph (28 mph) and finished 50th. That doesn't sound too great, but thats like 30-40 places higher than I normally finish in prologues, and I beat Bart Wellens, so that was ok. Michael Faerk put in a decent ride and got 4th, but he was hoping for a bit more since he is the part of the current world championship winning team persuit team. Phinney crushed everyone and won by 3 seconds, but he also previewed the course way more then we did, and that meant that he was going so fast through the turns that he clipped a couple of curbs according to an interview I saw. Considering Faerk and I only rode the course 3 times, which was just barely enough to get a grip on the direction of the turns, loosing by 6 seconds isn't so bad for Michael.

The first stage looked pretty easy on paper, and turned out to be pretty easy in practice as well. There were two categorized climbs, but they were both pretty gradual and neither seriously broke up the field. The only real excitement came when the started the three 10km finishing circuits and the heavens opened up for a serious deluge. Mathias Gade had just gotten away in a group of 10, so we were hoping they would make it to the line, but despite a small crash by Phinney and some of his team mates in a slow corner, they were still caught with 15 km to go and it ended up being a 100 person field sprint. I just tried to stay near the front and out of trouble and rolled in somewhere in the mid 30s. However, for some reason they put a 4 second gap to the first 20 riders across the line, so Faerk lost a place on GC.

The second day had three categorized climbs in the first 80 km of the race and the first one, which came 26 km into the stage was like 12-15% for the final 500m. I think a lot of guys were pretty nervous about that climb, so when a group of 6 riders went about 15 km into the day, the peleton basically let them go. There were a bunch of attacks up all of the climbs and both Faerk and I were pretty comfortably at the front. Phinney got dropped a few times, but always had guys with him who would help him come back. Then after the last climb we were on a plateau with some good crosswinds so we decided to try and break up the field there. At first a Dutch team was also helping us but they started off going to hard and couldn't sustain it. So we ended up trying it with just 3 guys, me, Michael Berling, and Mathias Gade. We did break the field into three groups, but once we stopped, all of the impetus went out of the front group and I think most guys got back on. At least we hurt some legs, which was pretty evident when we hit the final 60 km which were done on four 15 km laps. Guys were visibly tired, but Faerk was also struggling since he hadn't eaten enough during the first part of the stage, so we didn't want to blow the race up either. I attacked with 6km to go and again with 1500m to go so I gave it a good effort, but again was caught before the line. Since the peleton was so tired, no one really organized a chase of the early break and they ended up staying away by about a minute. It tured out to be the deciding factor on GC.

On the third stage I decided to give it everything to get into a break, but despite countless attacks in the first hour and a half, the break didn't go. Eventually a small group did get away, but they were pretty doomed. The four finishing laps had a good 300 ft climb and I thought it could be a chance to make back some lost time. But despite being off the front at the top of the hill each lap, the downhill was too fast and non-technical that the peleton would basically come back together every lap. So again, it was a 70 person field sprint.

Fourth day started off kind of strage as I found myself without team mates in a group of about 30 riders after 10 minutes of racing. Clearly being in a bad position I did no work until we got brought back. Then a group of 18 went and we only had Berling in it. So again he did no work until a few teams got togher and brought it back. Then there were a bunch of attacks and I got into a group of 8 which I though looked promising, but then we hit the first KOM of the day and our group exploded and got caught by the field. I attacked half way up and got into another group of 3 riders at the top, but we were caught soon after the downhill. Immediately after we got caught a group of 19 went away and we only had Luthando in it. Still, we had someone, so we sat back and let somebody else chace, while Luthando sat on. Eventually they did get caught. There was just one thing left that could change the race, and that was a steep climb with 15km to go that was followed by a plateau before a gradual descent to the finish. Three riders went right at the bottom and I was too messed up from the heat, it was about 87 F and humid, and couldn't follow them. But I did make the front group of about 20 which also contained Faerk. The run-in to the finish consisted of attack after attack as everyone was on their limit trying to make something happen. Another group of about 20-30 made it back on during the final km which included Berling and he helped keep some of the attacks in check. However, the three riders who had gone on the climb managed to keep a 16 second gap to the line and two of them got in front of Faerk and he ended up 11th. Since the group was a relatively small 50 riders, I moved up to 25th place on GC.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with how the race went. The tactics didn't quite go my way and I made the mistake of not going with the break on stage 2 even though I was in a decent position to go with it. It was a problem of condfidence. I was also worried about the big climbs on the stage and I feared that if I went and got caught that I would have been dropped. It turns out that I was probably one of the 10 best climbers at this race, I finished 5th in the KOM competition without actually sprinting for any mountain tops. So that shouldn't have been a worry. Still, I was getting dropped on these kinds of climbs in 2.2 races last year so I had that in the back of my mind. Now I have a better idea of where I stand, I will take the next race by the horns and attack without trepidation or hesitation. That is what I have done in the past whenever I have gotten good results, and now I have the confidence to do it here.