Due for some time off

Well this was my final weekend of racing in Denmark before I come home for a month. I am glad its over. I am definitely due for a break. I am starting to feel both tired and undertrained, which is a clear sign of too much racing and not enough training.

Yesterday was a relatively flat race with just enough wind to make it a bit hard just sitting back in the group. There were only 40 starters in the race so it was super aggressive from the start, any break that goes won't come back. After almost getting dropped twice in the first hour, I missed the break that went. But we had 6 out of 13 riders. However, there was one rider from Saxo Bank in the group, Andre Steensen, but he wasn't doing much work and his dad was our director so I think there was some mixed priorities there. He ended up riding away for the win and our riders finished 3, 4, 5, and some more. I gave my two team mates back in the peleton a lead out for the sprint for 14th place and they finished 15th and 16th, so not too bad. I missed out on money by about 3 meters and came 21st. But I basically sucked.

Today was our local race in Horsens. The course was pretty hilly and we needed to win. It was a strange race, 30 km into the race the field split in half and we had 6 riders there, myself included. We rode hard for a while until it was clear that the second half wasn't coming back. Then half way through the race there was another split in the group and we had 4 out of 15, again I was there. Finally, with about 40 km to go Jacob, who was our strongest guy today, attacked and took 3 others with him, and we basically stopped. Their gap went up to 2 minutes within 5 km. Because we were going so slow, a few riders caught up from behind, but the race didn't really opened up again until 10 km to go. In the end we ended up 8th, 11th, and 13th. I was the one in 13th. Honestly I didn't care enough to race hard for the minor places, especially since there is no difference in prize money between 10th and 20th. So I did ride a bit better then yesterday, but the course was also much more suited to my strengths and the race still felt way harder than it should have.

Tomorrow, I will be back in California, I can't wait. I need the time to rest and rebuild before the next big objective: the UCI 2.HC ranked Tour of Denmark at the end of July.