Clinton Avery Cyclist

Well i really hate to disappoint you guys but this is one email that isnt going to be that exciting to read. Well ill make it as exciting as possible but its not going to be long like the rest of them. Like my mum told me its ok to send a short email every now and then, to give us readers a breather……..well my dad was on the end of the phone line and said well if she needs a breather reading that get her to read an email with no comas or full stops, then we’ll see how long she can hold her breathe. Anyway back to the point, this email wont be long because explaining the race wont take long. Why? The race for me didnt last long!

Since you are all wondering why it didnt last long, well for now lets just say “I hope my luck in these world cups changes sometime soon”. I mean I do so many races a year that dont count towards anything….Day Night thriller, N-Duros, Club races, and many more. Who cares if you you have bad luck in them, no-one! But in a world cup when you are trying to qualify for the Olympic team, well then still probably not many people care, But I do! I know what I’m capable of, but 2 out of 2 chances I havent been able to show it cause my dam bike doesnt want to stay together. Oh well still have 2 more world cups and the world champs to go so hopefully my luck will change.

1 plane, a taxi, 2 trains and another taxi I was at the place I was staying for the world cup. HEHE a 4 star hotel.
The Race! 8 laps of a 5km circuit. A circuit that was more suited for me so that was the race I was planning on making my good one. During practise i was feeling good, I was loving the course, and everything on my bike seemed to be working good. Things were looking up for a good race. On the morning of the race, the sky had that look about it…. the look the it was about to piss down! By about 11.30am it was doing just that. But it was worse then pissing down it was absolutely terential! The drains on the side of the road couldnt even cope with the amount of water that was falling, so there was a bit of surface flooding occuring. By about 12 oclock I thought it was time I made my way to the course. I still had  to find Selby to see if he could feed me and look after my gear during the race. I rode the 5 km to the course from where I was staying with a back pack with my bottles in it but was wearing everything I was racing in, so was good to go. I had my rain coat on but with the amount of water that was falling it didnt really matter if I wore it or not. All it did was make it take a bit longer for me to get wet. well when I got to the couse everthing was soaked. Me, I Looked like a drowned rat, My bag, and even the dry clothes i had in a plastic bag seemed to get wet. And i still had 1.5 hours to go till the start of the race. I found Selby while I was warming up, I told him where my bottles were and asked if he could come get my jacket from the start line. Apart from being wet and cold everything was falling into place. I had a good warm up and was firing….Ready to go! I knew with the rain and the state of the course from the womens race half the field was eliminated before the race even started. BANG, and we’re off. From 61st to the top 30 by the 2nd corner. I held my position for most of the start lap but when we hit the single track people started josling around due to the conditions. I past a couple of riders and got passed by a couple so stayed roughly the same place.

Quater way around the lap things were starting to go bad….. not only for me. Your gears wernt working from the mud that had lodged it way into places water struggles to get into. Well the gear changes werent going so well for me from the mud, and I broke my chain. I thought “where is the tech zone? too Far away! ill fix it my self!” well got 500m form the tec zone and SNAP, it broke again. same place! I broke the quick link. I ran to the shimano guys who put a proper joining pin in it. Lol By now i was last rider on the track. I got going again and made up 5 places I think, of the people that were still going, guys had already pulled out by the tech zone. but coming around to complete my 2nd lap there was the UCI standing on the track saying your lapped out. 80% rule. (for those that dont know its when the leader of the race has more then 80% of the lap on you you are pulled out so you dont interfare with the front of the race) well race over for me.

I went to the feed zone to find Selby to tell him I’m out and get my gear. As I stood in the Tech Zone and watched, (the easiest way to explain it is) It was like the KFC drive thru on a Friday night. Or the McDonalds drive thru when they had the 50cent cheese burgers or the $1 Mc Chickens. I would say on average every 5th rider stopped with some sort of problem.

But i rode back to my hotel feeling like I hadnt even done anything. I use the fire hose to clean my bike and me, cause I dont think the hotel would have been to impressed with the state I was in.
1 taxi, 2 trains, 1 more taxi, and a plane and I was home again. Bring on the next world cup with no problems hopefully….. fingers crossed. And Paris - Roubax this weekend. am looking foward to it.
Till next time
Clinton
WoW it was actually quite a long email for not much. lol

Hey everyone,

This is just another race report, this time though its on a 3 day tour not just a one day race. So therefor I’m going to need to cut the run down on the stages a little shorter so I’m not here all day writing this dam thing. I must say though I was quite excited bout the tour so you might be lucky.
Stage 1: 145km over the most mountainous terrain Belgium can offer us. In fact the whole tour was in the same area so it was 3 days of mountains. The fist day was suppose to be easy compared to the others but half way through the stage I was thinking to my self if this gets any harder I don’t think I’m going to finish the tour. I know what you are all thinking now and that’s, “but he don’t quit when things get tough!” and I can assure you that I don’t, but when you have a cold and have more important races coming up sometimes you have to prioritize. I wasn’t going to pull out due to the fact there was big climbs, haha what kind of cyclist do you think I am? And besides how else are you suppose to get faster at riding up hill? Anyway, I decided against the pulling out option and chose to play the race safe and just ride in the bunch, in the hope that I would get some good legs later and get rid of all the snot out of my head.

 
Well I think I chose the right option cause that’s exactly what happened, I got rid of the snot and got some good legs. However with 60km to go on one of the fastest descents I have been down, some stupid idiot decided now was the time to move up the peloton! Well he cooked it, and down came 30 or 40 guys all doing roughly 65- 70kmh. Well when you hit the tarmac at that speed you slid for a long time, and when you are only wearing licra, which at that speed comes off in about 0.2 seconds and you are sliding for roughly 5 seconds, the next thing that comes off is skin! Ouch. Ill tell you what that 5 seconds at the time get turned to slow motion so it seems like a minute. I do know that the Ambulance was kept very busy. A lot of guys continued but some never had the chance too. Anyway I managed to avoid it. I was far enough back in the peloton that I saw it happen and had time to react. I figured I had 3 options, crash, take to the grass which hadn’t been mowed in 3 months and was knee deep, or ride over people. I chose option 3 then when that wasn’t working as well as I hoped (nearly crashed when I bunny hoped 1 guy and his bike at 50 kmh) I chose option 2. (All this going through my head in a split second. As I hit the grass now doing 45kmh, I hit a hole, or a stick, or a rock, or something cause I wrote off both my good Zipp carbon wheels. Fortunately they stayed together enough so they could hold my weight and still went round so I stayed upright. I don’t know how. Maybe the MTB skills coming into play. I came to a stop to change wheels which I had to wait 2 or 3 minutes for as the cars couldn’t get through the crash and I was 200 m past it.

Anyway I got going again and got paced back to the last bunch on the road, then I bridged from them to the next bunch solo, then went from them with 4 others to 20 seconds behind the peloton at the finish.

Stage 2: 149km and yeah I will admit it was a harder stage then the first one but I was told that it still wasn’t the hardest, the last one was. That is where the tour is won and lost. Anyway I don’t really have much to tell you about this stage there was no dramas and the peloton stayed together for a bunch sprint. In the 3 finish laps I laid down attacks in the hope that people were getting tired and maybe I could sneak away, but it wasn’t meant to be, they weren’t letting anyone go away. Coming into the up hill sprint I had a good position with 500m to go. It was looking good, because I still had the legs for it. With 200m to go I had a lead out train come down the outside of me just to be boxed in. So I had the legs but couldn’t do anything with them. Finished top 20 I think, didn’t get to see the results after.

Stage 3: 11km Time trial. I wouldn’t say it was a time trail to suit me… I like the rolling or flat time trails. An over 20 km. It takes me normally 10km to get into it. Anyway it was the sort of course that we spent a lot of the time tossing up weather to ride road bikes or TT bikes. Road bike cause it would climb faster but TT bike cause it would be faster on the flat sections. The profile was, 500m flat, 4 km climb, 2 km flat along the top, 2km descent, 2.5 km flat to the finish. I chose my TT bike and so did the Aussy in the team and we both did the fastest times in the team. I was going better then I thought I would, I caught my minute man (rider before you when you go off at minute intervals) and put another 20seconds into him. I finished 12 ^th in the time trail which brought me up to 36 ^th over all going into the last stage. Dylan (the Aussy) was 12 ^th overall going into the last stage.

The final stage: Man O Man! Talk about a hard stage! You remember the other week when I told you about that steep as hill we had to race up? Well these bad boys made that one look easy! It was 108km so only short, but this stage gave a whole new meaning to being in the box! 5 Climbs a lap, 3 were steeper and longer then bluff hill in the tour of southland. In fact they make bluff seem easy. Anyway we were riding this stage looking after Dylan to try move him into the top ten if not the top 5. He was only 28 seconds down on the leader going into this stage. Well we did what we could but he got a tad nervous and cooked it up himself by trying to go with most of the break away groups but none stuck. On the 2 ^nd lap he got tired and got dropped on the 1st climb of the lap. I dropped with him to help him chase back o the descent. We caught back on only to have him get dropped on the next climb as well. Again doing my job I dropped with him to chase back on with him on the descent. We caught them again only to have him get dropped on the next climb again! Again doing my job I dropped with him. And same went again! I was kinda getting frustrated with this cause there was only 3 of us left from the team at the start of the 2 ^nd lap, and the other team mate was high overall as well, so he was never going to help Dylan, he had to look after himself. And because Dylan wasn’t going good it was better to have some one relatively high on GC then to have no one. But by now I was starting to fatigue as well. On the next climb as the same pattern continued Dylan Said to me, ” I’m not going to make it up the next climb with these guys, stay with them and help Pieter.” As I chased on the climb back to the bunch, I went to Pieter and said “I’m all yours, Dylan is gone. Well up the final climb it was my turn to be gone and Pieter didn’t need me any more. He went with the front group to the finish and I got there 30 seconds behind them. There was maybe 10 left in the bunch at the finish, then another 10 (Pieter bunch) then me. So for all the work I done I never got much of a reward but I had a good tour and enjoyed it. If I never had the mishap in the 1 ^st stage I would have maybe been riding for GC so will have to make it my job in the next tour.
Over and out
Clinton

Well, well, well what can i say about this race?

Hmmmmm not really much to be honest with you. Its all the same as any other race really……..We start………. we race…….. it get really hard and your in the box towards the end of the race………. if you are at the front you sprint for the finish and just hurt that little bit more………… then take 3 days to recover! Well that about sums up most of the racing here in Belgium.

Ahhh what the heak i’ll tell you about my race, step by step and let you know how it was for me. First of all ill tell you how the race was for me cause thats easy. It was bloody hard! The race was an U26 race not U23. It was 170km consisting of a 130km lap followed by three 10km laps. The 130km lap was hard, there wasnt 1 piece of flat road any where. We were either climbing or decending and the majority of the climbs were what you could call climbs. I mean we were in the hilly part of Belgium not the flat part. I must say though the three 10km finish laps were definately the hardest, 1, because you were tired already, 2, the wind hard got up, 3, it had started raining (haha typical tour of southland weather) and 4, even though it was the flat section of the course it had a climb 1200m long and 17% steep.

For me this part was definatly the hardest as though i couldnt be bothered trying to get my hands on a 12/25 cassette and just rode my 11/23. I will admit there was some time there where i was struggling to turn the pedals over. haha because going up it 4 times, by the 4th time i must say it had definately killed me (once at the end of the 130km lap as well as the 3 finish laps). Just so you have an idea as to how steep that is an you have a relevancy to something, Waikete hill is 16% and 700m long (Rotorua), Bauldwin street is 20% steep and 250m long (Dunedin) and the steepest part of bluff hill in southland tour is 17% steep but only 150m long. However bluff has an average of 15% and is 3.2 km long (tour of southland).

Anyway the race started and I was feeling like shit. I had no legs what so ever. I went on the attack early in the race just to try get them to open up a bit but they wouldnt budge. I was thinking to myself right about then, “this is going to be a long day!” so I went back to the bunch and just rode in the peloton for a bit. The attacks started going and the amount of people going with each attack I thought I should really start trying to go with it, because if it sticks then its just going to be like riding in another bunch anyway. Well I went with a few but we kept getting brought back and then last one I went with hurt me, we got caught and just as I was drifting back into the bunch another attack went. and I didnt go with it more cause I couldnt. Well that one stuck, 9 riders gone.

Just after that one had got some time another 11 riders went. That one stuck also. Those 2 bunches joined to make 20 riders up the road and I wasnt with it. 2 hours had gone by now and the lead group of 20 were at 2min 45sec in front of us, but it was about now things made a turn for me. I started to get some legs and the wind was starting to get up. RACE ON!!!!!!!!!!! Me an 7 others including another team mate of mine (Steven) rolled off the front of the bunch in the cross winds and began on our long voyage across to the front group. Well we chased as 8 of us for a good 30km but it was really only 3 of us working the others were just sitting on. There was a few times though when everyone was rolling though it just didnt stay like that. So Steven, a BodySol rider an me tried just the 3 of us to get to the leaders, and attacked the rest of the group.

We went away and was pulling time on both groups. We were getting further away from the group we were just in and closer to the leaders. Well we made it…… right at the bottom of the most bitchyest hill I have ever ridden up! The end of the big lap, and begining of the finish laps. In the time we had spent chasing those leading guys though, 7 guys had attacked them, unfortunatly I wasnt there so I couldnt do anything about it but kept the race on with the guys I was with.

Up the hill the last time, its 3km to the finish from the top. I gritted my teeth (maybe I should go to a dentist now though) and gave it basically what I had left. Well there were 8 of us left at the top. unfortunatly I was that wrecked from the chase to the front group I had nothing left in my legs for a sprint and rolled across the line in 15th.
That was the race for me, I’m hoping this coming weekend will be better, with a 3day tour. But am looking foward to it.
Over and out
Clinton