Grant Ferguson

I arrived in the Basque country and spent the first week doing some training rides and enjoying the weather. This weekend I had my first race in the Basque country; it started with a long lie as we weren’t racing until the afternoon. We arranged to meet in the afternoon at the club house and give our bags to the team before peddling to the start which was about 5 miles away. The route was about 85km so quite short compared to my usual race length and it was flat for the first half with some longish climbs in the second half. We lined up about ten minutes before the start with about 90 other Basque Junior cyclists and just chilled out with fellow team mates Disco Stu and the Baby Face. The race started neutralised out of the town then soon enough we had started, the first 30min was okay with nothing interesting happening except some small attempts at a break. Then after about 10miles I followed a boy attacking and we were joined by Stu and about 5 others which created a group of 8. It was an exciting time as nobody in the bunch was willing to chase so we soon started to create a gap, and it was looking promising! The main man in the break was the Argentina national champ who is over racing in Basque and he is in the strongest team so I was in the right place. The gap continued to grow to a min when we were joined by the team cars and then 1.30 and 2min where it stayed until the long climb. Me and Stu where feeling rather good and had been putting in some decent turns on the front to make sure we kept the gap. We finally arrived at the main climb of the race, which was about 6/7 mile long with a steady gradient. The group was now getting nervous with people wondering who was going to attack. Me and Stu where patient though and eventually the Argentina Champ attacked and I was right on his wheel with one other boy which now created a group of three. It was then a bit of a game with neither of them wanting to work and forcing me to the front which I didn’t like so I decided to put in a small attack which got rid of one of the boys so it was just me and the Argentinean left. I thought this is good and asked if he wanted to work so we could get a good lead but he kept shaking his head and saying that he didn’t work. Well I wasn’t planning on towing him to the finish, so with him sitting on my wheel I put in an attack as hard as I could and I looked back after about a min to see a nice gap. The boss in his team car was going nuts at him to chase but he couldn’t so that was good, although I was fairly worried though as I still had 10miles to the finish on my own and most of it was flat or with small drags. I got on with it and started ripping into it all the way to the finish with the lads in the team car going crazy at me, I thought I was bound to get caught so kept going hard as I could, then on the final climb towards the finish they came up next to me and told me I had 3min, yaa beautyyyyy!  First place can’t complain for my first race here, job done! We also won first team and I also won the mountains competition which I didn’t realise until the end.