Tour of Biskaia

We had our second stage race in Basque a couple of weeks ago and it was much bigger with 180 starters and much more aggressive similar to Belgium racing. The first stage was a road race with no big climbs and quite rolling. I didn’t start this stage well as my legs were really suffering and I just wasn’t feeling myself, so up until about half way through the stage I was mainly near the back of the peloton, during this time a group of about 20 riders had gone up the road and had about 1.30. I started to get into the race at about half way through and tried to get myself off the front of the peloton, eventually I did with two other boys, and we started a three up time trial with about 4 boys sitting on getting a free ride as they had team mates in the break. It was close in the end as we caught the break in the last 500m of the race which I never realised was the finish and didn’t really get a chance to sprint. The main thing was we finishing the stage on same time and in 16th place.
The next day was a road race but a bit more hilly, after about 5miles I was warned it went into single roads with a lot of hairpins so I kept myself in the top 10 and looked for attacks, no groups formed so I attacked myself and was joined by most of the jerseys and a group formed of about 20 of us again. This group got smaller as we went over some climbs but then three boys attacked from us and got away and then we spent the rest of the day chasing, I suffered from cramp towards the end of the stage and had to hang on to the group to make it back to the finish, ended up in the second group of 6 behind the three leaders. This put me in 10th place overall.
The next day was another road race and it didn’t start so well with one of the team cars crashing on the way to the race and getting oil over the road, this caused it to be neutralised for a hefty amount of time. When we got going though there was a decent second category climb which I was looking forward to, as we began the climb I kept myself towards the front and the group gradually got smaller with about 20 left half way up, this is where I attacked and I got a good gap with only 4 boys eventually bridging the gap to me by the top of the climb. At the top of the climb there was mountain points and I planned to go for them until I got boxed in with one person in front and one at my side putting me in the bushes so I had to go behind them then attack again to lose the sprint for the points and coming over the top in second. It was then a very technical decent and with all the jerseys there, there was a lot of attacking as people tried to get away but to no avail. I then decided I would go on the attack with what I thought was 1km to go  fully committed but soon enough realised it was 5km and got caught at the bottom of another climb which meant I was losing wheels but somehow made it again into the second group with 5 up the road, losing another 30 seconds. That was the second time I had done that and going into the final day I made sure we had driven the final 5km so I knew exactly where the finish was.
 The final day was a split day with a short road race in the morning and a time trial in the afternoon. It was quite a short road race and it had rained which meant some slippy roads and plenty of crashes. I stayed in the bunch this time and it gradually got smaller and with an uphill finish I was able to move up and attack towards the end of the stage finishing in 6th place which moved me up to 7th place overall with one stage left to go. The final stage was a rolling 15km time trial which I was looking forward to as there was a bit of a climb in the middle. So after a good warm up I headed over to the start and off I went, to start off with I thought I had gone too hard to early but It was okay and with team shouting from the following car at the first split I was up by 20sec on the current leader which I was happy about, so I kept ploughing along and went hard as I could up the final climb before descending back into the finishing town. When I crossed the line I was in 2nd place 1second down but with 10 riders still to go I finished the stage in 6th place again which put me in an overall position of 6th. It was a good stage race but took me some time adapting to the Spanish style of racing but overall was rather happy at the end. Thanks for reading Grant.