Ryan Sherlock
WELL, it took three days but my legs are starting to come around. Today was the longest distance of this years Ras – we would travel 175 kilometers from Kilrush to Castleisland.
I didn't know the roads to Limerick, but from there to Castleisland I have driven many times in the car and knew what to expect. Big long main road drags dotted with some of Irelands most famous villages. The day started fast – for a change we had a tailwind and covered almost 50 kilometers in the first hour.
I was so happy to see the kilometers tick by at that rate. A group of 15 riders, including my teammate and former Ras winner, Stephen Gallagher, got off the front 20 kilometers into the race.
Shortly afterwards, the AnPost team realized the danger and drove the speed of the peleton way up. We were hitting 60 kilometers per hour on the flats into a cross wind. This meant that the peleton formed one long line.
My position was better than earlier in the week and when the elastic finally broke, I was in the front half. I basically looked over my right shoulder and noticed that there was only five riders behind me – I expected to see 100!
With the escape group caught, the speed eased a little – happy days.
Then, tick clunk, tick clunk – a broken spoke on my rear wheel! I pulled in and got a spare wheel from the neutral service as unfortunately my team car was stuck behind the second peloton – there was no hope for me to catch back on to the lead group so I was back in the second peloton.
With the pace the front group was riding I thought my race was over for the day and thought about how I would save my legs for the following day in the mountains of Kerry.
A few riders didn't give up on the chase, so I decided to join in for a while, and after 15 minutes of chasing, we were only 30 seconds back.
I started to ride hard with a couple of others (a huge group and only a few did any work) and we soon made contact.
I felt good and a race colleague, John Dempsey said to me (with a smile?), you may as well keep going.
So I did and blew by the peloton not knowing what the race situation was.
Soon, I joined up with five others that had a similar idea and we raced in pursuit of the lead break of 15.
For the next 65 kilometers we chased – we rode hard, but didn't kill ourselves.
I think it would have taken us to have gone full out to catch the break, but the horse power or commitment wasn't there.
I enjoyed it though and an effort like that is usually good for my legs over the following days.
The peloton eventually caught us when teams that missed the original break decided they had to catch it.
When we hit the final steep climb up Crag's Cave, I knew there were enough riders up the road that any sort of placing stage wise was impossible so I just rode to the finish at an easy enough pace.
Tomorrow, we race around one of my favorite counties – Kerry.
My legs are being rested and a long night of sleep will hopefully have me in good form tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
* Our man was 75th on today's stage, three minutes and 38 seconds back on the stage winner Nikolay Mihaylov (France AVC Aix en Pro). He is in 83rd place overall, 38 minutes and 15 seconds back.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/K9w_PVgJ5uc/post.aspx
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