My first race for the 2010 season was the Ruta del Sol in the Andalucía region of Spain. My aim for the race was to find a little race rhythm and fitness so I didn’t have any expectations for results. Most of Team Sky’s line up came off a 10-day camp near by in Valencia so we were feeling pretty good and ready to race.
The first stage had a tough finish with a steep 3km assent. With this stage being my first race since the middle of October last year I didn’t have the condition to be competitive. I lost a bit of time, which resulted in me being down on GC for the remainder of the race. Thomas Lofkvist rode well and finished the stage in 10th position.
Stage two was a pretty uneventful stage that ended in a bunch sprint. The team got together to help Greg Henderson in the finale. Unfortunately Greg hit a traffic island inside the last kilometer and lost position however he was still able to scramble his was back to 7th place.
Stage three was more of a hilly affair, with around 5 categorised climbs and an uphill run to the finish line. Greg returned the favor from the previous day giving me a hand to be well positioned leading into the sprint. I dug really deep and managed to pull off 3rd place, beaten to the line by Oscar Freire.
We had a 10.8km time trial for stage 4 and the team’s big hope was Brad Wiggins. The short flat course suited him perfectly. I have been doing quite a bit of specific time trial training this year so I was hoping to do a reasonably good result myself. Brad was close to the win finishing 2nd by 4 seconds. I was back in 16th place, which is not bad, however I wasn’t happy with how I felt during the race so I feel like I still have plenty of room for improvement.
We had another hilly stage on the final day so I was motivated to have a go and see if I could improve on my 3rd place earlier in the week. Team HTC-Columbia looked as if they were going to control the stage to protect the lead of Michael Rogers, so I planned to sit back and save my energy for the finish. Brad was looking for a workout, so he attacked off the front early in the stage and got away with a few other riders. Just as I predicted Team HTC-Columbia rode the front for the entire stage and brought back Brad’s breakaway with around 20km to go. By this point, the peloton had dwindled down to around 30 riders. Thomas, Steve and Brad then did a fantastic job to set me up for the sprint. Unfortunately I wasn’t strong enough to win the stage, but came in a close 2nd.
Overall, I was fairly pleased with the 5 days of racing at Ruta. I felt like I got stronger each day and was happy to get a couple of results along the way. My Team SKY teammates and I all worked really well together and we were probably a little unlucky not to notch up a win.
Simon.
