Albert Achterhes Ronde van Drenthe
11. March 2012
The second stage – or the second 1.1 race - of the Ronde van Drenthe was unfortunatelly even harder than the first one. Starting out with a little bit of rain, about 8 degrees and a lot of side wind, we didnt have so much look with the natural circumstances...
Also the route of todays race leaded us through several pavé sections overal about 15k’s long and again over the garbage mountain – five times today.
Several riders in my team, luckily not me, have to deal with a little cold and some slight stomach problems. But again the challenge of the day was to protect and help Giorgio Brambilla as much as possible.
Starting again with an uncomfortable speed of about 50km/h and strong sidewind, the pelloton was reduced to about 100 or 120 riders pretty soon. After 70k’s, the first pavé did its best to again decrease the bunch of riders and at the „little mens pause“ the team Russvelo did their best to reduce again a little more the peloton. By the way not a nice act of them...
The rest of some 90 riders was splitted so many times and unfortunately we weren’t able to position ourselfes in the first group almost every time. Stuiped but I guess our little sicknesses and our body compositions as mainly not so big and tall riders were the reasons we couldn’t weild ourselfs that good through the peloton as other belgium or dutch riders did. We, especially Alex Kirsch, Pit and I, closed a lot of gaps which arose after those hundreds of 90 degree turns in the little villages with streets being only two meters wide. I don’t want to mention the cobblestone sections here...
Entering the „garbage mountain“ at about 140k’s the first time, I felt the work of the last two days in my legs. I knew it was a matter of time when I’ll get dropped from the pelloton. I had two options: Finishing the race, completely tired and probably every time on the last three positions meaning not being able to help Brambo anymore or maybe quitting early, saving at least a little bit of power for the next race and trying to do my best at the Dorpenomloop today.
So I chose the second option and finished the race after 150 kilometers.
To be continued today :)