slovenia stage 1

The tour of slovenia kicked off today with a nice little 9km TT. This distance is a bit of a curly one and I guess is like 1500m race on the track. Not quite short enough to basically go all out but if you hold to much back you quickly get left behind! Here in slovenia we have our 2 slovenian riders in kristian Koran and junior mohoric and they are keen to impress in there home tour. Much like us aussie's racing in our home races in TDU and the suntour you are always that little bit more motivated and feel a responsibility to perform infront of your friends and family. Koren as expected took all this in his stride and by days end would finish a fine 2nd in the TT just a few seconds of the phenomenon Micheal Mathews whom at the moment has no limit to the strings in his bow. Koren however was the only rider to get within a bulls roar of the charging young aussie and will have the team at his disposal over the remainder of the tour in his quest to arrive on the final GC podium. It's no surprise koren stepped up to the plate and delivered today, the guy is a natural athlete and take one look at him and if you ignored the tan lines you could picture him in any sport know to man, he really is an athletic looking chap as such seems to be fit and ready all year round wherever and whenever the team needs him, an excellent team mate.

I was pretty excited about today as getting back into a new race I could put my last one behind me!! In the end I was certainly a fair bit off the pace but none the less was a massive improvement on the last TT I pedestrian paced through. I knew it would take a +53kmph ride to win and simply tried to hold that as long as possible. Consequently I had put my ambitions, well ambitions in tt position atleast way ahead of my capabilities and with about 3km I ran out of steam big time and my speed plummeted. Still at that point was on my limit, close to 200 heart rate, and had been since the start so was happy that I was able to push my lungs and consequently my legs again unlike my last outing in california. In reality this was the main thing I needed to take out of today to give me the confidence to dig in again and board the pain train without fear on the challenging 3 stages that lay ahead of us here in slovenia. There is certainly no hiding from the fact that my TT'ing has fallen off the boil significantly in recent years and I am a little frustrated by this and need to get it back on track. The reason is pretty simple in that I don't put the work in on it and unfortunately I am not the type of athlete than can just click my fingers and be at my best in any discipline in flash. I need to work hard and arrive at a race knowing I have done the work and the fact that today was the 2nd time I have ridden the TT bike this year, also on both occasion using different bikes, I am never going to lay down anything impressive. Anyways still I had a good crack and did the best I possibly could and in the end finished where I did. Fortunately superman koren flew the green machine flag with distinction so at the end of the day was a good day for the team. I have however worked hard on the rd bike this year and as such expect to be at my usual level over the next 3 days, today's tt from a physical standpoint certainly gave me the confidence of that so am confident I will again be able to do whatever is asked of me by the team's director we have here in slovenia in biagio conte. On the TT I will get one at home and get it dialed I need to get back ontop of that before my body completely forgets how to ride fast alone. To be honest I feel at the moment like I could ride faster on a normal road bike which isn't ideal as the cannondale slice RS is an absolute missile of a bike and I want to make the most of it. I do have some exciting things planned for the off season with this exact thing in mind and in due course look forward to filling everyone in on what that's actually involves but it pretty exciting for me!

Anyways for now we have 3 days in slovenia to give it some real hurry curry. The team is off to a great here thanks to Koren so that's a positive mood to hit the feathers with and get some good rest as the Green machine here is very motivated to keep the momentum going!

CJW