Aiton Bike Race – a good lesson

A good friend told me, right after the race: sometimes you win, sometimes you build your character.

Last Saturday I’ve built some character indeed. It all started a couple of weeks ago when I got sick. It wasn’t covid or common flu, but I had to keep away from the bike for almost a week. I think that this is because of the weather changes. About 15-20C fluctuation from a day to another ain’t easy to manage. I am not trying to find excuses, but solutions.

The race was near home so I had the chance to check the course a couple of times. It wasn’t technical at all but it required a lot of power and a good strategy as it was really windy on the hill ridges. We had two laps of 20km each and theoretically it should have been a sub 2h race.

I had a good start but because of a mistake I’ve lost the chasing group and I had to ride alone for a long time. Then I regrouped with other riders that had a good pace and tried to work but not all of them were willing to do it.

Everything went pretty smooth until around 7km before the finish when suddenly I started to feel heavy stomach ache and I had to slow down to the point of no return, when I simply tried to finish the race, as everything started to fade away. Finished 8th or so but it doesn’t even matter right now.

Looking back, I am still I am glad that it took part in this race now and I can be more careful for the upcoming ones.

Many thanks to the ones standing by my side. None of us is that good as all of us.