Tour of Tobago

Today we raced the Tour of Tobago. This is the toughest one-day race I have ever done in my life. It is super hot and humid, and there is about 9500 feet of climbing in a 120km race. The climbs are super steep. The roads are narrow and twisty. Sometimes you go around a turn and half the road may be missing or there is mud all the way across the road or loose animals. First of all we did lose the points jersey in the classic yesterday. Matthieu took second after a ton of great teamwork. Like I said we did our best and worked super as a team. The first 20km of the Tour of Tobago are flat, so we sat in the field and did nothing. Matthieu put me perfectly into position on the first climb of the day and lead me up that climb in second wheel. I felt good and wanted to have a good race. I lost a couple positions and focused on spinning a fast cadence when I could to save my legs. I know this race is long and hard, and you have to do it at a relatively conservative pace if you do not want to blow up. We hit the first descent, and I felt great. There was a car in the middle of the road after the first turn of that descent though. I squeezed through unscathed. I am not sure anyone crashed there. I felt great on the descent and whizzed by guys. I was really confident in my ability today. We rode over a few more climbs, and I was still feeling good. Then my legs started to fall apart. I would lose time on the climbs and catch the front group again on the descents. I totally cracked at about 50km into the race. I knew with that much left to race I would not likely finish, so I abandoned at the feed zone. It was really tough to do, but I was being super positive in the head and pacing myself well. Sometimes at the end of a long year your legs just totally leave you, and that has been the case for me over the last few weeks. I thought with how I was riding in the crits the past couple days my legs would have been there, but it was just not to be. Maybe what we did in the crits took a lot out of our legs for today. I am really thankful that Matthieu put me into that first climb in great position. Oliver, Emile, and Andy stuck out a long day to finish 16^th, 19^th, and 21^st respectively. I had a great time here in Tobago, even though my results were far from where they were last year. We worked really well as a team here and had a super time! It has been another great year with the Lupus Racing Team, and I look forward to an even better year with them next year. For now though it is time to take some time off the bike and rest, so I can have that better year in 2016.