Darragh leading the early two-man escape at the weekend
Just weeks into his move to French team VCC Morteau, 18-year-old Dubliner and former junior international Darragh Zaidan talks us through his latest chapter of learning the ropes in a foreign peloton.
As you can guess from the title, I’ve had another good week.
It started off well with the good weather showing some consistency, unlike home. It was shorts and short sleeved jerseys weather, the kind that gives you that extra little boost of motivation to get out and ride your bike.
Working off my well-structured training programme devised by coach Ryan Connor, I’m focused on long term development rather than short term goals. This has made training more enjoyable and successful.
So after a good week of sun, training and a rest day - my first full day off the bike since arriving at my French base - I was looking forward to my first race on French soil at the GP de Saint Genis Pouilly; 16 X 5.5km laps.
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We left Morteau at 11:20am for the two-hour drive towards Geneva; collecting the others en route. We arrived with plenty of time to get signed on, changed and warmed up comfortably with no stress. I was feeling confident and relaxed as we rolled up to the start line; it was a recipe for a good day at the office.
My race orders were to be aggressive and get in to the breaks. The race started fast and turned straight into a headwind. As the attacking started and I was moving myself up the bunch with thanks to some cross country riding and the luck of a small opening that I managed to find.
As we rode up the small drag through the start/finish area, the bunch was all together and once again turning into the headwind; a couple of riders were attacking. After the race came together again I launched an attack, opening a big gap and one rider followed. We built up a small lead of around 15 seconds and were out of sight for a short distance. I knew we hadn't a chance but I was following team orders.
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We managed to stay away for 15kms before being reeled back. I sat up and drifted into the bunch, taking some time to flush the lactate from the legs and catch my breath. The attacking continued and the race was rolling quite fast but after a while I had recovered enough to get back to the job at hand.
As I continued to try to break up the race and get into some promising looking moves, this was all to prove in vein; break after break went away and was reeled back, nothing was sticking. It was a fast but negative race. It reminded me of a typical day in an A3 race at home.
After my continuous efforts, the one time a break gets some daylight it is a counter move and I have two team mates in it. So I was covering moves but still trying to break things up. My legs were feeling good and I was enjoying myself. It was nice to be reminded of how that felt, and to prove to myself that all I needed was some time to adapt to racing abroad.
As we headed into the final two laps, play time was over and I sat in about 10th position and had to fight hard to stay there coming into the bell lap. I knew the pace was going to pick up and it worked perfectly for me; I made a daring move with a tailwind and muscled my way up to 7th in line using some controlled aggression to move in on the final corner.
I was in an ideal position for the bunch gallop. As we rounded the final roundabout and up the drag with the cobbled speed ramps, 7th proved to be too far back as I just managed 4th in the sprint to finish 17th overall. I was happy. The team didn't win this weekend, 4th was our top finisher in Phillipe Legros with Nico and Correntin finishing in 11th and 12th respectively.
So all in all, it was an average weekend for the team, but for me it was a big confidence boost and shows that I am continuously improving week on week. As I write these last lines I do so smiling to myself knowing that things are going in the right direction.
As for the week ahead; I'm looking forward to getting another good block of training in before thee days of racing this weekend in preparation for my first major outing with the team at the Ronde du Haute-Saone in two weeks time.
Speak soon
Darragh
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