Having enjoyed a very strong racing stint in the United States in recent weeks and then won the Shay Elliott Memorial on his return to domestic competition the weekend before last, Conn McDunphy is going into Rás Tailteann in great shape.
However, the 26-year-old Lucan CRC rider said he is determined to simply enjoy the race and see what it brings rather than putting huge pressure on himself to perform and take a result.
"If I put pressure on myself I'm just not going to go well," he said. "So I'm just going in trying to have fun and race every day it comes. I think the worst thing anyone can do is put pressure on themselves. If I'm going in having fun, just racing my bike, I think for me that's the best way to do it."
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McDunphy is riding Rás Tailteann, which begins on Wednesday, on a very strong Leinster Cycling team. He has Cian Keogh for company on the team along with former Irish criterium champion, Andy Maguire (Team Stafford Bounded), track Worlds and Europeans medal man JB Murphy (Killcullen CC Murphy Geospacial) and Paul Kennedy (Unattached Leinster).
All five are potential stage winners and they are a team that could win the Rás overall, perhaps especially if McDunphy or Murphy took the yellow jersey at some point.
McDunphy is quick to point to the strength of the team as a unit and to the ability of each individual rider, saying they can all back themselves on the race. He insists he does not see himself as a leader from the outset, adding the road will decide who is supported by the others, if and when the time comes.
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"The boys in Leinster have put together a really strong team and anyone can win," he said. "We're going into this Rás and everyone is on the same level and after day one we'll see where we're at."
During his recent racing stint in he US, guesting for SoCal Cycling, McDunphy rounded off his campaign with the UCI-ranked stage race, Tour of the Gila.
He went closest to a stage victory on the penultimate stage, which was a criterium. Having been in the breakaway, he went solo in the closing kilometres. However, while he had about 15 seconds on the main field with just 2-3km to go, he said he "completely bottled it" on a corner, making a mess of it and seeing his gap cut to about five seconds, ensuring he was soon caught.
The final stage saw the riders tackle 3,000m of climbing on the 162km race from Silver City to Piños Altos. He went into that stage 15th overall, almost four minutes down, and decided to invest all his efforts into a breakaway.
"I got in the breakaway of the day with a load of Colombians and did my best to hang on but I bonked really badly and lost something like eight minutes in the space of 20k," he said. "But I actually hung on 11th on the stage (and 12th overall) and that was how hard the stage was."
Just before Tour of the Gila, McDunphy was 5th in the Sea Otter Classic. That race was won by Tyler Williams, who led in a 1-2-3 for his L39ION of Los Angeles squad – the dominant US Continental team.
McDunphy was also 4th on the opening stage of the Redlands Bicycle Classic and opened his US racing stint with victory in San Luis Road Race in San Diego, California, which also doubled as the California State Championships.
