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Samuli
I see there's been discussion about my speed at the race. There's really no epic story behind the change in speed.
I had basically made just a draft of the first part of the route to cp1 and checked the details too late to start over so had to route on to bikepaths etc. to avoid highways and had also routed onto small roads going through villages in France, with roads so rough I had to ride rather slowly. It was also not that straight and there was some hills... The western option across Alps was also slighlty slower, though nice. As were the roads in France and through the Black Forest. But they were so slow it kind of seemed pointless to be suffering to be competitive as I was already behind. And then there was the death of Frank Simmons. I was kind of dropping on to a touring gear for a while, to just finish with a decent time. But then I remembered how fun racing is and started smashing it. And I knew the rest of my route should be actually pretty good. It became even more fun when I saw I was actually passing a lot of other racers and that I was taking a different route than anyone in front of me. My route wasn't the easiest with the mountains in Macedonia and Greece, but my legs felt really good after about a week of racing, the heat didn't bother too much and I managed to pass lots of the cities I needed to ride through during night, to avoid traffic.
Really enjoyed the race. Top 10 result is awesome. But even though I did go pretty much all out at the end, I know I could be even faster in the future.
The bike was good as usual. It's not light and it could have bigger gears (the cassette is missing the smallest cogs as the hub is only 120mm wide) but it work really well for this kind of riding, reliable and comfortable and feels like a fast road bike. No mechanicals really. One puncture and the front wheel ended up being slightly out of true but that doesn't matter much with so many spokes and sturdy rim.