Hello everyone,

 

I’m writing to you all from the windy, cold, rainy shores of Castlebar

on the west coast of Ireland. Today we just finished the second stage,

the first road stage of the tour.

The race started last night with a 7 km flat, time trial with no aero

equipment at all. The hard man’s style and I was glad. We had everyone

ready for the 7 pm start and I thought we would do well. That is until

I heard about Ryan Mullen. Ryan is the Irish national team’s big, big

hope and their best chance for a rare Irish victory in their home tour.

It seems Ryan just won the British 10 mile championship in a record

time. This is the senior championship, not junior in a time of 18

minutes. That’s over 33 miles an hour. He also just set a new junior

record for 25 miles in 48:48 beating Bradley Wiggins and Chris Boardman

previous records.

 

There is little I can do to help the guys in this race. They had

pre-ridden the course twice so they knew it as well as anyone. Rory,

the president of Cycling Ireland, my driver, mechanic and I stayed at

the start in case of any flats. We drove to the finish and checked the

times. Thomas was the last starter, having been the defending champion

and Ryan Mullan second to last, two minutes before him. I can’t time

everyone so we chose to time Ryan and get Thomas’ time from that. The

fastest time at that point was 9:24 and we waited. At about 9:00 Ryan

came into view and at 9:20 he crossed the line. It was the fastest time

and by the gassed look on him, I know he had given his all but it was

much closer to the field than I had expected. Thomas came into view at

9:20 and clocked a 9:45.

 

In the end, Colin was our best time in ninth place 19 seconds back and

I was okay with that. All the guys were good and reasonably close. It’s

a long race and not won on the first day but it can be lost on the

first day and we avoided that.

 

I’ll let you know how it goes from here.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Toby