In his latest blog, Simon Gerrans brings us up to date with everything that's been happening since the Ardennes Classics.
Simon reflects on his recent rides
Simon Gerrans experienced many highs and lows during a varied spring campaign and has sent us this latest blog through which brings us up to date with everything that's been happening since the start of the Ardennes Classics. This is what he had to say:
24 May, 2011
I was really happy with the way the Amstel Gold Race went. It’s my favourite of the three Ardennes Classics but I was going into the unknown a bit form-wise having not raced that distance for quite some time before it. I’d been working hard leading up those races and feeling good in training, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that I rode well a Amstel, but I was still pleased to get on the podium and at the time I thought my best form was still to come.
Three days later we had Fleche Wallonne and the team worked really well together there, everyone fulfilled their jobs throughout the day but unfortunately I didn’t quite have the legs to finish it off. I think I was still feeling the effects of Amstel because I went so deep there, and I hadn’t recovered enough.
I felt fantastic again at Liege-Bastogne-Liege though – the best I’d felt for the whole week. I was really hoping for a good result but the race just got away from me a little bit at the end - I got caught out and could only finish 12th.
I was a little bit disappointed with that because the way I felt probably justified a better position.
After the Ardennes I went home to Monaco for a few days to relax and have a bit of downtime. That was my classics campaign done and dusted and since then I’ve been building things back up for the stage races this summer.
At the start of May I flew over to Tenerife for 10 days of altitude training with Bradley Wiggins, Geraint Thomas and Xabier Zandio. We were staying in a hotel at over 2000m on the side of the Teide volcano and spent our time there slogging away with some hard efforts.
Tim Kerrison was running the camp with Simon Cope, and Shane Sutton also dropped in for a few days. There was also a mechanic and carer there with us which meant we were all really well looked after.
Our work on the island varied from day to day. There was a good climb up to the hotel every evening, and on our longer endurance rides we descended off one side of the volcano, looped around the island and then came back up the other. We also did a lot of work on a plateau above 2000m, and took on plenty of threshold efforts.
It was a quality training block, that’s for sure, and from there I went directly to the Tour de Picardie in the north of France.
That didn’t go so well for the team if I’m honest. I was trying to help Edvald [Boasson Hagen] out on the first day, but then on the second I got caught up in a big crash which included about 30 or 40 guys. I fell pretty heavily on my back which meant I couldn’t start on the Sunday and my race was done.
So then it was back home and missed a bit of training because I wanted to make sure that everything was alright before I started again. I only really got back into the swing of things last week, and because of that I decided it would be best if I gave up my place at Bayern-Rundfahrt.
Serge [Pauwels] is coming in for me and he’s really keen to race, so that means I can concentrate fully now on getting myself fit for June and July.
I’ve been going out a lot by myself in the last week because there’s so many races going on elsewhere and everyone’s away, but the guys will be getting back from California today so I’ll probably hook up with Chris Froome, Thor Hushovd and Matt Goss.
They’ll probably want to take things relatively easy though after such a tough race and long flight back, so I might head out some more into the mountains near my home.
(Simon has his own personal website at www.simongerrans.com and there are regular updates on there for viewers who would like to keep in touch with what he's been up to in between his blogs here on TeamSky.com.)
