STEVE CUMMINGS

The start to the year has been a bit of a disaster. My worst for years in fact. Because of injuries in the team I got called up to ride Milan-San Remo. After that, I jumped in the car and drove six hours to the Volta a Catalunya.

I just felt exhausted. I stopped on stage 5 because I decided it was better to recover and take some extra days before País Vasco, where I am now. I’ve felt better here but we have to be realistic. I’m not going to feel fantastic. It’s just been a difficult start, and it’s a bit wasteful, which is frustrating. I like to do Tirreno instead of Catalunya because there’s more of a gap between that and País Vasco.

I had one week between the two stage races, but one week is not really enough for me, I don’t think. You can’t do anything, just recover. On the other hand, in two weeks or 10 days you can change your training, change your weight, back off or train a bit more. I’m on the back foot and it’s hard to get forward again.

I do my base in training and that brings me up to a certain point. And from that you need a race to tie it all together. You can’t reproduce that racing in training. All the training numbers in the world are one thing, but the confirmation of your form is the race. That’s why I like these gaps in between. You can say, ‘Okay I’m really good now; I don’t need to do anything,’ or, ‘I’ve got a bit to go,’ and you can change something. Abu Dhabi wasn’t a gauge of my form as I was struggling in the heat. Plus, the race was a lot easier than most of my training rides and it wasn’t suited to my style of racing. If anything it probably sent me backwards. Then I went into Milan-San Remo and it felt like I hadn’t raced. To go into a big race like that was no good. Catalunya and País Vasco are probably the two hardest stage races of the year, I would say – Catalunya is like some of the Tour stages - and if you come in tired, feeling like you haven’t really raced, it’s not good.

As a team, we try and stay positive in spite of all the injuries, but it’s been really tough. There’s a knock-on effect, we’re missing five or six guys at the moment, but the team still wants results, so the pressure is mounting. It’s like I’m running on 80 per cent, and I don’t like that. I hate it. As a youngster I’d probably have thrown my toys out the pram and got the hump, but as an older guy you just see that things haven’t been perfect but life isn’t perfect, so we just have to make the best of what you have and keep trying to do the basics well. If I’m not good now maybe I’ll be better later on in the season.