ALEX DOWSETT

TEAM KATUSHA-ALPECIN

Finally, since January and the Tour Down Under I’ve hauled myself through a stage race without ending up in hospital. Quite an achievement given this year’s woes. After a positive prologue, the Tour de Romandie took a downward turn when

I had a heavy fall while in the race convoy. I bumped my head a little too hard and a concussion sadly ruled me out of the Giro. It was disappointing, but it’s something I should applaud my team for. In so many sports concussion isn’t taken as seriously as it should be and athletes often battle on and can do real long term damage.

The Tour de l’Ain would be a nice reintroduction, I felt. Only three WorldTour teams; several ProConti and Conti teams making up the rest of the field. Training had been good in the lead up to it, my weight was fine, and in the short 86km I had done at Romandie the sensations and numbers were very encouraging. I could maybe even look at a stage win on day one, as it was flat and we had no sprinter.

This year Chanel and I have relocated to the mountains and are residing at 2,000m altitude, and with such big blocks of time away from racing it’s been tough to know where I’m at in terms of form. My numbers at altitude aren’t a patch on what they are at

sea level, so it really has been a case of hoping that when

I come down to race it’s all going to be familiar, or, if the theory is right, better. In Essex, form was reasonably easy to judge; I’d go to the Maldon ‘10’ and a very short 19 or long 18 was good and competitive at WorldTour level, a middle 19 meant I needed work and a long 19 meant I shouldn’t bother turning up and instead get my arse into gear! If the Maldon 10 was at altitude I think I’d struggle cracking into the 24s.

Stage 1 of l’Ain was a shock. The mountain stages were much easier (relatively) because of the sustained power that was required. What I was feeling was expected, but I’d never struggled so much with it. It’s the top end of our fitness armoury; the punchy stuff, the ability to sprint, surge and sprint again and recover quickly to survive in the bunch that I was lacking in abundance. I was hanging on for grim death out of corners and in technical sections; small rises where the bunch would accelerate I’d have to slide a few places back, and not out of choice. Any hopes to be involved in a lead-out at the end or try something myself vanished.

My new training ground is what made it so much tougher, I’ve been riding slowly up hills for the past couple of months, whereas in Essex there’s still a punchy element to training. But ultimately, this top end you only get from the unstructured, high speed severity of racing.

I’ve got a possible Tour de France selection coming up and in light of l’Ain I’m needing all the races I can get. I’m hoping my top end form makes a bold return pretty sharpish. AD