Tour of Malta

Last weekend I completed my 4th Tour of Malta. As usual it was a great experience. When you are training for triathlon its always interesting to compete in an individual sport to test yourself on that particular discipline with the athletes of that sport. This year the competition was quite tough. We had cyclists coming from Sicily, Italy, Spain, Uk and Holland. All very strong teams. I was the only cyclist representing my club B'kara St. Joseph, so as regards team work I was left on my own, although along the way I did find some help and put in my share of work as well.

The Tour started with a 33km Time trail. I was looking for a solid time. I finished the first day with 7th overall and a very good 3rd Maltese with only a 7sec gap from first place. My average was 41.6km/hr which for the windy conditions it was such a great performance and boost for me. If I recall well, this is the best average I have kept on this course, even when compared to the 2 year spell I did as a cyclist. Certainly with regards to cycling I am at a good stage in my preparation.

The second day of the tour was an 86km road race, 10 laps round the San Martin course. I was hoping to hold on to my 3rd Maltese placing but the opening laps were too hard for me. I am lacking a lot when it comes to change of pace and attacks. This of course is due to the fact that I don't include any of this sort of specific training in my programme, so I suffered a lot. I managed though to hold on the a group of around 8 cyclists, 5 of whom were Maltese. We shared the load together and finished around 9 mins off the pace from the leaders. At the end of the day I was lying in 4th position in the Maltese ranking.

The third and last day was a 65km road race in Gozo. I decided to travel on Friday night so that I have a good night sleep before the stage. My plan was to do a good warm up and do a good race to move up the ranking. Unfortunately once again the opening laps proved to be fatal. I couldn't get the hang of it. Once I was left on my own, I started pushing like mad and gaining positions. Seriously I never felt so strong on the bike and it was rather frustrating that once I was left at the back I was cycling much faster then the group in front of me, but the gap was so big that I could never close it. In the end I closed the stage in around 20th position and 7th Maltese.

In the general classification I finished 4th Maltese and 21st overall. I am very happy with my performance and am looking forward to a good performance this weekend at the Malta Duathlon Championships.

A special thank-you goes to my parents who helped me a lot in the first two days on the tour, my girl friend Johanna for her help in the third and last day, and her constant support and to our club secretary Euchar who did 3 days in the sun taking everyone's splits + shouting along everything i passed by!!

Dermot