PFEIFFER GEORGI
I’m writing to you from the departure gate of a Ryanair flight heading to Stansted, which can only mean one thing – RideLondon time! It’s a race I always love starting the second part of my season with, and one in which we’ve had a lot of success as a team. Over the last two editions each of our two sprinters have taken stage wins and the overall GC and this year they go head-to-head for another highly anticipated battle.
For me it comes after six weeks away from racing, starting with a mid-season break and then a slow restart into training after an incredibly busy Classics campaign. This period always feels like a mini off-season/winter training, now with the ‘first race of the season nerves’ creeping back in. But there’s no better reintroduction to racing than riding on home (well, close to home) roads, having the honour of wearing the national champ’s jersey and not to forget a smash-fest around central London on the last day.
This third stage is also a favourite among my team-mates, and something pretty unique on our calendar. It’s not every day you get to race a crit in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, and there’s just something about having the bus parking outside Buckingham Palace that the usual Belgian supermarket car park can’t compare to.
And as if RideLondon wasn’t enough tea and scones for my Dutch/German/ Italian team-mates, our British holiday continues with the exciting return of the Tour of Britain. Previously known as the Women’s Tour, and always a highlight in my calendar, its back in a four-day format starting in North Wales and finishing in Manchester, with a couple of tasty bergs thrown in between.
One thing I can say for sure about racing in the UK is that the stages are always deceptively hard, despite how uneventful the profile may appear. The nature of the narrow, twisty roads, technical towns and constant undulations can still make the most n
