Tough Day Lands team title

January 2012

One of Australia's stars of professional cycling, Matthew Goss, blogs about his part in GreenEDGE's title tilt at the Mars National Road Cycling Championships.

Putting my GreenEDGE team hat on, it’s a very much ‘mission accomplished’ in regards to the Mars Cycling Australia National Road Championships powered by Subaru.

It was fantastic to see Simon Gerrans chalk up a win for our new team in a cracking fight to the line with Matt Lloyd and Richie Porte.

It’s a tough course at Buninyong, no doubt, but it’s a course where you always get a good winner. The strongest guy on the day wins, last year that was Jack Bobridge, this year it was ‘Gerro’.

Even though GreenEDGE did have numbers in the race, it’s not a huge benefit on that course because a lot of guys are hitting the wall and not making it to the front group anyway. So you end up with 15 to 20 of the stronger guys at the front of the race regardless. We had a few there, and ‘Gerro’ was the strongest of the lot.  Honestly, if you’ve worked hardest over the summer, then you’re going to challenge at Buninyong, simple as that.

There’s been a bit made about the course not being too friendly for sprinters, but I’m a sprinter I guess and I managed second place last year and Robbie McEwen has won around there. CJ Sutton only got dropped on the last lap on the weekend, so I don’t think there’s too much to grumble about. It’s a good course, which is not to say it wouldn’t be nice to race on a different one every now and then.

I found it a challenging day on the bike on a personal level. I was floating around for a while, but the lads raced Mount Buninyong really well every lap, and guys kept skipping away over the climb. I found myself in the main group and I kind of just got left there.

The big goal was to win for the team. If I decided to go out and drag some riders with me that were in a position to win the race it wouldn’t have helped the team too much.  Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve loved to have been in the front bunch but it doesn’t always pan out that way – we had six or eight guys up there as it was, so I had to take a back seat.

Instantly my mind turns to the Tour Down Under — it is going to be a big one for all of us. It’s GreenEDGE’s first UCI WorldTour event where we’re going to be in the public eye not just domestically but internationally.  To state the obvious, everyone is super excited, me especially. I had a good TDU last year, finishing second.

I’m feeling good, but I’m not quite in the same shape that I was at the same time last year when I’d had a longer break. Realistically I’m about three weeks behind where I was in 2011, but this is largely by design as my goals come a little bit later this season looking at the Spring Classics. I got sick after Milan-San Remo last year which threw out much of my planning, but this year I want to be hitting my straps a week before the big races and hold that level right through the Classics, rather than peaking and coming down after the first one.

Immediately though, it’s all about the TDU. The team has one big training block of two to three days coming up and then we’ll taper things back until the start in South Australia. See you there!