The Tourminator

I'm excited as well. If I'm not mistaken Jayco-Alula have been hedging their bets on Michael Matthews, who despite his age is still competitive in punchy and or reduced bunch finishes-see Milan San Remo last year. But they haven't really had someone to go on the attack in the classics for a while. Mauro Schmid hasn't really performed how one would have expected in the Ardennes so perhaps there's going to be room for Hatherly to step up. I'm really curious to see whether they send him to races like strade bianche and Brabantse pijl. I wouldn't be surprised if he finds a liking to those given his mtb history and the punchiness of the courses. Will be interesting to see whether they are going to let him ride a bit of the Ardennes, cobbled classics and semi classics or focus on one or 2 of them and let him refine his strengths as time goes on. Either way as you said, for him to have outclimbed Eddie Dunbar says a lot about what kind of form he's in. Exciting times!

I don't think this is the case. Looking at the results, I didn't recognize anyone who rode cat 2 last year. I think it's just merely increased interest in the WPcycling events which bodes well for the sport. I do however think that they will have to start working on enforcing clear category allocation criteria if this interest continues. I think we can anticipate similar interest in cat 3, if not more given the atlantis route, with cat 4's peloton being even bigger. I don't think the results page always tells the story of the race. All things aside, I think there's going to be a lot of exciting racing this year.

Looking forward to this race too. Think it's going to be a lot of fun in all categories!

I've never ridden consistently and recorded my data before a few months ago but last year I dropped my weight from 72 kg to 63kg from Jan to November. In November I did an ftp Test on the road and was a meagre 2.45W/kg (95% of 20 minute) But in two months I'm up to 3.1W/kg.(95% of 20 minute) Will I see consistent gains like this or is there a ceiling to which one can improve from the start of their training?