Friday, March 19, 2010

Terra Race Wrap

The final days of turino adriatico were very nervous and although we had the leaders jersey, we were always on the edge of our seats controling the race for scarponi. Alas he started the final day with a two second lead to Stefano Gazelli or the gazelle as i called him, and he was unable to stop the gazelle from speeding to the bonus seconds in the 2 sprints during the stage and losing the lead and finishing second on a countback! Was a heartbreaking experiences for scarpa i am sure and the team felt dejected as we came so close to sealing the victory and the mood post race gave me good indication how great the margin is between winning and coming second to the italians in the cycling world! It is good to hurt as it is a positive reminder that you want to always strive to avoid this feeling in the future! I am sure we will re group and we must as it is only march and the big races are only just beggining so onwards and upwards!

For me was a great experience week. I rode in my first breakaway at protour level and had my first attempt at trying to attain the victory on this day. I fell short but learnt that perhaps one i may just make it to the finish before the rest of the peleton so for sure i will try this approach again in the future. Following this day i switched roles to domestic and this is a role i really fell comfortable with and a role i can really give all i have the cause. It was nice to feel a real purpose in this race, although it did require me to stretch myself to new levels of exertion, so much so that i stopped wearing my heart rate monitor which i have always believed to be an important monitoring tool, i was really really enjoying being able to contribute and understand how to apply this type of role to the team. I hope this skill will be a big benefit to me this season. Of course the recognition of your efforts from the team is always important more as a means of re assureing yourself that you did the right thing, to me this is important as i like to know if i make mistakes to learn for next time!

This is no different to the workforce and although there is great importance for the worker to know he has done the right thing with positive feedback, it is perhaps of even greater importance that the leader or boss is honest in therein there appraisel of your efforts, again if though fear of offending you dont tell someone what they did wrong how ill the person to do it differently the next time. This is perhaps the most crucial element to the success of anything where a team or group of people are involved, if feedback both positive and negative can be used constructively by the workers you will have a greater chance of a successfull team than if you sit on the fence through fear of offending. At the end of the day any feed back must be not pigion holed as good and bad but simply as positive as you are either learning or being re assured you are on the right track.

For me i was certainly a culperate in my time in rowing of being to positive specially when things were not going as well as they could have so i guess with some very poor rowing results and experiences behind me and unfortunately some cycling ones also, i feel that for me this is a crucial area for me to work on and be attentive to. Luckily in my new androni team i have found an environment that most certainly opperates in this way and i think the core of this is respect for each other, staff and riders and everybody wanting the same thing, success. I am sure that this is also the core principles of successfull organisations in the business world.

Tomorrow i race milan sanremo, usually best done in a car however the italians decided to create one of the biggest races of the year by having us race the 300km. Luckily for i once rode from my home at Mt rumney in the south of tasmania to lake barrington in the north east, also 300km however on this occasion i had one element i luckily will not have to face tomorrow and that is the bass straight sea breeze just to make sure it was super hard, i dont think the mediteranian sea can through anything like that at us. Also on that occasion i had my good mate bomma for company so will perhaps be a little quieter without him but i am sure there will be plenty going on to keep us all on our toes for the 7hrs.

looking forward to what i hope is another good day of team work with the androni boys

cameron

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