KEY POINTS:
Top New Zealand road cyclist Julian Dean admits he's in a battle to find form in the early part of the European racing season.
Currently competing in the Tirreno-Adriatico tour in Italy for his Slipstream team, Dean is languishing in 144th place after two stages.
He is 14 minutes, 20 seconds behind tour leader Enrico Gasparotto of Italy.
In his website race diary, Dean, the New Zealand road champion, said he felt he had trained well last week and had begun to feel he was making solid progress toward the Tirreno-Adriatico.
"I'm now here at Tirreno-Adriatico and have just finished the first stage.
"I was s..t. I couldn't even get out of my own way. This is one of the hardest things in cycling to have to cope with; no matter how hard you train or focus on a good diet, bla bla, bla, sometimes the form just isn't forthcoming.
"Sometimes I think the form comes when it wants, no matter how hard I train. It's frustrating to do the training yet still the form eludes me."
He said he knew last week he was struggling to find form after analysing his training data.
"Each day's data wasn't good but I didn't think that I was going this bad. Let's just hope that today was more to do with just `having a bad day' and that I'll feel a little better tomorrow.
"Hopefully I won't be one of the first five dropped like I was today...."
Unfortunately, Dean was no better on the second day - he finished the 203km second stage from Civitavecchia to Gubbio in 132nd spot, 8min 23sec down on stage winner Raffaele Illiano of Italy.
- NZPA
