Good luck to our young men in the Junior Tour!

The Junior Tour of Ireland starts this evening in County Clare, and this year we have two Orwell members taking part.

Conor Murnane has been selected for the Leinster team after a stellar season to date, and Luke Keating will be competing in Orwell colours.

This will be by quite some way the toughest and highest profile race that either of them have ever participated in, so here's hoping that everything goes great for them, they learn lots, stay mostly upright and have a fantastic time.

Great to see some Orwell Juniors on the JT of Ireland. A great tradition of riders from the Orwell since the late 70's have ridden it. Best of luck to the lads and enjoy it

Yes Good Luck guys. As a graduate of the Junior Tour it is one of the best races in the world for Junior riders.

Good luck guys!!!

the very best of luck

Stage 1 is done and dusted and everyone is settled in. Conor placed 76th in the prologue,
1'15" off the winner's time, and Luke was 99th at 1'46" back.

To give some idea of the standard of the racing, the winner's average speed was 45.6 Km/h, and that was without tri-bars, aero lid or deep section wheels!

That's some going! I also see Jake Gray who won the Stephen Roche GP by soloing across the break on the last lap and smashing the sprint - he lost almost 40 secs! Against other juniors!

Best of luck to Conor and Luke for the week ahead. It's a brilliant week.

There was misfortune for Luke on today's stage, crashing out after only 5 km. Fortunately he has no serious injuries and he'll live to race another day, but for this year his Junior Tour is over.

Nothing so dramatic for Conor, though he still had a hard day himself, coming in with a grupetto of 12 riders at 12'39" down. 2 stages down, 4 to go!

It was a much better day for Conor today, surviving to the finish with a much reduced main bunch. 3 down, 3 to go.

Well done to Conor, who survived a very tough week to finish a very credible 62nd place on GC. He'll be moving on to the senior ranks at the end of this season, and the experience he's gained here will stand him in very good stead in the years to come.

On the other side of things, Luke is reportedly healing well and already looking forward to next year's JT.

Thanks for all the good wishes, and all the encouragement and advice over the season. It's great to have such supportive, knowledgeable and experienced club members.

On the Burren stage I cycled out with Sean to make our own little Orwell corner. After the cavalcade passed we rode on to Ballyvaughan, where the marshals stoppped traffic for the pair of us and called out "well done lads, work together" without a hint of irony. I took it as a compliment to my hairy middle-aged legs. Sean almost fell off laughing.