Still recovering from his second bad injury this season, suffered in Strada Bianchi, Simon Gerrans has revealed that he finds it hard to watch bike racing at the moment with the way his season has gone.

“I am a big cycling fan, but it was hard watching when you know you can be out there and mixing it up and that sort of thing,” The Orica-GreenEdge rider told Cyclingnews. “It is difficult to watch a race like that, but I was definitely on the edge of my seat like everyone else.”

He hopes to return to action at the one-day Vuelta Ciclista a La Rioja and the Vuetla a Pais Vasco stage race, on April 5 and April 11, ahead of the Ardennes Classics.

“I’m jack of riding the home trainer. It’s time to get back on the road and test things,” said Gerrans, who was to have returned at the Vuelta al Catalunya that finishes on Sunday but changed plans when a ride last Thursday indicated he wasn’t quite right.

“I had my arm in a sling for about a week or so …,” Gerrans explains. “And then on the home trainer I had my arm in a splint that was holding it close to being straight to pulling the elbow and preventing any rotation in my forearm. That was a little awkward because … you use your arms quite a lot in cycling and not being able to rotate your forearm pretty much restricts where you can hold on to the handlebars."

“It’s a pretty quite delicate injury and you have to be careful with it for a little while. But from what I understand once it starts to come good, it comes good quite quickly.”

He says the terrain and level of La Rioja makes it the perfect race to make a comeback in.

“I raced [Rioja] last year for the first time,” Gerrans says. “It’s not a World Tour race … it’s a lower level. The terrain is not so hard and it will be a bunch sprint. It would be a nice way to get back into the peloton and do four hours or so in a bunch before starting in the Basque Country, which is one of the hardest races of the season.”

“You don’t have to have that real high level of concentration in training like you do in racing, so it is something you actually have to get used to again.”

His crash has been tough to deal with but Gerrans has coped well and is making progress, hoping to lay his demons to rest in the Basque Country ahead of his Liege-Bastogne-Liege title defence.

“It’s been tough to deal with, but hopefully we’re nearly through the other side of it.”

“But for now we’ve said, ‘Let’s just get back out on the road and get through this period,’ and make sure I’m right and racing for the Tour of the Basque Country.”