Hi All
Stage 3
We’ll today for me was pretty a pretty dark dark evil day. We started out with rain and cold and rain and thankfully a head wind to slow things down.
Quite simply my legs were nonexistent today; I was hurting all day and so thankful for the head wind to keep it slow. Unfortunately with about 55-60k to go we hit a nasty cross wind section and the big boys decided it was time to turn the screws, the yellow jersey somehow ended up out the back so this just made them go harder, after a few km’s lined out in the gutter I cracked so bad. From then on it was a very lonely 50k home with just the evil broom wagon stalking me for company. By the time I got to the finish I was pretty depressed and unsure I had made the time cut or not. Then to make matters worse I crossed the line and they told me I had doping control.
WHAT!!!! I’ve come dead last by like half an hour and you guys want to see if I’m on something??? Get real man!! Well you can’t exactly say no or it’ll be the sideline for me for the next two years. So I sat round waiting and getting cold and hungry and after about 10mins the doping officer said I could go because I was just a reserve and he has to do 4 tests a day. Well I finally got to the motel and was about to get out of my filthy wet clothes and the officials show up saying they had made a mistake and that I had to go back to control. I wasn’t too happy about that as I was getting cold, and wasn’t allowed a shower. So finally got doping done and had a big feed and off to bed. Fortunately I had scraped in by a minute and a half so I was still in the tour.
Stage 4
Today’s weather forecast apparently wasn’t much better than the day before and on the start line it was 6 degrees. Fortunately this didn’t last long and we could see in the distance that it was clearing up. My legs felt much better today, and I was able to do my job taking bottles to the boys and towing them around the bunch if need be. It was a pretty fast day with a lot of tail wind. We had to good climbs down towards the end of the stage, and by the time we got to the first of the two my legs were pretty hammered. I got popped off towards the top and got with a few guys and we started lapping it out, we managed to stay pretty much in contact with the convoy which was lucky, but don’t get me wrong this didn’t make it any easier, especially with another drag up hill. Over the top of the last climb there were just two of us left the rest had cracked and we managed to lap it out and get in to the cars. Now it was all downhill and we were going so fast we couldn’t even pedal, just weaving in and out of cars at over 80kph, my speedo said a max of 101 at the finish so who knows how fast we really were going. I managed to get back on and in to the bunch and with the final kilometre of the stage a slight uphill drag I just sat up and cruised in, I had done my job for the day and finished just off the back of the main bunch. When I crossed the line and checked my speedo we had done 150ks at an average of 47.9kph which I thought was pretty impressive.
Josh
