Hi everyone
Time for another up date, sort of lost track of things so I think I'm up to stage 4
Stage 4
Today was the biggest stage of the tour at a mega 218km and certainly not at all flat and to make things more fun it was rain rain wind and more rain.
Well that wasn't so bad as it was pretty warm, as warm as wind and rain goes, thankfully not Southland wind and rain. Well the worse part about it all was I was feeling AVERAGE!! and that is putting it lightly. For the first hour I was struggling to get my heart rate up to 150 and my max is 182 so that wasn't making things easy for me. I was really scared I was going to get dropped and not make the time cut. I didn't want to go out like that so I just grit my teeth dug it in and suffered like a dog all day. Slowly through out the stage my legs gradually came right and by the time we got to the first decent climb of the whole tour at the 150k mark I was feeling better. I new I had to dig deep though as it was a long climb and yesterday I got popped out on 2k drag climb nothing steep or big and really normally I shouldn't get dropped on a hill like that. (Well i consider myself a climber so i don't really like getting dropped at all on the hills) But this is a level above anything I've ever done before and these guys go fast up hills. Any way I rode really well up the climb and surprised myself going over the top with a group, we all got moving and pulled another bunch back, and we were pretty much the main peleton. From the top of the climb it was still another 70k to the finish, thankfully I had grabbed a coke at the top from the feed zone and I rode the last 70k on coke and water. By the time we got to the finish i was hammered and looking forward to bed. It was about 6 hours we had been racing for in the wind and rain and I had made it. Plenty of people were behind as well including the yellow jersey who lost massive time
Stage 5
Today's stage wasn't looking much better weather wise and again we set off in the wet, from the gun my team mate David was in the break and away. Small groups tried to go across and I jumped into one of them, it looked like it was going to work but a few people were just there to mark it including myself so we weren't going anywhere.
The team of the new yellow jersey jumped on the front and rode tempo all day long and by the half way mark the rain had finished thankfully. I was feeling great and knew there was a hill with about 30k to go so I wanted to be near the front to see what I could do. Well once we arrived at the hill I was right at the front and with a km to go to the top my team mate Eric now 3rd overall put a huge effort in to try split it up, it worked and the field was broken up pretty good. I really had to dig the last few hundred meters in but made it over the top on the back of the front group. now it was all down hill and highway run in to town so it was pretty fast and attacks going constantly, it wasn't fast enough to hold the gap though and the rest of the peleton rejoined. The great news of the day though was that Dave had gone clear of the break away on the climb and was going to the finish solo a few minutes up the road in front of us. He took the win which was awesome and we also got the teams classification prize of the day. So the whole team was pretty stoked.
Stage6
So we have just finished stage 6 a few hours ago a big 180k affair, and not the easiest one either, Before the start of the stage Alex and myself were told we had to go to the presentation. Didn't know why but we soon found out that it was for the teams classification prize from the day before. So I got to stand on the top step of the podium which was pretty cool I'll try get hold of some of the photos to send out to everyone. But it was pretty mint to be up there.
Well I decided I was going to try and make the break today as tomorrow is a rest day so it doesn't matter if I waste my self today. From the gun I was mixing it up the front following moves and trying to get in the move of the day. Twice I made good looking groups and we had small gaps, but nothing ever stuck. By about 50k mark I was starting to feel the constant jumping around and thought I'd better have a rest as nothing was making it. So i just cruised in the bunch and attacks just kept going and coming back. It took till the 93rd km mark before something went.
By about the 100k mark I was feel really not good at all, and was feeling like I was stuck to the road. I wasn't sure why as I had just smacked back a fair bit of food but I think it was because I hadn't drunk enough so I downed as much water as I could and grabbed some more bottles from the team car and hoped I would come right. Thankfully I did, and by the 140k mark it was the business end of the race, the break was bought back pretty quickly and its was a hilly final 40k. I made sure I stayed near the front so if there was a split I'd be in it, and my bad patch had thankfully gone. With around 30k to go we smashed it up a steep climb and I was stuck behind some Skill Shimano rider who was going backwards pretty fast, as I went to go around him disaster struck me as some one smacked my rear wheel and buckled it. It wasn't making a healthy sound and I was pretty concerned that I had popped a spoke or broken the wheel.
Straight afterwards some one came down right in front of me and as I rode past I ended up 'accidentally' kicking him in the head as I was turning the pedals. There were some pretty fast descents with some tight corners and not being the worlds greatest descender at the best of times I was pretty cautious on a buckled wheel (not to keen on going back under the knife anytime soon). As a result I got tailed of the small chasing group I was with and ended up just cruising to the finish with a group of other riders. I felt pretty bad as I had been feeling good through those final Kim's and didn't want to finish like that. But oh well these things happen.
Tomorrows a rest day then we have two monster hilly stages before the final criterium
Until then catch you all later
Josh
