When we got to the stage start in Piacenza we were told that in order to get ahead of the race and meet us at the finish, the team buses had to leave about 20 minutes before the start which meant a scramble for shelter in the team cars after we signed on for the day.

As the rain bounced off the bonnet, I sat in the mechanic’s seat a few hundred metres away from the start-line with two rain jackets on watching the windscreen wipers swish back and forth and waiting for the stage to start like a reluctant school kid on the first day back after the holidays.

With three climbs towards the end of today’s stage, I expected some sort of breakaway to go clear but they wouldn’t concern us. The goal of my DSM team today was to keep our GC riders Romain Bardet and Jai Hindley out of danger and close to the front of the peloton so that they would be around when the hammer went down on the final climb.

A headwind meant that it took around 40km for the break to go and when it did, I was surprised to find that it had 25 riders in it. With a rider from almost every team in the move, including my German team-mate Nico Denz, there weren’t too many squads interested in bringing it back so it was left up to race leader Filippo Ganna’s Ineos team to ride on the front for the first part of the race.

In fact, as he knew he wouldn’t be able to contest this Giro himself when we hit the high mountains, the race leader sacrificed himself for long periods of time today, leading the chase for his team leader and former Tour de France winner Egan Bernal on the run in to the first climb after 110km.

After almost three hours of rain, I was as wet as I was going to get, so I took my first rain jacket and my knee warmers off just before the climb in the expectation that the incline would warm me up. As a team we stayed tucked in close behind the Ineos squad so that we would be near the front on the descent. Although there were splits in the bunch and crashes on the wet corners behind us, we managed to stay out of trouble as Bahrain-Victorious took over on the front and upped the tempo as we approached the second last climb.

I took my second rain jacket off as we approached the 9km long, second category, Montemolino climb with about 50km to go. Although we were climbing, it was still very cold and by the time we got down the far side my legs had turned to stone.

There was no improvement when I got out of the saddle in an effort to warm up and as the Bahrain team forced the pace and split the peloton, I lost contact with the front of the group on the last kilometre or so of an uncategorised climb about 12km from the finish.

After holding them to a handful of seconds going over the top I thought I might regain contact on the descent but within a few hundred metres they were gone. With my work done for the day and knowing that I’ll have more to do over the next three weeks, I took it easy on the climb to the finish and crossed the line in a small group around 12 minutes behind American stage winner Joe Dombrowski of UAE.

When I heard afterwards that early escapee Italian Alessandro De Marchi had finished second on the stage and taken the pink jersey of race leader I was delighted for him.

I’ve known ‘Demma’ for a very long time. We were team-mates at BMC for a few years and we’ve remained good friends ever since. Demma is renowned for his breakaways and we were in one together a couple of weeks ago at the Tour des Alpes, where I finished second and he finished third.

As a proud Italian, it’s always been a dream of Demma’s to wear the pink jersey at the Giro and I’m really happy to see him get it.

For my DSM team, both Romain and Jai stayed close to the front today in the finale. While Romain is 19th overall now, almost two minutes behind De Marchi in the overall classification, he is only about 20 seconds off the other GC contenders with Jai not too far behind him.

Giro d’Italia, Stage 5: Live Eurosport, 11.0am