Hotels on the Tour are like a lucky dip. Teams are allocated accommodation by the race organisation so, as Forrest Gump might say, “you never know what you’re going to get”. Last night we got one of the French budget chains.
eds too can vary hugely in quality; from ‘really comfortable’ to ‘afraid-to-move-in-case-you get-stabbed-by-a-spring-in-the-middle-of-the night’ so, to ensure a good night’s sleep for each rider, our team staff place a 10cm deep mattress topper on top of our hotel mattress before we even get to the rooms.
Last night, there was no air conditioning in my room, so I left the window open while I was at dinner and hope the place cooled down before I got back which, thankfully, it did.
Like most of the teams here, we have our own kitchen truck, complete with a little dining room which gives us control of the food we are eating and avoids the potential pitfalls of hotel food.
After getting through the opening seven days relatively unscathed, today’s first foray into the mountains was one I had been looking forward to, until I saw the first drops of rain.
It wasn’t supposed to rain at all today, so despite the evidence hammering off the windows of the team bus, I must have checked the forecast about ten times on the way.
I’ve never really raced well in the wet conditions and was hoping the sun would break through, but in the end it rained pretty much all day.
Although there were five categorised climbs on the stage, including three big first-category mountains towards the end, it was an uncategorised 5km long hill right after the start that proved crucial.
It was full gas from the bottom, with attacks flying off the front as soon as the flag was dropped. I didn’t have a problem following on that first climb, I was there right at the front watching the attacks go, but I felt a bit flat and just didn’t have the feeling that I could attack myself. Going over the top, I got caught out and was positioned in the middle of the peloton as we hit the downhill.
On most descents at the Tour, especially wet ones, the speed is so high that everyone just slots into one long line and follows the wheel in front of them. If someone leaves a gap somewhere up the line, there’s not a whole lot you do can about it. In fact, a lot of the time you won’t even notice it until you get to the bottom. All you can do then is hope the gap is small enough to close on the flat valley roads.
Today, though, a few people must have let wheels go because the peloton was split in three or four at the bottom, with yours truly caught in the wrong split.
I was left with around 30 riders but despite the Total Energie and EF Nippo teams putting in a concerted chase at the front of our group in an effort to get their leaders back into contention, after 25km we were a minute and a half down.
After that, the pace was so relentless at the front that the gap just kept growing and pretty soon we knew we’d never regain contact with the action and it was game over for the rest of the stage. Although we were working well together as a group, from then on it was just a case of getting to the finish, about 120km away.
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Because I am not riding for the General Classification here, I wasn’t worried about losing time to the leaders, once we stayed inside the time limit and could start again tomorrow.
Chasing a stage win instead of a good overall result on this Tour is a new way of racing for me. It means that once my chance goes on any given day, it’s just a matter of trying to get to the finish and conserve energy for the next opportunity.
Today, it felt like I was barely part of the race, just trying to get to the finish line so that I can have another go tomorrow or the next day. It was a weird experience to have no idea what was going on up the front today.
Mike (Woods), on the other hand, was in the thick of the action for our team and, with 30km to go, led solo over the penultimate climb. Unfortunately, he was caught and passed by Dutch stage winner Dylan Teuns and Spaniard Jon Izzaguire by the line.
We have been pretty invisible so far in the race, but Mike showed today by taking third on the stage that we’re at the level to compete here.
We came here with the aim of winning a stage and sometimes that takes a lot of trust from your sponsors, which we have here. There are a lot of hard stages coming up in the next ten days, some of which, hopefully, we can take advantage of. We’ll keep fighting and looking for the right opportunities to come along.