With the stakes so high, there was no shortage of guys willing to take risks to get to the front. Throw three weeks of fatigue into that mix and you have a recipe for crashes. The first crash split the peloton after just 3km, somebody riding into a rut on the left-hand side of the road, losing balance and falling across the guys behind him putting a halt to the gallop of two-thirds of the bunch.

There were only about 30 riders who got past the fallers. I was stuck right at the back, and with the attacks still going off the front, we had a really hard chase to get back on. When we eventually regained contact, we found out there were six guys already up the road.

As the Alpecin-Fenix team started chasing, there was another big crash towards the front of the bunch shortly after. After three weeks of racing, concentration isn’t the best and all it takes is one rub of a wheel to bring a load of guys down. The crash happened towards the front again and contained about a dozen guys, including green jersey ‘Cav’, so the pace was really high again after that to regain contact.

At the intermediate sprint in Saint-Sever after 55km, the attacks began again and we suddenly came off a big wide road and went through a barrier-lined town that was so narrow you could barely get a car through it.

When we came out the other side, somehow 14 more riders had gone away in a chase group. It was purely a case of positioning. The road was so narrow that it had an accordion affect on the peloton, squeezing the bunch together and forcing the rear portion to slow down. If you were up the front you ended up in the chase group.

We didn’t have anybody in either the break or the chase group though, so my team-mates ended up riding on the front of the peloton with a few other teams who had also missed out.

For about an hour, there was a hot pursuit going on between the guys in the break, the guys in the chase group and the guys on the front of the peloton. As we sailed along at 55kph into a headwind, I was thankful of having been given the day ‘off’ after my efforts yesterday and managed to dodge the workload. The only good thing about all of this was that it made a long stage pass by really quickly.

The guys cut the break back to 40 seconds, and even 15 seconds at one point, but the reality is there are so many motorbikes and cars in front of what was a really strong breakaway that they have the advantage of almost always being in a slipstream. When the two groups merged up front and began to pull clear again, morale dropped in the peloton and everyone gave up the chase with 80km to go.

Once the break had gone, the peloton relaxed. I was able to have a chat with a few guys for the first time in a couple of weeks. Having won a mountain stage the other day, Ben O’Connor is now fourth overall. He’s a really nice guy but I didn’t realise until the other day that he lives about 400m away from me in Andorra so we had a bit of a chat.

Although it was supposed to be flat, there were plenty of rolling hills and there was a lot more climbing than I expected but it was nice to see some sun as we snaked through the vineyards around Bordeaux.

Like plenty of other teams, we made a mistake. One lapse of concentration going through that town saw us miss the break. They opened their advantage to around eight minutes and rode away with our hopes of a stage win. There are two days left now so hopefully we can get Andre up there on the Champs Elysées on Sunday.

First though, I’m hoping there’s some birthday cake at dinner tonight.