Saturday, June 11, 2011

Dauphine stage 6

Not alot of exciting news to report today unfortunately. Just like yesterday we set of at a frantic pace up and down mountains again causeing splits left right and centre, after 80km a group finally got away which our team had mauro finetto. When a start is like it has been over the past few days to be in the break you have to be very strong as first you need to stay in the front as and today's group formed from a front group of no more than 50riders it is a big achievment simply entering in the days great escape. I had a quiet day in the bunch just doing my usual thing of looking after ivan. Had a little bit of chaos on the decent to final climb with only 20km to finish with first a puncture but while i was riding back though the cars to get to the front a few cows had decided to jump into the peleron while it was traveling at 80kmph and as you can imagine the end result was not pretty. By the time i arrived on the seen there were a few unlucky dudes on the ground and also of the side of the road in the paddock that should have been occupied by the cows. As often to any living thing when its scared, the natural impulse is to poo ones self. There was no exception in this case so not only was there a bunch 1 tonne moo cows charging down the rd between cars motorbikes and cyclists and all the hoopla that goes along behind a bike race but also a monumental amount of poo everywhere. Fortunately for me i was able to arrive at the scene of the carnage and avoid cars riders and perhaps most fortunately to piles of poo!

Of course the crash caused some chaos is the bunch and inevitable split so although i was back in a group of sorts i was now faced with a frantic chase to get back to the front group with only a few km's to the final climb. This was particularly importand as i had in my possesion the all important final water bottle for ivan to keep him suatained on the final climb. So a few crazy corners and some super high rpm revving and i made it to the front about 500m before the climb started, delived the bottle into the climb we went, i put up my parachut and went backwards at a rate of knotts and just to add insult into some very tired legs i flatted again just as the first set of cars had roled on past me to follow the lead group. So was not ment for me today, i put the call out for the second car to bring me a wheel but it was a fair ways back down the mountain so i just trudged up the first 5km of the climb on the dud wheel until paolo arrived with a replacement. Anyways all in all was another good hit out of a day and some days the luck just does not smile on you, hopefully tomorrow will be a little kinder.

The facts and figures for the stage from my srm are as follows

Distance 192km
Time 5hrs 20min
Speed av 36kmph
Elevation gain 4000m
Watt average 275
Heart rate average 145.5
Energy exp 5300kcal

So basically it was another jolly solid day which is good because thats what i am here for, give the body a bit of a wake up call

Time for a good sleep

Cjw
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

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