Stage 3 padania

Another day in tour of padania and another day of italian controversy. This time it is was not protestors but instead paolo bettini decided to flex his italian national team selectors musles and have the stage lengthened by 40km to try and make it more similar to world championship length to guage his chargers. I was surprized he did not also any non italian to sit patiently behind this most important race within a race and let the italian superstars do there thing in piece. Nope it was business as usual for us internationals and with the leaders jersey to defend i knew it was going to be a tuffy for me. Sure enough as soon a the flag dropped it was on for young and old and trying to control the makeup of the break meant we average 52kmph for the first 1hr of racing before it finally went clear. I was happy with the 7 escapees appart from my good mate and fellow tasmanian and hence big rival for the tassie cup being in the break in wez sulzberger so now not only did i have the incentive to chase to protect elias jersey but also to make sure wez did not gain any time on me. Ultimately we pulled them back and we were both spat out the back of the peleton with 10km to ride to the finish so that objective was completed. As for defending elias jersey and doing my main job it was pretty similar to stage 1 but this time i was on the front for 201km before i started to role back into the field. Once the break went i rode alone for 20km or so to ensure there lead did not balloon to much before longo came to help me until just over half way when a couple of other teams sent some guys up to help and make the chase a little easier in the run into the circuits. Ultimately the race was all together with 15km to go and my work was done and the rest of my team mates took over delivering elia to another fine 2nd place but unfortunately behind sacha modelo by a tyre width and hence loosing the leaders jersey to the colnago rider. Tomorrow's stage features a mountain top finish so i will be interested to see how my pins pull up as our focus will shift to Ivan basso being the team GC man. Time for so well earnt sleep i think because today was potentially the longest in distance to intensity ratio i have done on the front of the peleton and i am a little tired.

SRM Data
225km
46kmph av speed
282 watt average
150 heart rate average
5000kj burnt

Cjw
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