Stage 3 tour de taiwan

Stage 3 here in Taiwan has been run and won and we enjoyed a very unique experience courtesy of the climate today, the sun!!!! On paper the stage looked a little more challenging than the previous days however it did not turn out that way with the 2 climbs seemingly repesenting an ever so slight rise as appose to a climb. The race manual book at most races understates the difficulty of stages however here they depict a stage crossing the himmer layers only to be climbing over bridges!! No it's not quite that out of wack and certainly ensures for plenty of surprizes along the way. After copping the 20" time penalty the day before for getting my flat tyre changed I was pretty determined to have a bit of a go today. I tried from the get go to form a breakaway group but under the control of the strong saxobank team nothing significant was headed up the Rd. I settled into the bunch and Waited for the action on the climbs. Nothing happened on the first climb so it was all onto the second. With the first part barely rising at all the pace was a little high to try an attack. With 3pm to go the Rd pitched up for a bit and I had a dig, got a good gap and started to pull clear, at 1pm to go I thought I had it with the knowledge of the final 800m a steep uphill. Alas I turned a corner expecting wall in front of me and I was greeted by a decent instead of about 500m so guess again I failed to understand the book! The bunch was still 30 strong and momentum had them barreling down the decent much quicker than me and when the hill finally arrived with 300m to go the stage winnner Anthony giacoppo ripped past me so fas that I had to go and ask him for my helmet and sunglasses back after the stage as I swear he sucked them clean of my head!! He went on to win the sprint pretty easily which is fitting because he is really a class above this field and is certainly destined for great man great things most likely this week and certainly in the future. 100m later i got swamped by the rest of the front group and to add insult into injury to m failed attempt at the victory, ne of the riders decided to try and squeeze past me, loose control of his bike and career into the barriers sending me crashing into it with him, my the only first I achieved on the day was my first crash of the season!! So as I write this I am sitting on my bed layered with ice on my knee and elbow. Fortunately no damage done, only to my pride and I look forward to tomorrow which again on "paper" looks to be hilly and hard so looking forward to what lies on store for us. Time to rub some tiger bake into my bruised muscles and get as much of the best healing medicine available to man kind, SLEEP

Cjw