Stage 3 tour of beijing

the queen stage of the tour of beijing lived up to its diagram in the race manual and causeing some splits in the field. While the GC remained largely unchanged, the two short climbs in the final 30km of the stage turned a gentle start to the day into quite a suffer fest. With everybody knowing it was the only opportunity to make any moves on the gc attacks went off left right and centre which meant the lesser likes like myself just had to put the head down, chew the handle bar stem and hope to stay in the slip stream and we set about prettending we were on a flat rd as apposed to the 6% gradient 7 and 5km climbs we charged over. With all the attacks only 3 riders remained as we crested the top of the final climb with 10km to go with a 10sec lead. It seemed they would come back but a wild fast twisty decent split the front group and with 5km to go we were in 3 groups which disrupted the chase somewhat. Unfortunately i was one guilty of being caught out by gaps on the decent and got stuck at the back and was unable to help our sprinter danial oss who showed great strength all day to be in the front group in the final kms. When we finally all got back together with 1km to go i went full biscuit to try and actually get to the front of the group but at the same time a team mate in davide cimoli lit up the front at 60kmph and and 10riders from the front was the closest i got before blowing to pieces so i am dissapointed i missed this moment to help my team mates. Working for the boys is always what i enjoy most so will have added motivation to try and make up for it in the next couple of stages.

Certainly i had hoped today to feel better but i was a little bit shocked by the pace of these world tour races. I had not done a world tour race since the dauphine in june and while the out and out pace is not neccessarily any faster than the smaller races but the number of riders going that pace is much greater so i was a little tentative while regaining this rythm in the small hills. Anyway got the shock of all that out of my system now so am looking forward to getting stuck into the final 2 days. Tomorrows stage finishes at the olympic rowing course so hopfully it can be a good oman for me and inturn my liquigas cannondale team mates and we can get a good result.

Srm data
Time 3hrs 53min
Speed 41kmph average
Av watts 250
Av heart rate 139bpm
Kcal burnt 3500
Altitude gain 2200m

Cjw
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