Good news in that my bag finally arrived. Late last night Ed came to our hotel room with them. It was a great relief, and bode well for a big stage today.
Today's stage was again about 150-160km with a nasty hill at the end. The hill wasn't as steep as yesterday, but it was longer. The hill was Mt Magazine. We started and finished at the top. The stage kicked off with a long gradual descent, a few rollers, a lot of flat, then a lovely little climb to finish.
After the descent attacks came on the rollers. And they were killing me, with splits in the field opening up and I was in the hurt box. Eventually a three man break went it was our job to set the tempo for the day. Today seemed a bit unusual in terms of racing. In a race with 90 people in the field, I usually get to a good view of most riders except those at the front. However, after 30 min today all I saw were the hard working boys of Team Type 1 setting tempo. Well that was until the bottom of the climb. At that point my job was done, I blew up and started going backwards. Kobza had been killing the pace all day, and he still was when I went backwards. Fabio and Ian were also still pushing it pretty hard right to the base of the climb.
I struggled up the climb, which just seemed to go on forever. I thought I was almost at the top, till I saw the 10km to go sign. Bugger. I did manage to struggle home well down, and my teammates were all packed up and ready to go. Chady finished in the front group to retain is overall lead, so we got to be happy with that.
Tomorrow is a 75min crit. Should be fun, but we'll see. Time to rest up now.
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