Hey guys….

Today was a very hard day in the office.

It started off calmly with the peleton paying it’s respect to the team sky soingeur who passed away yesterday…. Pretty sad day for that team, they all pulled out but were present at the start of the stage…

The peleton started off with 20kms of easy riding and then it was on like donkey kong! A 10km slight uphill to start fired things up before a massive crash in the peleton caused huge havoc… I come down here too…. I went straight over the handle bars and down into a rocky ditch… It was at slow speed and I got hit from behind hard. I really was scared though, thinking only of my knee, but I came away from it with little skin off so I was happy…. Don’t know what caused it, but it happened at the front of the bunch and many come down…

From here it was on. The peleton chilled for a bit here as many were a but shaken but as soon as we hit the first climb of the day the attacks started. I felt really bad after my crash, I had to change my bike and I just was on the red for a long time as the parcours never allowed for any rest. Many thoughts were running through my head here I can tell you that, but as you do, I carried on and things came better…..

The race blew apart on the 2nd last climb and I rode in with the gruppetto… It wasn’t easy though and we had to ride hard to make the time cut as a super steep climb to the finish was on everyones mind…

This climb was unreal.. Gradients like I’ve never seen before. A lot had 27s, some had 29s, and the guys in the front had compacts on… Like I said, unreal!

It was over 6 hrs on the bike today in the first really hard day of this years tour… Tomorrow is harder again so it will be interesting to see what happens…

I was really happy with my feelings in the last half of the race. I got better and that’s a good sign… This weekend isn’t for me though, although I’ll still sniff around tomorrow in case of those legs you dream about decide to poke me! Otherwise it will be conserve again, readying myself for what lies ahead…

Today was a reals mental test though and a lot are very tired….. All good if you ask me!

Will update tomorrow from hot sweaty espana! Happy that all my family and friends are ok in chch… Looks like something out of a holywood movie if you ask me…. What is the world coming too! Moses had to have a cold bottle cause of no power, poor buggar. Still slept like a Trojan though so all good lol…

Ciao my friends.
Roly