Tour de Timor
Stage 3
The stay in Loihuno for me was a nightmare. I must have eaten some bad meat or something, because I got no sleep, and was feeling really sick, and ontop of this I must have been sleeping with my head slightly down hill and was suffering from slight reflux and general discomfort. I arrose the next morning feeling like death, I think I had a stomach bug, and I literally couldn't stomach any food. I was far from eager to race 100km in 40 degree heat pushing the pace on tremendously rough, momentum sapping terrain, but I wasn’t the eager to give up either.
Being a reasonably flat stage with some short hills at the start, we predicted that a break may happen real early. It did and Pete once again was the one that managed to cover it. With only Three riders in our team, and one of those riders being in yellow and not to do any work, Pete and myself were getting spread thinly and it was definitely fatiguing. With a group up the rode, it took a while for the chase to get organised. obviously it was mainly our team that had the need to chase down this break and with me being the only one left to push the pace, it was going to be a nearly impossible task to chase down a couple of fresher riders up the rode, ontop of the fact I was quite sick.
Pete was on the ball and realised this, so he dropped off the break and came back to help me. And that was the story of the day really, Pete and myself swapping turns digging into our reserves to chase down this break.
The two riders out front were Brendan Brooks and Ben Grieve-Johnson. The chase took a while to start up, and that seemed to be our undoing, no matter how hard we pushed we were pulling in very little, and by the time we got to the finish line the break had made 11 minutes on us!! It felt like an unlikely scenario, but we had just lost the Yellow Jersey to Ben Grieve-Johnson of team Praties. Luckily for us Ben had been a little bit behind in the other stages and Neil was now in second, only a few minutes behind.
A time gap we thought was very achievable to bring back.
And tomorrow was the MOUNTAINS STAGE! a stage that could make or break GC.
ScottyL
The stay in Loihuno for me was a nightmare. I must have eaten some bad meat or something, because I got no sleep, and was feeling really sick, and ontop of this I must have been sleeping with my head slightly down hill and was suffering from slight reflux and general discomfort. I arrose the next morning feeling like death, I think I had a stomach bug, and I literally couldn't stomach any food. I was far from eager to race 100km in 40 degree heat pushing the pace on tremendously rough, momentum sapping terrain, but I wasn’t the eager to give up either.
Being a reasonably flat stage with some short hills at the start, we predicted that a break may happen real early. It did and Pete once again was the one that managed to cover it. With only Three riders in our team, and one of those riders being in yellow and not to do any work, Pete and myself were getting spread thinly and it was definitely fatiguing. With a group up the rode, it took a while for the chase to get organised. obviously it was mainly our team that had the need to chase down this break and with me being the only one left to push the pace, it was going to be a nearly impossible task to chase down a couple of fresher riders up the rode, ontop of the fact I was quite sick.
Pete was on the ball and realised this, so he dropped off the break and came back to help me. And that was the story of the day really, Pete and myself swapping turns digging into our reserves to chase down this break.
The two riders out front were Brendan Brooks and Ben Grieve-Johnson. The chase took a while to start up, and that seemed to be our undoing, no matter how hard we pushed we were pulling in very little, and by the time we got to the finish line the break had made 11 minutes on us!! It felt like an unlikely scenario, but we had just lost the Yellow Jersey to Ben Grieve-Johnson of team Praties. Luckily for us Ben had been a little bit behind in the other stages and Neil was now in second, only a few minutes behind.
A time gap we thought was very achievable to bring back.
And tomorrow was the MOUNTAINS STAGE! a stage that could make or break GC.
ScottyL
posted by Scott Liston at 10:11 am
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