‘There was still 6km to the summit. I was cooked. Done’
I ’VE been in so many hotels on this Giro that last night I woke up and didn’t know where I was. With the room pitch dark, I couldn’t find my phone to give me a bit of light to find the bathroom.
Having won ‘Paper, Rock, Scissors’ with my room-mate Lukas Postlberger the first time we had a double bed and a single bed in our room, I decided that in the interest of fairness, we would alternate every time it happened.
Last night, I had a massive double bed while Lukas found himself on the couch.
My bed was so big that I offered to share it with him but he wasn’t having any of it, even when I offered to put a little pillow wall between us. Maybe it was because I told him I sleepcuddle.
Today, I felt worse at the beginning of the stage than I did at the end. With a third-category climb from the gun, I was hanging off the back. There were guys getting dropped all the time but the top of the climb came just 13km into a 191km stage so I fought to get around them and stay in the group. It was pretty grim.
HEART-RATE
It feels like I’ve reached a point on this Giro where my body just can’t feel any more tired. My max heart-rate is 209 but today all I could get was 184bpm.
I was panting and wrestling my bike but my body just couldn’t go faster. If I was hurting that much only 13km into the race, I knew it was going to be hard.
I hung on over the top and then the break went. Race leader Tom Dumoulin’s Sunweb team took to the front and I thought ‘Yes, they’re going to control it. Things will calm down now’.
When Dumoulin stopped for a p*ss a few minutes later, though, the other teams went hell for leather down the descent and split the peloton in bits.
With Dumoulin’s team-mates controlling things when he stopped, nobody expected the other teams to attack.
Despite his comments yesterday that he hoped Nairo Quintana and Vincenzo Nibali would lose their podium placings, that’s not the way to attack SAM BENNETT somebody. I think it shows how afraid of him they are.
With his team-mates having to drop back and try to tow him back into contact, we were soon going full gas again. My maximum speed today was 102kph and I was stuck on the brakes behind other guys.
There were so many corners on the descent that it split in three or four groups, and having been at the back anyway, I got caught out in the last one.
With the race going at breakneck speed ahead of us, there was a CCC rider in the top 20 on GC in our group, so they ended up pulling hard when we hit the second-category Sella Chianzutan after 93km.
My posture on the bike is totally gone on the climbs now. I’m lurching forward, leaning sideways, trying to get everything out. I can’t even keep my knees in.
I was bobbing and weaving so much today Conor McGregor wouldn’t have landed a blow on me. It’s not a pretty sight and I probably don’t look like I should be there but I thought ‘If I get dropped on this I’m out’.
At one point, I looked down at my computer which said there were 6km to the summit. I was cooked. Done.
I knew that if I hit the last climb out the back, I’d struggle to stay inside the time limit but I couldn’t handle another 6km at that pace and had to slow down, so I began to set my own pace, which wasn’t much slower, but felt a bit better.
Either my computer or the race manual was wrong, though, as within seconds, we came around a corner with a banner saying ‘3km to the top’ so I gritted my teeth and got back into the line. I hung on over the top and went down the descent in the fourth group.
Up front Dumoulin had regained contact on the descent so the pace eased dramatically, which enabled my group to ride up to the back of them. I was so happy I couldn’t stop smiling.
With 60km of flat roads before the 15km first-category climb to the finish, as long as they didn’t let the breakaway get 20 minutes or something stupid, I knew I was going to make it.
The extra effort and concentration required for moving up through the bunch and then riding there was too much, though, so I just sat at the back and relaxed.
When we got to the final climb, I asked the team car for an estimate of the time limit from
the stage winner Mikel Landa and was told it would be around 50 minutes. The break were 10 minutes ahead of us at that stage so I didn’t even try to make the grupetto.
I knew I had so much time that I just got into my own rhythm concentrated on my watts and rode it at my own pace.
Within seconds everyone around me was gone, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get to the finish inside the time limit so I can start tomorrow’s penultimate stage.
I caught a handful of guys before the top and crossed the line third last on the stage, half an hour after Landa of Sky had won the stage.
With Quintana now leading the race by just by 38 seconds, tomorrow’s penultimate stage is going to be savage but I’ve come so far now that I’m ready for a fight to get to Milan on Sunday.
My girlfriend Tara is coming to visit me tomorrow after the stage. I haven’t told Lukas yet, but he could be on the couch again.
Giro d’Italia, Live, Eurosport, 12.15