Breakfast, pack-up and check-in at the start for 8:15, then have at least 5 nervous pee's before the start at 9. Straight after the finish its into recovery drinks and food, then bike washing and prep for the next day, massage, then food and by then its time to go to bed.
Anyway, todays stage started with another 20Km of climbing, after a decent start Steve was struggling again and we started slipping back, or so it seemed. I have my first proper experience of overheated brakes, pulling them on as hard as I could but I was no longer slowing down, was lucky to get away with that one!
Another hard stage with some really brutal climbing that eventually got to everyone with just about all getting off and walking.
Just when we thought we'd cracked it with only 8km to go the track crested in a tiny hamlet, I'd just changed to the big-ring ready for another screaming descent to the finish when the course turned hard left and up for another 500m of height to gain!
We did have a great section of technical wet singletrack descent that was great, as most things round here, it went on for ages leaving hands, arms and shoulders screaming.
A final couple of miles flying downhill on tarmac (70kph today) to another town centre finish.
In all today racked up 10000ft of climbing over 72km, and just as I was thinking we'd had another bad day, seemingly everyone else did too again finishing 44th in 5hrs 51mins.
Now somewhere in all of this Stevie found his turbo button (or his missing stash of EPO), he went flying past me and kept on going, and was still going at the end. He's been bouncing around like a demented Zebedee tonight... Hopefully this bodes well for tomorrow!
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