The story involves hill accelerations, bridging gaps, and just hard smart riding, but to cut it short, Craig won again. Very awesome. He led the last climb up to the castle from the group he was in, but the little Dutch twin pulled back 55 seconds so the crested together, then rode the downhill and sprinted in.
Jon abandoned the stage. Had a series of double pinch flats beyond what his patch kits, tubes and CO2's could do. Also broke a spoke again and wheel warped further.
Kate had a steady day and survived. Antibiotics, warmer and digestion seem like they're playing a bit of a role.
I had a hard wake up, didn't feel good from the start. Felt hungry, but I don't think my food from last night digested well. Ate breakfast by force, then went up for a nap. Ended up at the start line 30 seconds before start.
Felt fine on the first technical climbs, and on the cobble descents picked up a bunch of spots. Wanted to just get in a good rolling group for the long distance. Got gapped on a smooth steep climb to a town then took some wrong turns and started on with a new group. That went fine on the rolling hills and technical descents until the fuel in my muscles ran out and it became apparent I hadn't digested a lot. Was off the back on rollers, took another wrong turn, ended up alone. Also lost a bottle. Beautiful day and long day so I decided to spin it easy solo, stop for water more instead of fighting to stay in groups, just slowed down to a crawl and plugged away, looking for water in each place.
By noon I backtracked after a wrong turn and bumped into a group of 6. Hard to tell where the field was when I kept going wrong. Felt good at their pace, especially on a road section. We got near another group so I rode up to the next and it felt easy. The 4h morning spin saved a lot of legs, and my stomach started working. Kept rolling forward through groups on the road because nobody wanted to pull into headwind. Did most of the farmer gates solo, which was good as I could do more hopping them. Did one shoulder height - it had a sturdy beam at the top that aided vaulting. More were open this year with farmers working, but hopped half the closed ones.
Got caught near some field with cow footprints everywhere, but didn't want to get caught, so pinned it on the dry cowfootprint "cobbles", hopped two gates and was off.
Last 75km were solo. Felt really good, just cruised along easy. Saw some big storks. Did a low speed wipeout after a gate with a water bottle in hand and a bug in my face. Of course instead of a gloved hand hitting first I put out a soft as can be underside of forearm and ground it into some gravel. Oops. Probably the right way to go though as a sore hand wouldn't have wanted to hold the bars. Has dirt in it.
Came in at about 8.5 hours, and as it turned out it was my best day even with doing an extra 3k and soft pedalling first few hours. Looks like it was a tough day on a lot of people considering 8.5 hours was 25th, or roughly middle. Man this is a long race!
Good day to be short oil and gas too... Bam!
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