Well after a few rather cruisy days rolling along in the bunch on the flat the tour changed gears on stage 5 and got really intense all of a sudden!
In the end it was a pretty disappointing day for me personally but on the whole not a bad day for the team. I finally made the break after over 80km of trying (we did the first 50km in 1hr and it was all uphill) there was four of in the move, two euros and and Aussie. The euros weren’t too keen on riding hard and the bunch didn’t give us much leeway so we never got a massive gap, I had good legs and made the most of it by taking the first cat2 climb, unfortunately the pace was on in the bunch and we got caught just 5 k from the top of the next one, if we had just made the top I would’ve had the kom jersey for the day. It went from bad to worse when I punctured twice in 5k lose the lead group of 40riders just 30k to go. Joe, mike and Roman were riding well still in the front group and Joe managed to finish with the main chase group at the end to move up to 5th on gc. Tomorrow’s day is going to massive but we are still in a good position do do something. We all know that the next stage is the one that will shape the tour, at the moment we are still in a good position to do something!
That was a crazy brutal climb today. There’s not many climbs that you have to ride up at about 10kph for the last 10km. I managed to slip into the break again this morning and won the first kom to add a few more points to my tally, unfortunately there aren’t many climbs left and its pretty much a given that whoever wins up genting wins overall and kom. In the break we managed to hold on off the front untill the real climbing began when we hit the 15% gradients with 15k to go, from then it was just a matter of getting to the finish for me. Unfortunately hints didn’t go quite so well for the boys back in the bunch, while trying to set Joe up for the climb they got caught up in a couple of crashes in the panic. From now we will look to make the most of all opportunities in the next few days, there are still four stages left that suit us so we will look to do something for sure!
Road to the sky/Genting
Stay tuned for more updates!
Jimmy
