The stage race was 4 days but the first day was a 1.3km prologue. The next day was kind of rolling and finished on a steep 500 meter cobbled climb. Stage 2 had a big climb with 40km to go and then a 3km climb up to the finish, and the last day was basically flat.
Well the prologue was a prologue and I basically suck at prologues so I got 108 out of 170. But I also messed up the last turn and lost a good 2 seconds there. Those 2 seconds would have given me about 20 places. Still not as bad as my team mate who crashed in the same turn. One team mate was 6 seconds up and finished in 23rd. Overall I'm like 14 seconds down so basically, who cares. The legs felt really good, I just don't have enough power for such a short race so what can you do.
There is another American here I know from racing with the national team and stuff. His name Tejay Van Garderen, he rides for the D3 rabobank team, I am sure a good number of people who might be reading this have heard of him. I find it funny that among all of these people from a whole swarm of European countries, there are just two americans who have decided to leave the comforts of home and try to make it big overseas with a foreign team. I didn't get a chance to say hi but I am sure I will tomorrow. He'll probably be surpised to see me here.
The first real road stage had some good news and bad news, the good was that my legs felt pretty sweet and I was ok at moving up and staying up. With like 10 km to go there was a gradual 3 k climb and Rabobank started attacking. I was right at the front following the moves and it was hard but totally doable. At one point they sat up a bit and so I looked back to see the damage over my left shoulder, just as I did, the race leader came by on my right and hit my bars with his hip. I went straight down. Luckily, I didn't have too much road rash, but I pulled my left glute and groin muscles, it pretty much hurt to walk or do anything. It was just a racing incident, but it was definitely annoying to go down like that, especially when I had good legs. In the end I finished in a group about 2 minutes down.
Stage 2 went basically as I expected, the legs felt like crap and my pack skills were terrible since I was a bit freaked out. I started the big climb at the back of the field and rode my way up to the third group. We caught the second group which had our GC guy Chris in it, so I got to the front and helped with the chace back to the front group of about 30. After that I was basically done racing physically and mentally and sat at the back untill the 3k climb up to the finish and then just rode ME up it to finish about 80th. Chris rode pretty well and finished around 30th, not bad considering he's been the only guy on the team who's spent most of the time at the front and going with attacks. I was too useless to do that today. I wonder how it would have been on a normal day without the crash the day before. Still it was not too bad considering I am still walking with a limp.
Then stage 3 was more of the same. The first hour was crazy fast with non stop attacks. The guy who won yesterday was not on the strongest team so the big teams wanted to test him to see if they could take back the yellow jersey. The leader's team held touch through and eventually let a break go of 8 guys who were not a big threat to the overal and then kept the gap at 1:35 for most of the day. With 40km to go the attacks started again, but still to no avail. When a field sprint looked inevitable we decided to ride for Linde who was our best finisher in the Porec trophy. I tried to get him up to the front, but we sadly got stuck about 70 guys back and could not find any room in the road to move any higher.
So although there weren't any stellar results, it was a good experience and I can't wait for some more races when I have completely recovered. I think it will be sweet.
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