Then somehow (and this always seems to happen to me) I found myself in the break. A few people had slipped away and one solo guy had just gotten away and I figured it was my duty to get up there. So I attacked right before a one lane bridge, got a gap and caught the solo German. We worked together for maybe 3 laps before we finally caught the 4 guys up the road. And that's when things started looking bad.
Before I describe how poorly we rode as a team today let me first say that the guys on the team are great racers and I'm very grateful that they've brought me to this race. That said, you just can't expect to do well in a professional level race with totally amateur organization. We didn't have a team meeting before the race so we didn't really have any idea of the plan(okay, we didn't even have a plan). We also had no idea who the riders were who were close to Lisban on the GC. I wore a radio all damn day and didn't hear a single thing on it.
So I ride myself up into the break and I can't think of anything to do but sit on, soft-pedal through and try to bring down the time gap without getting dropped. Had I known where people were on the GC or what was going on behind me I could have at least marked some threat or tried to disrupt things instead of just sitting there twittling my thumbs.
I keep finding new depths of suffering here in paradise. Like I said, I was pretty worked from the day before, and on top of that it was brutally hot. When I say hot I mean hotter than satan's balls hot. Hotter than a dead dingo's donger hot. Hotter than to rats gettin busy in a wool sock. It felt like I was standing too close to a fire. The whole day.
And then disaster. I didn't get a feed for 3 laps. That pretty much sealed my fate. I missed one feed when the girl helping us out ran into someone, and then after that I guess they just ran out of water. I mean, plain water might not have done much for me anyway, but without it I was done. To add insult to injury all they could get me was tap water, which is only good to drink if you want to spend some quality time with the toilet.
So I was a wobbling corpse on the bike, sweating so much my hands were getting pruned and my feet were swelling in my shoes. At this point it would have been nice to know that our time gap of 5 minutes was to the field, not the chasers who were right on us. They caught us and suddenly I was one of ten and a couple of guys had teammates. That was about it. We were no longer working smoothly, but going in fits and starts as guys would attack, get reeled in and attack again. Eventually 4 got away in total, in ones and twos and after a few failed attempts to get up to them we resigned ourselves to being caught.
In short the group got us. I slayed myself to keep the pace up and cover moves for Lisban, going as deep in the pain cave as I ever have, and eventually getting popped with about a mile to go. After the race I heard that one of the guys who had gotten away had been within a minute of Lisban and was now the leader by a good margin. So lame. It was brutal out there, and we're decidedly outgunned by a talented international field, but I can't help but think that if we'd been a little better organized it might have come out better.
I was weaving on the bike on the way home and barely made it. I've been horizontal ever since and its taking everything I have to get myself out the door and downstairs to this huge party with a steel drum band and free booze. Yup, I'm that tired.
Don't know what good I'm going to be tomorrow. I tell you I'd much rather spend the day on the beach drinking fruity drinks moving as little as possible, but if Lisban asks me to start I guess I'll have to.
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