murcia stage 1

Today was a day of contrasts. After a windy start, a small non-threatening break took off and we settled down for the longest stage of the week on some riveting wide open interstate with a nice full head wind. It was one of those days where I wished our director had a book-on-tape to broadcast over our radio that we could have followed for the first four hours. We rolled along easy for a long time, no team wanting to chase yet as the break never got far with the head wind. The thing is though, with a day like today, you know that the slower we go at the start, the faster we go in the end. And that was certainly true today. We popped off of a narrow forested road into a wide open plain with a downhill and a ferocious, gale force cross tail wind. At one point, I was actually picked up into the air and skipped sideways. Not kidding. Instantly the field splintered into pieces and the last 30 kilometers to the finish were spent at about 70 kph. Like I said…you always gotta make up that speed somewhere! We had four of us in the front group including our GC and sprint hopes, so that was good. Then Julian was taken out in a crash in the final kilometer. But hopefully tomorrow is a little more exciting and we’ll improve on today’s performance. On another note, I can’t resist telling you how awesome my first day on my new aero Felt AR was. It felt like a rocket. I was really impressed. And since I lost some time today, I’ll have to really put it to the wind tomorrow in a breakaway! Thanks for checking in,