This is more like Paris-Nice than the Dauphine Libere as today was mainly flat/rolling farm land, wind and grey skies — not what one expects from the normally sunny and hilly Dauphine. I shouldn’t complain though as it was a good first day. The break of five riders were literally out of sight by the fourth kilometer and Cadel’s team were on the front riding tempo only a couple of kilometers later. We were set for a 228km steady bunch ride down through eastern France.
Sometimes these days can be harder than expected as there is so little going on and no real physical or psychological demands that you just switch off and become only too self-aware of your well being. Meaning: you feel like crap. There comes a point where you just want the race to start up again so you can get your body and mind fully operational and out of their stand-by state. This happened today about 10km from the finish just as we were about to catch the last three of the five man break, it was aided by the increasingly wet roads and the fear this breeds within the bunch.
As I switched back on again I realized I was actually feeling quite chipper and would have a go in the finale. I was sitting near the front watching people attack and seeing that only Quickstep were really managing the front of the peloton. They seemed to be getting a bit overwhelmed by numerous individual attacks which was a clear signal to me that there was an opportunity that rarely arises in these bunch sprint finales.
I followed an attack up to the remnants of previous attackers and then attacked. There was a lot of attacking. This was between five and four kilometers to go. I put my head down for a few hundred meters and then looked round to make sure I’d taken nobody with me, which I hadn’t, and then went into TT mode. I was shocked at how in control I felt and was able to pace my effort in order to last the full 4km to the finish!
Lionel told me on the radio that there were going to be some corners which was a great relief as I knew this would string out the bunch (more so than normal with the wet roads) and make the chase behind harder to organize — unfortunately it also meant that I was going to be coming into wet unknown corners that were stupidly slippery at high speed with the TV motorbike filming my every move. In between counting down the kilometers and trying with every bit of myself to maintain the high speed I kept repeating to myself, ‘DO NOT CRASH, DO NOT CRASH, DO NOT CRASH!!!’ I didn’t want to crash…
With about 1.5km to go I actually increased my lead and I came under the km to go arch really believing it was possible. Unfortunately there was one last big corner with 600m to go which took all my speed away AGAIN. The last 500m were false flat and I just couldn’t hold off the sprint from behind, they caught me with probably 20-30m to go. Boonen blew himself up closing the final gap to me. Which serves him right…
I think the saying ‘So close but so far’ is truly applicable to my day today.
