The Millar Diaries: Them are the breaks

Friday, July 17 — I’ve been trying really hard to get in the break the last two days. Thursday I ended up trying too hard, I was probably one of the strongest in the race that day — well I certainly was of the riders who wanted to go for the stage win, but unfortunately it just wasn’t happening. I was in almost every breakaway from km zero to km 55. There were probably about seven or eight different ones I was in (with different riders each time!)

At the 55th km I decided it was out of my hands and if I tried any harder then by the time I did get in the break I would be too tired to seriously challenge for the win. So I went onto Wiggo-VDV detail. I was reminded of a rule Cyrille Guimard (legendary DS) taught me my first year pro, ‘David, c’est le peloton qui decide si l’echappee s’en va, pas le contraire.’ It is the peloton that decides if the breakaway works or not, not the other way round. Words of wisdom; it’s a bit like the sea, doesn’t matter how good a sailor you are, if the sea really wants to pummel you, it will

So on Thursday I just took care of Wiggo and VDV, sat them near the front in the finale even though it appeared that it would be a fairly safe controlled run-in as we were only coming in for eighth place and it wasn’t the most dangerous run-in. We didn’t count on Levi doing a death-defying surge into a left-hander with just under 3km to go. He took himself out and only just missed Christian, reminding us of how important it is to keep our GC riders at the front and away from such incidents.

Granted this happened at the front, but Wiggo and VDV were even closer to the front! Mick Rogers was one of the guys that was jettisoned into the bushes, he came and sat at our dinner table last night to say hi. The bushes incident wasn’t quite the icing on the cake, but it did display his growing disdain for his unfortunate luck here — he has to have some sort of record for the crashes per TdF ratio.

Friday was brutal! TV images cannot do justice to the harshness of it. It was so cold, a full body-shaking, head-shivering cold. I got to the point of trying to find a happy place deep inside my head away from the physical world, and there were two places. One was laying in the hammock under the trees in our garden in Girona; it’s one of the most peaceful spots I know. My Dad put it up between two trees when he visited a couple of months ago and it’s protected from the sun by a huge canopy of leaves and looks out over a field of corn that moves as whole in waves with the wind. The other was imagining our honeymoon in Mauritius and being on the beach. This is a clear indication of how cold I was as normally the beach would be the last place in the world I would want to find sanctuary (I have a mild sand phobia…), but imagining being there with Nicole was a perfect escape from where I was.

That’s my personal way of escaping the extreme freezing cold. I’m not sure how others deal with it, others are not top of my list of interests at times like that. On a nice note, I was able to give Fabian a Garmin yesterday as thanks for saving mine the other day. It was a touching moment, we bonded further… His roommate is one of my bestest friends, Stuey O’Grady. We were messaging last night and Stuey was expressing how yesterday he actually hated his bike, in his own words, ‘I don’t mind suffering when it’s 35 degrees, but when my eye balls start icing, it’s just not cricket. Can’t be healthy!’ Of course this is the same Stuart who was jealous that Kiwi Guy got shot yesterday and he didn’t. I think Stuey wanted that to add to his TdF stories… Yeah, Kiwi Guy got shot.

He’s ok though, he’s Kiwi Guy.