Team Garmin-Transitions’ physiotherapist Toby Watson will be checking in from the roads in France during Le Tour (literally from the roads as the transfers from start to finish in the car are the medical staff’s only down time!)
As the physio on team Garmin-Transitions, all I can say is this is a dangerous sport!
All things considered, third place for Tyler Farrar yesterday was a fantastic effort by the whole team, with Dave Zabriskie helping to control the break for most of the day, Johan Van Summeren bringing our boys to the front of the peloton with 4km to go, Martijn Maaskant taking a big turn to maintain our position at the front, Julian doing the perfect job to put Ty where he needed to be to contest the sprint and then Tyler eking the absolute maximum possible out of his body to gain third place.
It was a brilliant team performance.
My day was a slightly less glamorous one, helping out at the hotels with transferring everything from one town to the next. We rotate the people who help out at the hotel, and these past few dayshave been my shift. We collect all the bags in the morning, get to the hotel as quickly as possible, set them all up in the rooms (including massage tables for those who use them), and then grab lunch.
If you’re lucky, the hotel has a pool (ours did), and so the majority of the afternoon was spent flitting from watching what was happening in the race, and heading back to the pool to play Arrowman.
We also had to do a shopping run, to restock our medical supplies (we’ve gone through some strapping!), water supplies (we consume MASSES of it daily), as well as stuff like fruit, washing detergent, sandwich ingredients, etc. All of the little things to keep the roadshow running!
I have one more day of this, and then it’s back onto the race. Just in time for the Pyrenees! Bring THAT spectacle on.
More photos from the Tour de France:
