Its fitting I guess that we should follow the 2nd hardest day with the longest, and slightly disappointingly cut a little short because of a 24hr public transport strike so the Police wouldn't allow us to race right into the centre of Trento. Our real finish line was a rather less spectacular layby off a road about 5km out of town. Although we did have to ride into the finish in the centre anyway, race-heads switched off!
We've made lots of friends in the peloton, and it this that makes you realise the truly international nature of this race. There's a couple of lads from Wisconsin, the Rocky Mountain mixed team that we see everyday, a couple of Spanish lads that we have a daily sign language conversation with. There are teams from Cuba, Peru, Venezuala, South Africa along with the inevitable smattering of Aussies and Kiwis etc.
Another hot day today although it was freezing on the start until the sun came round. I was a bit concerned about the early part of the race, hitting a fast section of downhill gravel I wanted to get through as much of the slower traffic as we could. It worked well and by the time we hit the gravel everyone was moving at a good pace.
Then we hit a great section of singletrack we'd been told about in the briefing, a cracking bit of narrow downhill through the trees with tight switchbacks "that you will have to walk your bike around"... Not if your from Cannock Chase!
One big climb today, not steep but steadily up for 20km with a rapid descent to the valley floor and 40km of flatish tarmac cycle track. Sadly my hopes of a good sized group to work with were just a bit too far out of reach leaving me to hammer myself to bits into the wind. We worked well for a bit with a couple of other lads but the accelerations out of some tight bends soon did for Stevie and we had to let them go (to be honest I was barely hanging on myself).
The final climb although short was hard and I've got to confess to reading the Garmin wrongly and convinced Steve the finish was at the top... Err but it wasn't, it was another 10km down the road (Doh!). Time for Steve to get the bit between his teeth, I'd virtually blown myself to bits getting us to that point.
We crossed the line in 5hrs 18mins which was good enough for 22nd place on the Stage. This has moved us up again in the GC to 31st overall, 6mins behind the team infront... I can sniff a top 30 finish if we can keep it nailed tomorrow.
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