Today was a super fast & quite flat 60km stage at La Ferte Gaucher, East of Paris. It was non technical except for a 5min wood section on each of the 3 laps. This looked like being a traditional Hex stage; a very fast start to blow the field appart, then bunches would form and the pace would ease slightly until the attacks start coming on the last lap. Neil (the team coach) told me to try and go with the lead bunch on the first lap, even though the pace would a bit quicker than i am able to ride, in other words i had to put in in the red and hope that i could recover enough to hang in (it the very least it would be good training).
The start of the race was exactly as expected, i positioned my self as far forward as possible but gaps started to form in the bunch as people started to drop wheels. When we hit the technical section for the first time the field was split into a few bunches with small gaps between. Realising that i might have missed my chance, i got to the front of the second bunch and smashed it through the woods as hard as i could, knowing that the tail of the lead bunch might stretch back a bit. I bridged across to the back of the lead bunch which was my team mate Dan, but i was starting to hurt. I knew i had to stay on his wheel, but i couldn't. I joined up with a swiss rider and we swapped off turns for about 30km until we eventually got caught by the chasing bunch of about 10 riders, including Nick and AJ. Before we arived in the technical section for the last time, everyone was getting twitchy. It would be very important to be near the front because the bunch would almost certainly split in the woods. In the middle of the woods i was about half way in the bunch and on a steep climb i broke my chain...bugger. i had a spare link and fumbled around for a while fixing it but the group was long gone. A couple of french guys picked me up and we rode together to the line but they rolled me in the sprint. I ended up 34th dropping one place to 28th on GC.
Overall it was a hard day. I was pretty smashed at the finish. A good result for Dan Mac as well as he finished 10th, hopefully his form is starting to come on for the olympics. One day to go.
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