tour du jura

stage 1 800m up hill tt
this stage was pretty cool it was flat for about 200m then 600m uphill at about 15% gradient and the whole way up the hill there were people lining the road cheering and alot were dressed up as random things like there was some guy dressed up as an angel and a group of old ladies all dressed as cows.i had an alright time nothing special
though as it was a bit short for me suited the sprinters more. I was 30th i think and the guy that won was a mountain biker that was 2nd in the U23 world champs and he smashed everyone he beat me by like 10 seconds.

stage 2 65km
This stage started on saturday and was only short as we had a stage in the afternoon aswell. It was all flat and with a pretty big field 130 odd riders it was a mission trying to hold a good position in the bunch so for the most the race i was mid pack as i didnt really think much would happen. then about 10km from the finish there was a cross wind section that wasnt really that strong but some muppet dropped a wheel and a group of 30 were out front and i didnt make the split so i tried bridging solo but didnt make it. so kieran prety much sat on the front and we only just managed to catch them at the end so luckily i still got bunch time.

stage 3 75km
this stage was pretty hilly so was a chance to move up on GC. this time i made sure i was at the front of the peleton the whole way. at about 25km in a couple guys got of the front and then a few groups of 2s and 3s brdged up to them making a pretty big break up the road, i was origanly going to try brdge acrross to them on the big climb that was coming up but the bunch was creeping, so i went with 2 guys that attacked and we managed to get accross to the front group after 5km of chasing. the break was pretty big maybe 30riders so the whole time it was attack, sit up, attack untill we dropped a few riders. by this point though the yellow jersey got up to us so he covered most of the atacks which was good. about 20km from the end i started to get a real bad stomach ache which was annoying. a group of three managed to get away from our group at about 10km to go. the finish was at the bottom of a 5km hill and at the botom it was a mess with 2 sharp turns and riders goin the wrong way and almost hitting barriers and i got caught up in it a bit so i came in 21st with 2 riders ahead of my bunch. so this moved me up to 13th on GC not to bad but real hilly stage tomorrow.

stage 4 130km
the first 65 km was pretty easy mostly falt with a few rollers. there was an early break of 8 guys so the team with the yellow jersey, cc etupes, were doing all the chasing so was pretty cruisy. the first climb was 10km but wasnt very steep and the bunch stayed together. the last 40km were real hard there were 3 3km real steep climbs, on the first one we caught the break, then 2 guys snuck off the front on the flat. the 2nd hill was real hard and the peleton blew to bits, i was in the front group of 5 going over the top, but on the decent my group was caught by a few more guys. the last hill was 10km from the finish and we got pretty close to the break but didnt quite catch them, i finished 8th on the stage and moved up to 10th on GC.