Just a real quick update on this tour. was a super long drive away, like 6 or 7 hours travel in the car west of Lyon. So im pretty sure it was in a region called 'deux-sevres', and im just guessing that because it was the name of the race. Anyway the region of the race wasn't so important to me. The tour was 4 days, 3 days of 160km road races and on day with a 17km tt and 90km road race, all flat stages.
First stage was pretty windy and on a flat course. ended up splitting at the start and was real hard but all came back together at the end for a bunch sprint. had a few a goes in the stage but had no luck. And it rained.
Second stage it rained ... and rained and rained all day. this day had the tt in the morning and I was hoping for a good ride but just could find no rhythm the whole race and just felt crappy. think I was 30th or something. I then had a nap in the middle of the day and in the afternoon was a 90km stage. Bloody hell this was a sketchy stage because of the intense rain and the course was at times a bit technical so there were a lot of crashes. The worst came half way when about 50 people came down, we were going down a small decent on a straight piece of road and someone pulled their brakes too hard and just slid out taking out pretty much everyone behind them. I luckily missed it and finished the stage unscathed and in the first group. Incredibly lucky when I think back on it because if I had crashed and landed on my shoulder again it most probably would have broken again.
Third stage got in the main days breakaway of 10ish riders only to never get more then a minute because half the people didn't work for some reason, still dunno why. Because of that we were basically doomed from the start and got caught 20km from finish. I then finished in the bunch. Did I mention it rained again?....
Last stage nothing interesting, was controlled by yellow jersey team and all finished together again. It also poured down with rain again for the start of this stage, surprise surprise.
So to sum up was a very well organised tour lots of people watching and team presentations all the time. The racing was flat and hard so a good engine building tour for me. I think I have also worked out that about 80percent of the races iv done this year have been in the rain, and I'm not the only one complaining about it, comments like- "I think I have worn my rain jacket more than my short sleeved jersey in races this year" are very common in the peloton.
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