TOUR DU BOURBONNAIS CHAROLAIS

had a long 4hour drive to this tour. our team had 5 riders and it was the first race i have done without either Matt or Kieran so the whole weekend i had no one i could have a proper conversation with so made it a bit more difficult than normal and was a bit testing on my limited french vocab.
stage 1
well this stage was half good and half bad. After only 5km of racing the peloton was going down hill and i was in the front 10 and a guy in front of me went down and i went right over the top of him and then about half the field piled up behind me, a few riders hit me but it wasnt to bad. although id gone down pretty hard and ripped up my shoulder and back a bit, luckily my bike was fine. Because the crash was so big the race officials had stopped the race while everyone cleaned them selves up and got bikes back into working order, there were about 15 people abandon from the crash so i was pretty lucky. After about 20minutes the race was started again but i was having trouble putting pressure on my shoulder i crashed on so standing up and sprinting was a bit of a mission. The rest of the stage wasnt to bad though as i managed to pick up the KOM jersey. Unfortunately some guy managed to slip of the front with 20km to go and the peleton being pretty unorganised he managed to win by a minute so he was well up on GC. The trip to the ambulance at the end of the stage was a bit rough as the medic there didnt speak any english and was pretty ruthless as he sprayed my back with something and then started scrubing it to get all the gravel out and then started probing all my cuts and grazes and that was it. From what i could understand i think he wanted me to come back the next day aswell so something to look forward to tomorrow.

stage 2 morning
I didnt sleep to well before this stage as my grazes made it really uncomfortable so i didnt recover very well and to make it even better all there was for breakfast was bread with a bit of jam not exactly the best race food. the stage was short only 60km, i was focussing on keeping my KOM jersey as the all the people with points were close, but all the points were picked up by breakaways and everytime i tried to attack i had the whole peleton chase and the rest of my team werent interested in helping me chase down the breaks so i had to settle with getting no points and some guy managed to get on the same points as me so he got the jersey. the bunch came back together for the finish so i just finished in the peleton.

stage 3 afternoon
the last stage was 75km and mostly flat with a few pinches in the finishing circuits (5 times 6km) i missed the break again and along with it the chance to get the KOM jersey back so pretty disappointed. our team set up a bit of a chase to bring the break back as we had no one in it. then by the finishing circuits team mate Alex attacked on the first one i accelerated to go with him but the hole peleton followed me so i sat up and let him get away. he managed to bridge up to the break and then win the stage. so for me i got to sit in the bunch for the rest of the stage. Overall was a disapointing and annoying tour so real motivated to smash it in the tour next weekend

Sam