No seriously, they are... not really so fun. They are never easy and the pain just grows throughout the entire ride. It is a different animal than the individual time trial because rather than set out on a pace you can hold for whatever distance/time, you need to go above that level while pulling, then when you pull off you need to quickly recover enough in time to be able to jump onto the back of the line then rest a little more before your next pull. It is an exercise in self control because once you go above your limit and can't recover, you will be dropped for sure. And as guys drop off, the recovery gets shorter, which means your pulls come quicker, which means the lactic grows more! All in all, I don't think it is something anyone really look forward to.
So, regarding our team today, I think it is safe to say we are disappointed in our overall "numerical" result, but the time gap is not an insurmountable one looking at the last four stages of the race. There are A LOT of mountains and A LOT of time to be gained and lost. It is probably safe to say we won't be contending for the overall, but our goal coming here was Bauke and Haimar in the top 10, and that is certainly still attainable.
As far as how it happened today, it was a difficult parcours with two pretty long "false flat" climbs where recovery was very difficult. We were immediately at a loss after 5km because Fumy, Calvin, and Popo were all dropped, so that left 5 of us to survive another 19km to the finish. (And we had to finish with 5 because the time is taken on the 5th rider). There is differing opinion on whether or not we hurt ourselves when those guys were dropped so early because maybe they could've pulled on the flat section or even the downhill, but we'll never know. The remaining 5 of us did a good job I'd say. I'll give my suffer award to Markel today because he was left with 4 climbers on a climbing course and he wisely metered his effort to make it to the finish. So other than a debatable tactical error, we gave it our max and that's all that could be asked of us. We're looking ahead to the mountains!
So, regarding our team today, I think it is safe to say we are disappointed in our overall "numerical" result, but the time gap is not an insurmountable one looking at the last four stages of the race. There are A LOT of mountains and A LOT of time to be gained and lost. It is probably safe to say we won't be contending for the overall, but our goal coming here was Bauke and Haimar in the top 10, and that is certainly still attainable.
As far as how it happened today, it was a difficult parcours with two pretty long "false flat" climbs where recovery was very difficult. We were immediately at a loss after 5km because Fumy, Calvin, and Popo were all dropped, so that left 5 of us to survive another 19km to the finish. (And we had to finish with 5 because the time is taken on the 5th rider). There is differing opinion on whether or not we hurt ourselves when those guys were dropped so early because maybe they could've pulled on the flat section or even the downhill, but we'll never know. The remaining 5 of us did a good job I'd say. I'll give my suffer award to Markel today because he was left with 4 climbers on a climbing course and he wisely metered his effort to make it to the finish. So other than a debatable tactical error, we gave it our max and that's all that could be asked of us. We're looking ahead to the mountains!
1 comment:
I appreciate the insights in to the TTT. It sounds damn grueling! Good luck this week.
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