Average speed: 23.16, Max Speed: 53.54
June 6th, 2009
After going to bed at 1:00am it was near impossible for me to get up at 6:00am, but when you’re sleeping in a lounge room of an apartment your choices are limited when everyone else is up.
Today we had 196.5k’s to ride so we knew we had to get going early. However by the time we had all eaten, were all packed up, our bikes on the car, and heading to the start point it was about 9.00am. So when we were driving on the highway and one support car took one exit to the left and the second one took the exit to the right you could have almost bottled the stress and used it for energy later on in the day.
We regrouped at 10.30am, decided that near enough was good enough for the start point, and got ourselves organized to ride off. Then a sweet little French girl appeared from no where and was on for a chat. Only Carole spoke French so she translated for us. We thought she was so cute we had a photo with her, then gave her a little koala to say thank you. She said she already had enough stuffed toys but took it anyway.
We had four riders today, Damian, Dale, Chris and myself. Dale and Chris powered on up ahead and Damian waited back with me.
The first part of the stage was hills so I started drafting my letter in my head to the Tour de France organizers to explain the difference between a hill stage and a flat stage. I was going to tell them how in the first “so called” flat stage we’d already climbed more than the equivalent of Mount Hotham. I didn’t get very far into that however before we became lost again, and that was how the morning turned out, it felt like there was more time spent looking for the right way to go rather than riding.
It was a bit of a tough slog, undulating, not feeling the fittest and not knowing where to go. But the day was brightened when we passed a “T” intersection and saw a lady sitting on a stool in the middle of nowhere looking like she was missing part of her top. We decided she must have woken up that morning and felt like sitting besides a highway to pass the day away and we kept riding.
We pulled over for lunch at 3.30pm after clocking up 86k’s. We weren’t too hopeful about finishing off the last 110k’s, particularly when we started riding again at 4:15. Chris decided he’d ride on ahead by himself so it was down to Damian, Dale and I.
After lunch we were greeted with yet another hill, which really made me and Darth Vader very happy. However at the top of the hill was a stunning castle, and yet another great decent so things were good again. We kept riding and kept turning our legs over, not particularly quickly, but making progress none the less.
It was about 8.00pm when we struck a detour. One of the towns we were passing through had some kind of a bull and horse event on, which involved horses racing each other through the main street one way then flying back chasing a bull the other. I have no idea what it was about, and I’m not sure that the locals did either as they seemed to be more interested in getting drunk, and then, more interested in the three people behind them in lycra wearing helmets (not many people wear helmets over here).
The local teenagers entertained us with their stories and questions and then entertained us by buying us a shot. Not each, one between three, but we had a go of it anyway, said thank you very much and continued on our path.
At 10:00pm, after 176km, we called it a day and decided to make up the extra 20k’s the next day on the time trial.
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