At first glance, this stage looked
to be a straightforward sprint stage. But look a little closer and you’d
realize that it would be tough for us. We have the most dominant sprinter in
the race, while other key sprinters have dropped out. If we wanted a sprint, it
would be up to us to control it. Of the remaining stages, there are limited
opportunities for breakaways (depending on how the GC riders play the uphill
finish stages), so they'd probably be gunning hard for this one. The course for the stage also presented a challenge: it was
along the coast the whole day. Winds can shift constantly, and the roads are
always rolling and twisting. It could make for a very hard day. The last
time I chased a breakaway on coastal roads (California), the break managed to
stay away….
But we did want a sprint, and that
meant that our work started from kilometer 0. There was likely to be a big
fight for the break, but we had to shut it down, probably alone. We had to
assert ourselves and make sure that the break was manageable, and let me tell
you, we asserted ourselves all over the place.
The fight went on for 20km, and we
had all hands on deck to shut the moves down when they got too big. In that
time, I could tell that I had again responded very well to the rest day. My
legs felt awesome, and I was excited to put them to use.
As we went through a town, a small
group was off the front. We all rushed to the front and clogged up the works
immediately while we still had narrow roads. It worked, and the break of 5 was
established.
A short aside: I’ve always thought
the team’s superstition about how the salt should be passed at meals was silly,
but I respect it to be a good sport. Well, last night Warren was reckless with
the salt at dinner. After he stopped to pee today, he crashed into a car in the
caravan. He’s alright, but I think he’ll be a bit more careful at the table in
the future….
We started riding tempo
immediately so the gap wouldn’t go too far, allowing it to slowly grow to 3
minutes. For over 70km Tobias and I took 10k pulls at a good tempo, keeping the
gap at 3 minutes. Orica and Omega had promised to contribute to the chase after
100km.
It’s a funny game, the
give-and-take between the break and the chasers. They ride hard enough to
increase the time gap, testing to see how far we’ll let them go. We adjust our
pace behind when the gap reaches our desired maximum, then both of us ease up a
bit while still holding the same gap. We want them going hard enough to at
least get a little tired, but not hard enough to wear ourselves out. Then later
on, we start ramping up the pace to bring them back. So they ramp up their pace
to hold us off. So we keep going harder until the gap starts to fall. Or in
today’s case, we add more riders to the chase when we can’t go harder.
The break today was really strong,
I’ll give them that much. After the feed zone, we started trying to pull them
back. It was me, Tobias, Johannes, and a rider each from Orica and OPQS. We
were going hard for 40k, but all we managed to do was match the pace of the
break. OPQS added more riders along with Orica, and finally the gap started to
fall.
I had to take a break after 150km.
I was starting to crack, already over 4000kJ. After a short recovery, I was
back at the front for another 10k before I could contribute no more. The gap
was slowly falling now that there were a dozen riders chasing all-in, and up
ahead the break was starting to splinter.
We checked out the last 7km of the
stage yesterday, and it served us well today. We had wanted to save the other
guys for a proper leadout, but in the end we needed to use everybody just to
bring it to a sprint, and hoped that John could finish it off. And boy howdy,
John sure knows how thank us for our hard work, bringing home his 4th
win at this Vuelta!
Our team had a goal today, and it
required a complete team effort from start to finish. We did exactly what we
wanted and needed to do, and the goal was accomplished. I’m so happy, it almost
makes my legs not hurt!
Today was another 5000kJ day for
me, setting new power records (for the second time in a week!) of 3.5-4.5 hours.
That makes my legs hurt.
17 down, 4 to go!
