Tim Gudsell

The final two days definitely brought the toughest parcours of the race, even though the distances weren’t too long.  Along with the first real heat of the season it made the giant Swiss cols even more difficult.

 Stage five was shortened from 122km to 112km due a landslide on the 3rd category 1 climb of the day.  When I first heard this I thought it would be quite nice missing out another 5km of climbing, but in reality it just made time cut at the end of the day shorter, damm it.

 Anyway the stage was as hard if not harder than expected, as I found myself along with quite a few others off the back after only 3km, now this doesn’t help the head when you know there are still four mountain passes to go.  It ended up being a very long day though over a relatively short distance.  I rolled across the line almost half an hour behind the winner, completely exhausted with sweaty salt crystals all over my face as the heat of the day had really taken its toll and sensations of cramp weren’t far away.

The final day have one really difficult obstacle early on which came in the form of the Col de moss.  A 20km col after just 10km of racing and as we hit the climb the previous days racing hadn’t seem to dampen the legs of the climbers at all.  Though for me my day was to be cut quite short when one of my team mates and strong climber, Remi Di Gregorio broke a spoke in his back wheel I pulled to give him my wheel as the team car was already along way behind as the not quite so strong climbers were already well behind.  So Remi got on his way I waited for a wheel and then took off in chase of the last group on the road, but this would become a tougher task than I had imagined and I was a long way behind as the front of the race attacked the mountain at a frantic pace.  I ended up getting in the team car after only 28kph of racing though this had taken me a whole hour due to vicous gradient of the climb.

 So it wasn’t the best end to the tour for me but with what I have ahead of me in the next month with the Giro, its not really a big loss.  By 9pm last night I was back home in Albi to grab a quick pizza with Pete and Sally before my bed was calling my name for a good night shut eye.  With just two days at home before leaving first thing on Wednesday morning for Sicily I am in full recovery mode to try prepare the body for the next month of intensity, suffering, battling, sweating, and hopefully at the same time enjoying racing around Italy.

Ok I’m off for an easy hour ride before hitting the couch for the afternoon.

 Back soon, cheers

 Tim