An we underway.  This afternoon at 16.36 I rolled down the start ramp with my team at my side into a boulevard jam packed with fans spilling onto the road in front of us.  TV cameras everywhere, helicopters over head, music pumping, as goose bumps appear on my arms I am thinking to myself just relax and ride straight and you’ll be fine.

We didn’t finish at the right end of the field today, an were disappointed by the result but there is a long way to go and you have to think about how to do it better next time.  With our first real practice together in TTT formation yesterday we never expected a miracle and having a team full of mostly climbers lining up against the best teams in the world at this discipline is never going to be easy. 

 Though for me tonight I am feeling pretty happy with my form.  The legs felt good and pulled some good long turns on the front to test where I was at.  It has been I while since I felt good legs to be honest, so it can be a bad time to start feeling them with what I have ahead of me. 

 Tomorrow the race really starts though and the hilly parcour is going to make for a difficult day first up.  There is rain on the forecast, so I’ll sleeping with my fingers crossed they are wrong as it will be chaotic if so.

 So far the word around is we are in for a very difficult three weeks, very likely to be the hardest of all the Grand Tours this year with a parcour consisting of gigantic mountain stages and a peloton stacked with the absolute best, including last years Tour de France winner Alberto Contador.  So be prepared to see some exciting racing and maybe some big time gaps too….

Signing out from Palermo

Tim