Day 10 (Stage 7): The Russian Motorcycle Haunts My Day and Subsequently My Dreams

In the elevator after Stage 7 a sprinter's team asked me "We had 6 guys swapping off on the front chasing you guys for an hour and only pulled back 5 seconds, what the hell was going on up there?!"

To that, as the elevator door closed on them at their floor, I looked with a blank stare and said "the Russian motorcycle. The. Russian. Motorcycle."

Stage 7 is a great example of what I love about racing in big UCI stage races. You can get in a breakaway on a day people figured would be for the sprinters (according to the stage profile, which I shall address in a second, but we were all wrong about that), and have 4 guys ride so hard the field actually might give up, but then a 1000m climb at the end of the stage surprises everyone by being far more difficult than a Category 3 climb normally is, and the entire field explodes! Check this out:

That Cat 3 Probably isn't too hard.....

WHAT THE HELL WHAT THE HELL THAT CLIMB WAS SUPER HARD!!?!?!

 Ok, enough foreshadowing. I was feeling like a new man on Stage 7. Infection was under control with Antibiotics (which you can buy over the counter, next to the live chickens, not sketchy at all), sleep schedule was on point, my mood was 100% better than the Dark Times, and the day in the Grupetto served my legs quite well (despite being 6 and a half hours). It was time to race!!  The opening circuits were actually raced on MC Escher's Primrose Stairs in the downward direction.

It started off going down this big hill, we went around the whole circuit without any uphill to speak of, and suddenly we were back at the downhill again!! I was surfing the front waiting when I saw RussVelo and Kolss attacking, so I went with it, did a hard lap of the primrose stairs, and that was it! I was having a blast because the Russian guy was pulling SO HARD that it kind of made me happy inside, this of course would all change later, but for the time being life was good, we had over 4 minutes, and the Russian Motorcycle was in high gear.

Taking a pull while the Motorcycle contemplated his next massive effort

Another cool shot form Daebong Kim

We were going so hard that at one point the field, already 4 minutes behind, took a pee break and essentially gave up allowing the gap to grow to 9 minutes for the 4 of us. WINNERS! Right? How long is this climb again?

The guys back in the field later told me that when they hit the climb it seems the Incredible-Amazing-Climbing-Iranians-Come-One-Come-All! noticed the same thing everyone else was realizing: this climb is way harder than we thought. What do the Iranians do when there is a hard climb? ATTACK!!!!

My group had started to ride easier on the climb, with 9 minutes in hand we all figured it was a day for the breakaway considering the next stage was so hard. The next time check we got was 2 minutes at the top of the Category 3, which prompted the Motorcycle to ATTACK!!!! 35k to go, with a small climb, and then 20k slightly downhill to the finish and I went from being happy as a clam in the draft of the strongest rider on the planet with 9 minutes advantage, to alone 40 seconds behind the strongest man in the world, 20 seconds behind a cross-eyed Ukranian rider from Kolss, with 2 minutes on the field trying to hang on to the podium. WHY IS THIS RACE SO STRANGE?!

I put my head down and rode as hard as I could for the last 35k with the Russian and the Ukranian riders painfully close, but impossibly far away. With 2k to go a group of 3 from the field caught me and immediately attacked on the uphill finish. I stayed with them long enough to drop one guy, but ended up 5th on the stage when I was so close to the podium. The Ukrainian was 4th. If we would have worked together we would have rounded out he podium behind the Russian, who probably won by about 2 hours.

Crushed.

Lesson of the day: if the guy who was a domestique for 7 years on Katusha is feeling good, you may end up bonding with a Ukranian after the stage having both been terrorized to the core for 4 hours, despite not speaking the same language.

Second lesson of the day: When Mike Woods does a superman on the finish line, he loses a lot of skin and a lot of clothing, but not a lot of positive attitude.

Third lesson of the day: Taylor destroyed everyone in the field sprint for 7th. Its not really a lesson here, but he schooled everyone for 7th and its worth noting.