Almost halfway through!
Stage 3 yesterday was a 16.9km TT on a pancake flat course. I always look forward to time trials about as much as I used to look forward to exams at uni. At uni I had what I used to call my 'cleaning lady' moment, which would generally occur as I left home for the exam hall. I'd look at the cleaning ladies working away in the college grounds and wish I were one of them. They never had exams. Life was good for a cleaning lady in November. Whenever I came back from my exam, though, I'd see the same ladies, toiling away to clean up the filth left by 300 20-year-olds, and think, man, I'm so glad I'm not a cleaning lady.
Now that I don't have exams to do, I tend to have my cleaning lady moments before time trials. Yesterday was no exception. People call time trials the 'race of truth' but I reckon it's just time triallers who like to say that. The rest of us just suffer and try not to get too much spit on the handlebars.
I was happy with my TT, the more so because it was such a flat course, which suited me about as much as budgie smugglers suit Tony Abbott. I was 28th (out of 156 Giro starters), and given we are riding with so many of the world's best, I am stoked. Tiff Cromwell and Shara Gillow smoked it in at 22nd and 23rd respectively, which puts them in good GC position and bodes well for the team leading into the mountain stages (both Tiff and Shara eat hard mtn climbs for breakfast).
Ina Teutenberg won - again. That girl is a certified freakshow.
Stage 4 today was 94km of sprinters' delight (flat), ending in a bunch kick. After the stage I had the privilege of being drug tested, which I took as a great compliment.
Tomorrow the tour starts hitting some hills- it's playtime!
If you have any good luck left in your kitties, please send them to Sharon Laws, TE's other peleton representative in the Giro. Sharon broke her collarbone in stage 2's epic pile up. Hopefully this will mark the end of her bad luck run and tour des hospitals. Get well soon mate.
Ride happy
