ToF Stage 1 & Pre Stage 2

Stage 1 (Prologue): 7km ITT Well, the race finally got under way. The course for this time trial was nice, a long straight road out and back, with a short slope at the start/finish line area in the middle. I did a nice 2 laps warm up before the first guy went off. I figured it was tailwind from the start, and strong headwind after the U- turn. If everything goes according to plan I should be taking roughly 10mins to complete the course, considering I normally clock around 12-13mins for a 20mins interval. It is not too long, but also not that short. I should stick to a zone somewhere between threshold and VO2. 

After my 2 laps warm up

We went off in 30secs intervals, when it was my turn to go, I sprinted off on my drops. Immediately, I was struggling with some gearing problems but managed to get it sorted out in the first 200m. Soon I got back to my saddle and settled into a nice rhythm. I looked at my Garmin and it showed 51km/h. For a moment I thought my Garmin gps wasn't getting a good signal. But then I started looking at the surrounding and it feels that I was really going very fast!  Perhaps faster than what I should be going. So I eased off a little knowing its tailwind and will be headwind coming up. I was right. After the turn, the wind blasted straight at my face. I couldn't manage to get my speed up to over 40km/h. It was tough. Not long, Matt from Team DirectAsia.com overtook me. I tried to pace him over the next 1km but the gap increased as he rode away from me. Demoralised, I kept pushing on at my own pace with my throat running dry and even struggled to swallow my saliva. On the last 500m I increased my effort and on my drops, I sprinted with all I could up the finishing slope. My legs were burning with lactic as I crossed the line with a time of 10mins 38secs. The fastest time of the day was 9mins 20secs by Matt of Confero Mavericks team. So I am now 1mins 18secs behind the race leader, 30th out of a total of 40 riders who started in my cat this morning.

After the race I took a look at my Garmin and noticed my average power over the course. I did not managed to hit the wattage that I had aimed for, 15watts short, but I certainly did it above my threshold power. Perhaps I could have pushed a little harder, but it was near my best efforts. It was almost the best that I could have done, but apparently it wasn't good enough. I was quite surprised by the level of the field to be honest. Maybe a clip on acrobars could have helped a little but nothing more than 10secs. So disappointed as I was, there are still 4 more days and 4 more chances to go. This race is not over yet.

Tomorrow's stage will be a pancake flat stage covering 120km. Some of the big teams will definitely send some riders to go into breaks and force the leader and his team to do some work. Some more ambitious might try to gain time by forcing a break to work. There are also time bonuses for finishing the stage in top 3 positions, so it'll be interesting especially when the GC now is only separated by few seconds. Tomorrow will probably be a day for me to conserve my legs for Stages 3 and 4, since I have nothing to lose anyway. I might have a go at the sprint finish if I have a chance. Will also need to watch out for splits or potential GC contenders slipping away.  That's all for now. Time to get some good rest! Goodnight...