Stage 4 – Meru Raya › Cameron Highlands (142.3km)
The starts here are super early! When I say super early, I guess it’s standard enough for Irish racing, maybe 9 or 10 o’clock. But, I think I’m used to the time difference now and have gotten over the jet lag.
Gotten used to the time zone and for the first time I got a full night’s sleep last night, so that’s good. First few days was pretty broken, pretty rough, but I’m better now and getting up is a bit easier.
But tomorrow is actually a 6:00 start for us – six in the morning! We should be gone out of the hotel because the start is at 10 and it’s an hour and 40 of a transfer.
Hotel Transfers
Transfers are something worth mentioning. In all races it’s not something that’s kind of brought up in interviews and stuff but some of them can be super long. We’ve been lucky this race this year – they’ve all been kind of less than an hour. This is the longest one of an hour 40.
But yeah, I’ve been in some races where you could be talking 3 or 4 hours on the transfer, you know, and they’re pretty rough days. You’re getting to the hotel super late, hardly have the time for a massage, maybe 20 minutes. You’re eating dinner at half nine – 10 ‘o clock, and you’re just falling into bed then.
But that hasn’t been the case here because the starts have been so early. We’ve been getting back early thankfully. In France you could be starting at half one – two o’clock, then have a massive transfer after the race and like I said, you’re not in bed until maybe 11 or 12 o’clock and have to race again the following day. Makes recovery that little bit more difficult.
Stage 4 summary
Anyway today, when you look at the profile, was pretty straightforward again. Flat run into a 40km climb basically. Unfortunately Mattia (Gaffuri), our leader, crashed in a bit of a pile-up with a couple of other big riders. It was looking like maybe his hand or wrist was in trouble. We got it bandaged up, met the race doctor, and they did what they could.
He actually couldn’t brake with his right hand so we decided the best thing to do for us was to position ourselves at the front in second position at the bottom of the climb. Now we knew it wouldn’t be a made battle or anything for positioning into it because as I said it was 40kms.
But because he couldn’t brake, it was the safest place to be. IT worked out really well. We all pulled together. We used the bigger guys to pull on the climb with Tudor (Pro Cycling Team). I was still there going into the second half of it I guess the 7kms at 5% and still very much in the race with the lads.
I was able to do a good turn on the end of the first part of the climb so kept all the boys in position, Juan (Guillermo Martinez), Matthew (Peace) and Mattia (Gaffuri), and they all stayed in a group and didn’t lose time which was the priority. So now Mattia (Gaffuri) has gone for x-rays, so hopefully he can start tomorrow and we can continue on with the plan.
It would be a bit disappointing if he was to leave because we’re pretty confident that he can win this race or at least podium.
So yeah that’s the plan anyway. Tomorrow is a brutal climb. Well not a brutal day, I should say a brutal climb. We finish with 20kms basically at 10%, to be quite honest about it, brutal. It’s a hors catégorie (HC) climb. So for people who don’t know, hors cat is higher than category one.
I’m looking forward to it, despite that. It’ll be a bit of craic on the run in and then… look for the big guys like me I just try to hang on as long as I can up and toddle away up the climb then. Once I’ve gone to the maximum that I can, then try and recover for the next two or three sprint days after that.
It’s humid here and we had a couple of downpours. Yeah, when it rains here, it rains, if ye know what I mean. Refreshing in the heat for sure.
But best to keep the mouth shut though, because you never know what would be coming up of the road at you from the wheels in front!
