With 7 days in the legs, stage 8 is probably the one most suffering occur. It starts out gentle but midways the fun begins - one climb after another, with the real kicker at 109, a 25% gradient to start the first 1 k of this 4 k climb.
I'm hoping there is something left in the legs to enjoy this otherwise great stage, along with stage 2 a favorite of mine in terms of riding and scenery.
Today is also the Norwegian constitution day, Happy May 17th! I'll celebrate on my bike.
Post race Update:
Ouch! It was as hard, maybe harder than I recalled. It takes me well over an hour to enable the butt to sit on the seat, by then it's numb and I can give the feet a little rest once in a while. Good thin it's only one stage left; I might have reached the limit to what it can take :)
The first 50 km are pretty in eventful, lots of farm lands and rolling, kept looking back for Eric and Raphael, some company would have been nice. Eventually Raphael rolled up alone. Eric had rode easy to wait for Peter today, good friend. Raphael stayed with me for not too long. So it was a fairly lonely ride today. I was actually quiet happy when the climbing started at around 60 k mark, gets the mind focused on the task and not wondering to all the aches and pains. It was very hot and by the time I hit the second major climb it was well over 30, and trees that used to give you some shade were all gone! It was hot. I'm happy I turns around to ask a couple of farm workers if they had water on the bottom, I would have been very short. This is around the 110 k mark. It's about 4 km climb and very steep. The decent down went safe, not risking anything this close to the end of a 9 day race.
Around 120 and there is almost no more dirt and rock, all paved but still hard, steep and hot and I knew the guys were behind chasing me down. Jose passed me a long time ago at this point.
Did what I could to keep it steady. And it felt very good cresting the last hill knowing it was mostly down to finish. Made many navigation mistakes today, all fairly short but going down I made sure to keep a close eye on the gps, it's so fast so missing one turn might have you climbing back up a few minutes. I only made two small mistakes, pretty good, it's actually pretty tricky in the last little bit.
Second place just in front of Malcolm. Happy with the day, glad it's over! Tomorrow is a shorter day, ride it safe to the finish on the beach!
Team Aardal also celebrates 17th of May.
I used this as a little bit of motivation when it got real rough today :) we got it pretty good, so feeling sorry for my self while doing something I on my own chose to do is not really an option. I'm really fortunate to be able to participate in events around the world and live a life totally free to make my own decisions on how to live it. Those who enabled me and the rest of us to live such free and full life's, those are the heros.
So, happy 17th of May Norway!
Happy Riding!
Thanks Joao, for photo and keeping my bike tuned :)
Nice to have a little time no solo, Raphael had a good day.
In to second place; then got stung by some bug....
Team Aardal! We had a good day again, all cp's covered and second place:)
Miss you little guy!
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