Haute Route Pyrenees, Stage 3. Another safe day out.

We awake in our rather dubious hotel to a chilly start. The forecast is the same as the last two days. Hot sunny and beautiful! Ideal, makes descending much safer, I like that! Last night hotel backed onto a lorry park, and the hotel owners did not seem to us in anyway shape or form! Not being harsh I would say ignorant, rude and very unprofessional. Never mind this though, they are history and today we travel further West towards the finish line. Each day I feel my knee a tiny bit worse but still feels I can get through the stage. Once again this happened, no crashes and a reasonably smooth day. Oh no, maybe not.

So the mayor counts us down to leave the town and we are off, we have a convey for nearly 30k then time starts at the foot of the first climb. As we roll off the start I clip in one shoe then have a nightmare getting the other one in. 300m of fiddling I hear a crunch, look down and my two month old pedal has fell to pieces. Bloody great, good start to the day. So I pull over and turn round and trudge my way back to the van where Roy and Darrell would be heading after waving us off. Luckily they both have their own bikes with them so Roy suggest I use his pedals and his shoes. He is 2 sizes bigger than me but at the time it certainly is the best solution. The group is rolling away from me and time is of the essence! While we are fiddling a couple of the motor bikes see our issues and hang about, once I am sorted they motor pace me back to the back of the 200+ riders then I can ride myself to the front end. Panic over. Now back in the place where I should be I start to fiddle with the shoes to make sure I can get in and out of them ok. Getting out is fine, I just take ages to clip in. Hopefully I do not need to stop too much so that will not be an issue. They feel very odd but will be grand for the day.

So I am probably warmer than most in the group from having to get back into the action and work quite hard. Within the next 5k I get cooler and then cold. We are promised the weather will get very hot so I try not to worry about it. After 40 minutes we arrive at the start mat and all roll through it without any stress. I am about twenty riders back. I stand and get ready for the pace to lift, it does not lift. This is nice, so I carry on my dancing on the pedals and move into the first 5 people. Then see the road lift up a bit, not sure what comes over me but I have a bit of a push off the front to liven things up. This have its effect and the group has been strung out quickly. I carry on for two minutes and glance round and selection has been made for about 20 riders. I strangely feel good in the legs, the knee doing its normal pain thing but no more than usual. I let someone else take the lead and we carry on. The first climb was said to be only a low grade but it did have a downhill which we hit after 3k, so the rest of the climb would need to be higher grade to get the average. The group carries on, where I then seem to be struggling to hang onto the back. Amazing how you can feel like a hero then go to zero so fast!

We crest with me on the rear of the group. I am now treated to my favourite dish. Fast and furious descending. Magic! So the majority of the group can descend well. Myself another guy and Sergio are getting gapped. By the time we get to the valley road we have well and truly been dropped. I am guessing we are one or two minutes away from them, so me and Sergio do the brunt of the work to try and limit our losses to the group of 12+ ahead. We plough on for something like 40 minutes, and then to my surprise there they are on the distance. Another few minutes and we are back on, though we are both lacking a few matches for later!

The group then seemed to generally chill with a few bursts on little ramps. Just before we arrived at the start of the next climb the next group on the road caught us. The guys on the front did not seem to like this and put the gas on. Those who had just joined us were soon off the back again. Off we go. This climb again I was in miseryville hanging on. Being dropped then back on, dropped and back on. I kept with it and managed to summit with the 12 in our group. Then onto the descent, the standard profile of me on the back and getting dropped with the same two others. Luckily we only had a little descent so we could see some of the guys ahead (two of which were my team mates). Though there was three right out front. We started the next and final climb which was around 8k, I somehow had miss calculated and went too hard at the start of the climb trying to bridge the gap to the three out front. Even so we were catching one of the guys ahead. We all chatted with 3k to go and agreed to wait for Nico (short for Nicolas) on the descent then we could work as a unit for the final 20+k of flat to the finish. Amazingly Nico started the descent a good minute behind me and the other two, I was not taking it too easy when he flew past only 10 corners down, hell he can descend!

Safely down the descent myself and Sergio had been gapped by the other three, race leader, Nico and another guy. So I set to getting on them asap as I knew they were sitting up waiting for us. We got together and I immediately got on the front and hit it hard. I am not sure why, it does seem I am pretty decent on these flats with other climbers. More likely I am heavier than them. Two of our group were hurting quite a lot and I think they may have not eaten enough. We ploughed the flat and eventually got to the finish. Me, Nico and Cyril ended up joint third as one of the guys got a ten minute for feeding outside the correct zone. So our team was still in the lead and we got some more socks for our efforts!

Tomorrow is a big day so a good nights sleep and a good feed now, talking of which I will stop rambling.