Well we're finished with stage 3 now. It was supposed to be an 80k circuit. But I think they couldn't quite close all of the road. So we ended up on a much shorter hot dog. They didn't add any laps though and the stage ended up being about 40k. It was a welcome event however, as the trip to get to the race was fraught with lengthy transfers, most notably an 8 hour bus ride beginning at midnight, immediately after arriving in Caracas.
I don't do very well with taking days off, so 2 days without getting a bike on really shut down the system. We rode a bit on Sunday and I tried to shock the system back into action. It was quite painful…and entirely innefective. The time trial was okay I suppose as Geoff Brown made up some TT bars for our road bikes. And it seems to me that Rabobank has been rolling the shallow front Shimano wheels in TT's the last couple of years. I can't understand why but figured they must know something. So I put faith into my Scandium wheels that they would roll quickly. After the TT, we had an afternoon circuit race. I was totally blocked still but combined this with a total build up of lactic acid and just hung on.
The next stage was a long 195km in sweltering heat. I was still in pretty bad shape and nearly lost contact on the first climb after 10km. So I rode last man for about 130km, praying that the remaining KOM's would not be a factor. Eventually the legs did come around a hair, giving me hope that I can get into this race over time.
Svein flatted today with about 4 laps to go. Sherby and Brando went back for him and brought him up to the 5 cars that followed the race. That was when I decided I could help out and dropped back too. I think some guys really lit it up when they saw Svein flat because we were barely making any headway at 54kph. Luckily the roundabout at the end of the course was jammed up and we closed the final 10 seconds through there. Eric flatted too but in the last K so he was given pack time and his GC is intact for another day.
One of the dudes on another team speaks english and told us that the guys who've done well here before do essentially nothing for the first week. That sounds like a good plan, but for me, it's not by choice just yet. I hope to sit in down the road because I want to, not becasue I have to.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Jacob Erker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.