China 1 stage 4

It was a slippery dippery day here at the tour of china. As I have mentioned before the Rds are not the cleanest in the world with oil, dust, rocks and any other type of general waste that spills from what would be described as poorly serviced vehicles!! Basically it is a film of filth that combined with a light shower of rain becomes an ice skating ring.



On a positive we had a basic plan for the day to keep the peleton together for bunch sprint hoping our bundy bullet could pulverize the other opposition in the bunch gallop. A nice little break went and I planted myself on the front with a few riders from other teams to keep all under control and most importantly keep every body at a safe speed around the slippery corners. All went according to plan and with 5km to the finish the field was all together and the bunch sprint was set up. Only problem we had was now negotiating the final series of corners in the final 2km. Aaron was in perfect shape however once we hit the corners our japanese kamikaze's decided it was crash or win and hit the corners at full speed. Not surprisingly the results were mixed for them with half crashing but half surviving and ultimately winning the stage as crashes and confusion meant they were alone ahead with a pile of chaos behind so congratulations to them, take the risk and be rewarded for it. Our boys were not so aggressive and consequently a few fell while the rest of us were happy to get to the finish and live to fights another day with all our skin intact. Once again never a dull moment racing in china!!!



Cjw 



Distance: 100km

Time: 2hrs 5min

Speed ave: 49kmph

Power ave/max: 285/1070 watts

Heart rate ave/max: 125/185bpm

Energy burnt: 2000kcal