A very long stage awaited us today, with 139km with 1200+. The dreaded wind has reappeared on today’s stage. 50km along the coast with a headwind, they took us 3 hours to complete. Luckily we were able to go with a group and that made the job easier, although when you go with so many people on such a sandy and curly terrain, it makes everyone want to ride at the same pace and if you’re not alert, you fall to the ground.
Then it was the first port, 20km for a progressive ascent, but which did not give you respite, with a sandy terrain, as in most of the stages we have done around here, which made some sections of the ascent difficult, making it very long , but it ran through some very beautiful brownish hills. It was also very hot, 30 degrees.
Once we have crowned the port we stopped at the hydration station, to eat a little, drink and to return there we have half the stage and 5:30h on the bike.
From here there was a descent of about 20km that allowed you to stretch your legs a bit, although with this terrain, between sand and stones, you had to be careful. Down there was the checkpoint at km 88, which you had to pass before 2pm, otherwise you got disqualified (at the last minute they extended the cut-off time by 30 minutes, since half of the racers would been half out of the race otherwise) We went through about 45′ before the first cut, but after about 4km before kilometre 90, when we still had 50 to go, a physical and mental slump came over me. I told Itó to stop for a while to see if I recovered. When we were going up the port, I got a little sciatic cramp. We had a lot of kilometers to go, so I ate, took a voltaren, rested for about 10′ and started to cycle one point less than we did before. And I started to feel better. Now we had another climb of about 10km with a lot of sand, where we passed a lot of people. The goal now was to reach the hydration point which was at kilometer 106. We only had 33 kilometre to go, but here in the desert they go very slowly. But the truth is that I was feeling good and we started to quickly cover about 10km more, where we were able to go in a group of 5 and we were very comfortable. 115 kilometers already! We climb another hill full of sand but through some idyllic places, with spectacular mountains around and in the background.
We have been going on for 8:30 hours, we have very little left, although after so many kilometers, when you’re pedaling, it doesn’t seem like the distance is getting any shorter.
When we crested the other port we made a quick descent and now all that was left was to hold on at a brisk pace. We were looking forward to arriving!
The last kilometers were flat and fast. We succeeded! 9:15 hours / 139 kilometers and we are still leaders
