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Stage 4: Mountain stage 2
They were nice enough to put the 15k climb at the end of the stage today, though it was far steeper.
It was mostly light rollers for 40k or so, then there was a turn around, 30k back, left turn into the climb, which started with 5k of cobbles. For some reason they put a metavolante, intermediate sprint, 5k into the stage, so it was guns ablazing from the start. That was fine enough. It was fairly calm until the turn around, and I launched an attack about 1k before the turn around with another guy, and lit it up out of the turn around and found myself alone for a k or so, when some Dos Pinos and Jared bridged up to me. I managed to shatter the field, and when the front half made it up to us, Tom B launched an attack and took some guys with him, got a rather large lead. They took out about 2 minutes until Dos Pinos lined it up and brought it back to about 30 seconds going into the cobbles. I was smart enough to be at the front when we turned onto the cobbles, and just rode it out the best I could. It blew up pretty fast, and the cobbles seemed to go on forever, but a bunch of us managed to make it with the front group over the cobbles, and then over the first climb. Once the second climb started, I fell off the back, got a feed and rode it out alone. Some nice 18% sections really hurt the legs, just what I wanted after the day before. I rolled in a few minutes back from the winner, yet again Dos Pinos (noticing a trend yet) Jared managed 8th place. Apparently he took a bottle and held it a bit too long, and the American team saw and bitched. I guess they don’t understand how its done in central America. So they came over and tried to start shit with us but we were too busy piecing our souls back together to care. They also complained that there were too many speed bumps and gravel in the corners. Sorry, we shoulda had the Nicaraguans sweep it up for you.
Stage 5: “Flat stage”
One of those days where it’s a headwind the whole time. Apparently someone decided to spend the whole day on the left side of the road, even though it wasn’t the best place most of the time, especially when the trucks were baring down on you. We were told that it was fairly flat, with a climb, turn around, go back over the climb, and then finish. Well, that was part of it. I was basically just gonna relax today and see what happened. Well Jared went off after 60k, dropped the two guys he was with, and solo’d the rest of the stage, yay. We got dropped the first time over the first climb, made it back on. I fell off the back the second time over, made it back. I was all psyched that we made it and that was it. Then, we turned right. And went over two more climbs, about 15k worth. At some point Dave and I fell off the peloton and rode it in alone. Who cared, Jared won, we hadn’t had a feed in an hour and a half, cause our car was up with Jared the whole time. I just wanted a coke and some real food. We went to Pizza hut.
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