I woke late on Friday after a good long sleep in preparation for the stressful weekend ahead. I rained all day and I didn't train. But when I hoped for rain -during a late night track race on an open air track, the weather eased of and of I was sent for a 20k race round the track under floodlights. Because it was dangerous, the track being moist and uneven, I resented doing this at first. But then the adrenaline kicked in and I really enjoyed it. We came away from the race pumping -this would be the best "warm up" party ever before a night out! Alas being the middle of the season such things are out of the question.
The next day after a late night and a lack of dinner we were up at 07:00 for short 86k stage. I felt good to start, but unfortunately for me these feeling were fleeting and I really had to knuckle down to do a half decent job for our sprinter, Samuel Caldeira.
Later that day we had a short hill climb, 3k's long and again I didn't quite deliver. I have a long list of excuses for this, but I imagine that my having the flu last week is the main one. I came in 34th, far bellow my expectations. Sergio Sousa was the winner of the stage in 5:15 m and was 11 seconds faster than my team mate Ricardo Mestre who finished second.
Today we controlled the race for Caldeira, who lay second in GC at 9 seconds as he could potentially win the race if he collected a lot of bonifications by winning the stage and two metas volantes. But we made some errors and it didn't happened. We won the Metas Volantes classification and came in second through intermediate of Caldeira.
I hope to get back tot he form I had before the Volta ao Algarve again rapidly. I though I was well, but I wasn't. But I am motivated to improve.
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