The race was hilly and windy making it a nightmare for cycling, but this is also the terrain on which my team goes best. It's a team built for climbing. Controlling the race was arduous enough, but there is also a weight of stress, a stress that doesn't pass until the race is over. I was terrified at the prospect of failing to protect our yellow jersey. But I managed to do a very good job.
After the race we had to go look at a few stages of the Portugal. This wasn't brilliantly organized and turned into an ordeal, none of us happy with the long journeys, the absence of celebration for our victory and most of all -the 2000 metres of climbing facing us on what was supposedly a rest day. The following day was a continuation of this nightmare and after many, many kilometres through the mountains of central Portugal we finally got on the road home at about 21:00. One of the stages was important to look at, however we would have been just as well seeing it from a car than a bike. Actually just saying "harder than you could possibly imagine" would have done the trick!
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