Portugal stage 6..
The last day for the sprint for Tyler today as the next three stages all finish on hilltops, no worries we have Dan to take care of those for us. So today we decided to take it a bit easier in the morning, figuring that we were wasting a bit to much energy chasing all those futile early break, as it has been clear that everyday thus far the Portuguese sprinter’s team were always keen to have everything come back together for a sprint. Finally after covering 48km in the first hour something finally went once again though it took some yelling and the yellow jersey to stop for a nature break for it to get some time on the field. From there it was just keeping Tyler well positioned on the climbs,riding out in the wind, pushing him while he takes a pee, basically doing anything to make his day as easy as possible so he can just unleash it all in the last few hundred meters of the race. The finishes thus far have been pretty crazy with tons of roundabouts, crazy corners and steep climbs in the closing kilometers, making for some really hectic racing and today was no exception in a sharp right into an uphill going into the last 300m. Our job usually starts about 15 to 20km out when we start making sure to that Tyler is close to the front, riding out in the wind to take him up the side and we try to have him and CJ well positioned in the last couple kms. Usually in the last couple kms its so strung out that if they are well positioned its not to much problem staying up there and then CJ does his final leadout for Tyler, either putting him on another top sprinter’s wheel or doing a straight lead out and dropping him off with about 250m to go. My job is usually done with about 2-3km to go and from there we usually just sit up and roll into the line, and hopefully as your rolling across the line we see our man sprinting to victory during the recap on the jumbtron. Unfortunaltly today Tyler got taking into the barriers and it being an uphill finish once you have lost that bit of speed there is no coming back in the remaining meters. Tomorrow it will be for Dan with a 7km finishing climb. Still looking for the breakaway.
