Emma Mackie's (Lotto-Belisol) third report in her own words:
Stage 2, Day 3
We have arrived in our new hotel for tonight after a long 4 hour drive! Again there is no Internet access which I am finding difficult. My stay in Italy so far has been going good, although I am feeling the heat as are the rest of the girls! I have still been drinking plenty of coffee every chance I get, I just love the coffee in Italy. So the prologue and one stage have past and I have heard that these are meant to be some of the hardest stages! (I doubt that).After my doping control on the 1st stage I thought that would be it but to my delight and my teammates we woke up yesterday to doping control in the hotel!! The doctor wasn’t very good with his needle and I was left with a dead arm for the rest of the day...ouch.
The stage yesterday was the Individual time trial. It was 15kms long. We drove the course when we arrived and we were all shocked at how hard the finish was. With 1km to go coming off a descent you took a sharp right hand turn and almost immediately went straight up to the finish. I think I could have run faster up it!
My goal for the day was to just finish in a reasonable time but not to blow myself as I’m not much of a time trialer and the GC is not a goal for me. We have one girl on the team, Lizzy (ed. note: Elizabeth Armitstead) who is riding for the young jersey classification. She did a great ride and ended up taking the white young jersey!!
Stage 3, Day 4
The heat again really knocked me around and I felt empty later that night and pretty tired when I woke up today. We had to pack all of our things when we left this morning as we would change hotels for tonight and for the rest of the tour. Today’s stage was one of the hardest on paper and as it turned out on the bike as well! It started off with rain which wasn’t nice and ended in heat again. We had two main climbs. A cat 1 climb and cat 2 climb. We finished again on the top of the last climb which was 10kms long and steep. I think the guys went over the same climb in the Giro d ‘Italia. We had a fast speed going into the first climb and straight away it split into groups. I just tried to get myself into a nice group to get myself to the finish. Lizzy again had a great ride and managed to keep the young rider's white jersey.
I’m always amazed at how much pain you can put your body through in tours and how fast it goes away when you cross the line and finish. So we still have a long way to go so I hope to have some exciting news to come....
Ciao
Emma
Stage 2, Day 3
We have arrived in our new hotel for tonight after a long 4 hour drive! Again there is no Internet access which I am finding difficult. My stay in Italy so far has been going good, although I am feeling the heat as are the rest of the girls! I have still been drinking plenty of coffee every chance I get, I just love the coffee in Italy. So the prologue and one stage have past and I have heard that these are meant to be some of the hardest stages! (I doubt that).After my doping control on the 1st stage I thought that would be it but to my delight and my teammates we woke up yesterday to doping control in the hotel!! The doctor wasn’t very good with his needle and I was left with a dead arm for the rest of the day...ouch.
The stage yesterday was the Individual time trial. It was 15kms long. We drove the course when we arrived and we were all shocked at how hard the finish was. With 1km to go coming off a descent you took a sharp right hand turn and almost immediately went straight up to the finish. I think I could have run faster up it!
My goal for the day was to just finish in a reasonable time but not to blow myself as I’m not much of a time trialer and the GC is not a goal for me. We have one girl on the team, Lizzy (ed. note: Elizabeth Armitstead) who is riding for the young jersey classification. She did a great ride and ended up taking the white young jersey!!
Stage 3, Day 4
The heat again really knocked me around and I felt empty later that night and pretty tired when I woke up today. We had to pack all of our things when we left this morning as we would change hotels for tonight and for the rest of the tour. Today’s stage was one of the hardest on paper and as it turned out on the bike as well! It started off with rain which wasn’t nice and ended in heat again. We had two main climbs. A cat 1 climb and cat 2 climb. We finished again on the top of the last climb which was 10kms long and steep. I think the guys went over the same climb in the Giro d ‘Italia. We had a fast speed going into the first climb and straight away it split into groups. I just tried to get myself into a nice group to get myself to the finish. Lizzy again had a great ride and managed to keep the young rider's white jersey.
I’m always amazed at how much pain you can put your body through in tours and how fast it goes away when you cross the line and finish. So we still have a long way to go so I hope to have some exciting news to come....
Ciao
Emma
Stories, including cycling trip stories, for the Italian Cycling Journal welcome; contact veronaman@gmail.com
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