Well, the tour is finally over.  Here is how the last few days turned out.

Stage 7a – 11 July 2003 – 45km

Today was a tough day as we had to ride two stages.  We kicked the day off with a point to point race that started at 9.30am.  This meant an early start for us with me trying to force some pasta down at 7am.  I couldn’t do it and decided to just eat cereal and a croissant.  Some days during a long tour, I wake up hungry and it is no problem eating a small feast, but this morning the site of food made me feel sick, but I ate what I could to get through the morning.

The 45km point to point race started in Gabbice and finished in Cesenatico.  After a 4km descent to the Adriatic coast, some keen rider attacked and the peloton became one long line of riders, all trying to hide from the cross headwinds.  The pace was painfully fast and I was actually concerned about getting dropped during the first 30km.  I looked down and we were hammering at over 50km/hr.  Our director, Chris, as he gave out instructions to us from the car, occasionally referred to these winds as ‘tailwinds’ but I was suffering out there and did not ever feel a nice taily!

The race bible described the finish as a straight run to the line, but at 3km to go, we went through several roundabouts, negotiated a steep highway curved off ramp and then had a 180 degree corner only 800m from the line.  I wasn’t in the top 10 at this point and it was impossible to move up during the final few kilometres.  We all finished safely in the bunch but without the anticipated top 10 finish.

We rolled around for a few minutes to try and cool down (although the temperature was hovering into the upper 30’s), found the team cars, piled in and commenced our 1.5 hour transfer to Cento for the afternoon circuit race.