Stage 11 – Saint Martin – Trelaze     146km

I know I have mentioned that I have felt tired but today I felt really really tired.  I hoped many of the other riders felt as fried as I did today.  I went back to bed after breakfast and tried to get as much rest as possible.

Today’s stage was nearly 150km and I didn’t want to even think about how much it was going to hurt.  I looked at the profile and luckily there were only two climbs which I knew I could drag myself over.  We had a 15km neutral start and my legs warmed quite well.  As soon as the flag was dropped from the commissaries car, Petra Rossner (Nuernberg) attacked solo.  I thought about going with her, but I was struggling to just stay in the peleton so I would have been useless  out in a break.

After 25km she sat up and we rolled along as one group for a while.  Mette got into a break a little while later with two other riders but radioed back to say she couldn’t work.  The headwind was reducing the success of any break away attempts.

As Mette was caught, Meredith and Katrina were in the next move and they spent the next 20km trying to get their 11 rider break to work.  I patrolled the front of the peloton and did my best to shut any attacks down.  I used up so much energy doing this and was concerned about not making it in with the peloton if I didn’t ease up a bit.  When this break came back, an Aurora rider headed out alone and spent the next 80km riding solo into the headwind.  The peleton set a steady tempo of 45km/hr to keep the time gap down.  I couldn’t imagine how she could maintain over 45km/hr and stay away from the peloton.  I was feeling light headed and counting down the km’s until the finish.  At the final feedzone, Bob handed me an electrolyte drink which gave me the boost I was looking for.

With 20km to go, Nuernberg decided they wanted a stage win and had 4 of their riders on the front swapping turns.  The entire peloton was in a single line trying to get some protection from the headwind.  The Aurora rider was caught with 8km to go and Nuernberg continued to drive it hard to set up Rossner for the win.  And their plan worked to perfection with Rossner taking the stage, Wright (Australia) coming in 3^rd while team mate Mette finished 4^th.  I finished 23^rd and had nothing left in me for a dig at the end.