Stage 8 – Aubusson – St Leonard de Noblat 87km

I am counting down the days until the Rest Day.  I only have to get through today and tomorrow and we have a day off.  It will be so blissful to not be racing and travelling.

Today it was really hot – 47 degrees.  Our neutral section of the race, 13km was done at such a slow pace that it took nearly an hour.  All the riders insisted that we stop after the neutral section to pee and fill up our water bottles.  The officials just turn there heads while we shamelessly drop our knicks.

Given everyone in our team was there to support Katrina, who was our GC rider sitting well up in the overall standings, our plan today was to set something up for her.  Our director told us to cover the early breaks and hopefully get Katrina into the winning move.

An Italian rider jumped behind the commissaries car as he blew the whistle and drafted behind the car for nearly 1km.  I watched in amazement as the commissaire did nothing about this blatant form of cheating.  The rest of us chased hard and eventually caught her.  The terrain was sloping steadily upwards and yet we were maintaining over 40km/hr.

I saw 5 girls attack and after a moments hesitation, burst out of the peloton in pursuit.  After a few minutes of hard riding, I caught them and sat on the back of them, gasping for air.  I was unable to take a turn.  I had used up everything to get across to them.  I was definitely feeling tired as I usually have more than one attack in me per stage.  The peloton caught us and with the following attack, I was popped out the back of the group.  Six of us started working turns but the others were reluctant to work.  They had already given up the chase.  Meredith was with me and I told her if we could get back to the cars then we would make it.  She was having a hard day and I told her to stay on my wheel until she felt ok.  A French chick joined us in our chase while the other 3 shouted out “piano piano” (“slower, slower”) to us.  It took us 20 minutes to make it to the cars and then we progressed from car to car until we made it back to the group.

I had used up a lot of fluid during my chase back on, so after I’d caught my breath I dropped back to our team car to get some water.  I took 3 bottles for myself and another 3 for a few team mates.  Usually the riders up on the General Classification don’t drop back for water.  They conserve energy and stay up near the front of the group.  It is the duty of the workers on the team to go back for fluid and bring it back.  It is quite a skill to stuff 4 or 5 waterbottles down your jersey and then get these back to your teammates.

Three riders had broken away which included aussie Margaret Hemsley, whilst I had been chasing back on.  Our director suggested that some of us bridge across to these riders but I had used up everything.  I was really tired today and the 47 degree heat was making me feel pretty lousey.  With 3km to go, Meredith attacked and as she got caught, Christine had a dig.  She was swallowed up with 200m to go which is always an unfortunate way of getting caught.  I rolled home safely in the peloton but with no top 10 result that I had set as my own goal for the tour.