Algarve Stage 4

In the words of my mother-in-law, I was a member of "the platoon of fugitives" during today's stage. It was a difficult day for sure, but it was fun to be in the action a little. It took awhile for the break to go, but when it went, I knew it was a good opportunity. I have to give credit to my teammate and roommate Laurent for pointing out to me that Movistar was pulling for the first time bonus sprint of the day in order to help their rider gain a few seconds on the gc. He did in fact take second in the sprint and is now ahead of Tiago, but it doesn't change anything really besides start order. As far as me getting away, I was trying to get to the front to do the sprint and take the time from Movistar, but I couldn't do it. Still, I was maybe fifth through the sprint, and I knew it was strung out from the twisty run into the sprint; therefore, a good time to keep things rolling. I pushed on with a few guys instead of just sit up and wait for the field. We established the gap and eventually 10 (I think) of us got clear working well together the majority of the day.

The field seemed to just toy with us though, keeping our gap inside 3 minutes and bringing it down when they wanted. Jan was in the break with me, and he was clearly strong today, so I was trying to help him out a bit. I don't know that I really did much honestly. About 12km from the finish there was a nice kicker, and as I suspected, some guys attacked and thankfully Jan was able to follow because I didn't. He gave it a really good effort, but the field was charging and caught them with 2km to go. A hard day's work done.

For any of the number guys out there, my SRM values at the end of the day were as follows:
4:35
280 watts with 0s (includes coasting)
312 watts without 0s (subtracts the coasting, only counts when I am pedaling)
4600kjs

Tomorrow is the final stage: a 25.8km time trial. I don't have any goals personally, but I have nothing to lose/save, so I will give it my best for the experience. For the team, we have Tiago to hopefully put together a good tt and win the overall. He is currently 12 seconds back, which is a totally realistic chance. Then we have Jesse and Andreas who can do a good tt as well, so maybe we could have a stage win, too. It would be sweet to have both! We'll see what we can do.