Dauphine Take Two

The second stage of Dauphine had the possibility of putting some serious pain in our legs, but it seems everyone knew what lies ahead this week and opted to keep things civil. The start was directly uphill today. Technically it was a 7+ km climb, but only 3km of it was considered classified in the race book because the first 4km of it were the neutral start. We were lucky for that because it could've been pure ugliness if we raced the whole thing from the gun. After hitting kilometer 0 a few guys jumped away quite easily and the field basically blocked the road to keep things under control. Those three guys made a good effort for the day with a gap as big as 7 minutes, but it was a long stage to stay away with only three guys. After the starting climb there was a good bit of rolling road and then one big climb in the middle of the stage (9km @ 7%), but nothing happened there either as the top was still 100km from the finish. Then it was a pretty long, sometimes rolling descent into the last 50km of flat for the finish. So in the end it came down to the sprint today. Things got pretty chaotic in the finale actually. There really wasn't a super good reason for it, but the threat of crosswinds created the tension and then even when that was alleviated guys seem to just fight for no reason. We had relatively large and straight roads, but we still had multiple crashes. I had to lock up the brakes several times but was able to avoid any mishaps. Unfortunately Popo fell victim to one of the crazy moments and crashed pretty hard. He's no stranger to this though and I suspect he'll survive. He seemed in good spirits and I know he'll try to make it. Tomorrow is the team time trial. They are always interesting and I just really hope I have good legs in order to not just survive it but help the team to a good time.