A Few More Stages in Oman

We've had several more stages here in Oman since my last post. It's been a mixed bag of goods and not so goods. We had the queen stage yesterday with the finish on Green Mountain, a 7.5km climb averaging 10%. It is a beast of a climb and we actually only do half of it! My performance there was not what I was hoping for. The team did a great job helping Jani and me to enter the climb in a good position, but the first pitches were super steep and I might have gone a little too deep to stay with the group. After a small leveling the road pitched up again, but I hadn't recovered enough. Soon I paid for my early effort and came off. It took me a long time to recover and then I was battling to find a good rhythm on the steep slopes, especially because I was grinding a horribly slow cadence. Definitely could have used a little bit easier gear. Lesson learned. I also remembered a lesson I had learned from my previous experience on Green Mountain, which was to not go too deep on that initial slope, try to save a little, and then use those savings to ride a better overall mountain. It's true that if I hadn't tried to stay with the group there would be no chance for me to be there in the end; however, it is also true that the climb is such that things blow up pretty handily and there is almost a case of the tortoise and the hare. Sometimes a little individual TT action can help you catch up to those who went too deep later on. Whatever, never know!

So how about today. The anxiety levels were high as we drove to the start over some incredibly steep climbs. The starting line today was similar to Qatar with guys lining up a good 15 minutes before the start because there was a really steep climb about 1km after the start. I unfortunately arrived at the start a little late because I was out warming up to try and get into the break. So we started the race, well neutral roll out, but it was already a race because everyone wanted to be in the front to start. I couldn't make it to the front with all the congestion until part way up the first climb, but that took a pretty big effort to do, so there was no way I could go in the move then. A quick descent and onto the next steep climb. I was able to get into the front there and tagged onto a move, but we weren't going anywhere fast as the road in front of us was pretty much eye level. A few individual guys managed to sneak away and eventually join forces to make a 3 man break. It was actually a very strong break too as they pulled out a good 6 minutes on us even as we rolled along quite steadily. Astana took control to keep it under wraps though, just enough to make sure the gc wouldn't be a threat.

The real fireworks of the stage happened as expected on the final 3 climbs. It was actually one climb that we did the back, front, and back again. The first two times were not too explosive, but just a good amount of pressure applied to pull time out of the break and discourage attacking. The third time up things got a bit spicier as guys began to attack in earnest. After a few accelerations I came off with Marco and Jani, but we kept a good rhythm to hopefully stay close enough to catch them on the quick descent and run into the finish. By the top we had lost a good bit a ground, but with collaboration from our group and a little bit of poker in the first group, we came back with about 4km to go. At that point we knew Marco was definitely our fastest finisher and had a legitimate shot at the stage win. We tried to place him in a good spot before the final two corners and let him do his thing. In the end he got third, so we were pretty happy with that! A win would be nice of course, but he can't be disappointed finishing behind Boasson Hagen and van Avermaet. Tomorrow is the final stage and replicates the finish of stage one, but then goes on another 30km of flat circuits, so it is likely to be a sprint, but you never know!