FB fpost rom Joe on today’s stage
Stage 7 is over.
Up there with the hardest days I've had out on the bike. I've edited this a few times to remove the swear words..
The Tour of Britain keeps showing that no matter how hard yesterday was, today will always be harder. We'd all expected an early break to go and that the race would be controlled for the next 200km, however that was certainly not the case. Spent the first 40km or so with lactic acid up to my eyeballs wondering why I'm not on holiday yet and when it finally did 'ease up', seeing 170km to go was a truly disgusting sight. Oh and then it started to rain. So we proceeded to smash it out of every single corner and up every hill for the next 15 hours I think it was, and when I was pretty certain I was about to be dropped I was told on the radio I had to get to the front and help the other teams chase the break. And that's when I started a 25km chaingang with a bunch of world tour riders chasing Ian Stannard and suddenly the last 150km of suffering seemed pretty insignificant. If you aren't already stunned by Stannards ride today, take it from me that he is outrageously strong.. But anyway, did what I could and I was glad to end the day on a positive note rather than just swinging all day and doing nothing of any use.
One final day to go. Thank f*ck.