HEAT, STRESS AND ILLNESS AT LE TOUR

LEWIS ASKEY Tour Column

- LEWIS ASKEY

Stage 3

Today was one of the few pure sprint days at this Tour de France. A block headwind pretty much all day made sure of that. No one was interested in going in the breakaway of the day. I didn’t even know when the neutral ended and the racing started. For someone like me who isn’t the best at backing up hard days on the bike, I welcomed it with open arms. The only issue with a day like this is that everyone gets to the final part of the race without having used much energy. The result is usually carnage, and today was no different.

Stage 4

Romain [Grégoire] has shown himself to be best of the rest so far this week and the possibility of being able to sneak off in the final few kilometres while the favourites mark each other out was our plan of attack. I did 600 watts for around three minutes and 500 watts for five minutes to keep the team in a good position on the climbs. My job finished at the end of the technical section. If you are far back, there is an elastic band effect, which means you will be doing an effort that is exhausting. When it comes to the crunch point at the end of the race, you will pay for it. Romain repaid us back with another top five.

Stage 5