Wide eyed and legless: On a rest day at Giro 2014, Philip Deignan recalls his first ride in the race back in 2008 when he was sick and on his hands and knees. To this day he gauges his fatigue against how he felt on that race.
Monday May 19th, Rest Day
By Philip Deignan
When you’re riding a stage race of any distance, or even just training hard at home, getting a good night’s sleep is very important if you want to recover every day.
So far things have been working out well on this Giro and I’ve been able to get a decent nine hours sleep every night and even managed a bit of a lie-on this morning.
I didn’t get up until nine and after breakfast the whole team met at 11.00 and went out for a 40km spin.
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One of our directeurs, Dan Frost came out on the bike with us so we tried to put a bit of pressure on him for a few minutes to wind him up but it didn’t work so we ease up pretty quickly.
Today really just a social spin, time to get out of the hotel, get some fresh air and spin the legs. Sometimes you have a rest day, the next stage starts straight up a climb so you might do a little bit more to keep ticking over.
But as tomorrow’s stage is pretty flat and looks like one for the sprinters we took it pretty easy and stopped for coffee halfway through and had a bit of a chat.
Today some of the lads have their wives and girlfriends here and at lunch time it was nice to have a bit of female company at the table for a change.
Because he was drafted in as a late replacement for Pete Kennaugh, Chris Sutton was only home for a single day in between finishing the Tour of Romandie and heading to Belfast for the Giro start so it was nice for him to have his fiancé around today.
Some teams frown upon having wives and girlfriends around during the race and while I don’t think it happens all the time at Sky, in circumstances like that it’s nice to make exceptions.
Being Irish I don’t get a lot of visitors on a Grand Tour but nowadays with Skype and Facebook you’re only a phone call away from home.
While he says he's not yet at the level he reached when he won a Vuelta stage with Cervelo back in 2009, Deignan is feeling a lot better than some of his first major races as a pro including the 2008 Giro for Ag2r despite an interrupted early season thanks to a broken collar bone.
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Myself and Eddy spent much of the afternoon lying flat out on our beds watching American Hustle in the room. It was quite long but it’s nice to have something like that to get your head away from the race for a while.
I like to read too but find that when I bring a book to a race I usually don’t have the patience to read it so it just stays in my suitcase.
Instead, I do stuff that needs minimum concentration; surfing the internet, checking emails, and today I also checked up on the An Post Rás on stickybottle as well. It's always good to keep an eye on the Irish scene, which is obviously where I started.
This evening I had my first visit to the team physio at this Giro. In fairness, he’s been pretty busy with all of my teammates who crashed so far and he’s the one responsible for keeping them going.
After a few days, you start to get a bit stiff in your neck, hips and back so it was nice to spend a half an hour getting it checked and having a bit of realignment if necessary.
After physio, it was time for my daily massage, which takes about an hour. If I’m lucky, some days I’ll nod off on the table and arrive to dinner looking like a zombie.
Sometimes if I’m tired I think back to the Giro I did in 2008, where I was on my hands and knees, and I compare the state I was in then to how I’m feeling now.
After four or five days of racing I got sick and was on antibiotics and was in a terrible state really. Every day I would just about finish the stage and literally crawl onto the team bus.
That Giro was a horrendous race for me and it’s usually how I gauge my fatigue.
I’m feeling pretty decent at the moment, although I’m a good bit off my stage winning form of the 2009 Vuelta, where I was able to ride to the limit every day and stay with the front group of a dozen guys on all the climbs.
Back then, I could go to the limit every day and recover whereas here I’m sort of riding in losing 10 or 15 minutes here and there.
Thankfully, I’ve managed to stay upright and healthy so far this time around and if I manage to do that for the rest of this race I think it will make a massive difference towards the end.
While it was nice not to have to pin on a number today, as is always the case on rest days, today went by all too quickly.
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