Philip Deignan's Rapha skinsuit may be designed for speed but it is difficult to stand upright in it and to get it on; one the road between Barbaresco and Barolo in yesterday's stage 12 time trial at the Giro d'Italia (Photo: Sirotti)
Thursday 22nd May, Stage 12: Berbesco to Barolo 42km TT
By Philip Deignan
The one thing I’ve always liked about racing in Italy is the food and, more recently, the wine.
On the Giro you get to go around all the different agricultural areas and get to taste the speciality from each one.
A couple of days ago we were in Parma where we had some beautiful Parma ham and, as we were in Barolo last night, I had a nice glass of wine at the dinner table after my long day in the breakaway.
I never really liked wine until the last year or so. I think the reason I didn’t drink it before was because I got a really cheap bottle when I was younger and it tasted like vinegar.
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About a year ago though, I tasted a really good bottle for the first time and since then, although I’m no sommelier, I’ve started to appreciate good wine a little bit more.
Having crashed yesterday and suffered cuts to his face my teammate Salvatore Puccio got teased at the dinner table that his girlfriend would probably dump him now because his looks were gone.
But Salvatore is in really good spirits despite his injuries and had everyone laughing when he told us that “girls love scars”.
After a good night’s sleep, I was pretty relaxed this morning ahead of today’s first big time trial and had a small breakfast around 9am before going back to my room and chilling out for a while.
With my roommate Eddy due to start a minute after me today, we joked about how long it would take him to catch me in the 42km test.
Just after 11, three hours before I was due to roll down the start ramp, I had another small bite to eat and a couple of hours later I left in the team car for the start and got changed for my race against the clock.
At Team Sky, we did a fitting with our clothing manufacturers Rapha back in December for all of our pieces of team kit. So everything is tailor made, which is probably one of those marginal gains you hear about all the time.
The pink jersey of race leader Cadel Evans. He was 3rd yesterday, but his losses of 1:34 to stage winner Rigoberto Uran Uran saw him lose the lead to the Colombian.
Everything is made to measure and is really good quality stuff but as comfortable as they are on the bike, the skinsuits are not something you want to be wearing for long off it as you can’t really stand upright in them.
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Specifically cut to fit snugly when you’re down in the crouched time trial position, I needed one of the team carers to help me get mine on before hopping up on the home trainer for my warm up.
As usual, I rode easy for five minutes before going up through my heart rate training zones for eight minutes, doing some really high cadence sprints of five or six seconds and a couple of minutes easy.
We have heart rate monitors and power metres on all the bikes at Team Sky and I’ve noticed that over a period of time in a stage race you get tired and your heart rate goes down quite a lot for the same power.
In Belfast my heart rate was probably around 15 beats higher for the same power I was putting out today.
Today definitely wasn’t flat. After a couple of kilometres we started climbing a long drag, which was followed by a really technical descent. There was a long flat part after that but it was really bumpy from then to the end of the stage
I got rain the whole way through my time trial today with some torrential downpours and even a few bursts of thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure.
When you’re not up there fighting for the overall classification, there’s no point in killing yourself in a time trial unless, of course, that’s your speciality and you have a realistic chance of winning the stage.
Otherwise, whether you finish three minutes down or eight minutes down it’s the same. For me, today was almost like a recovery day.
I needed to do just the bare minimum to get around while at the same time trying to save energy for the tougher stages ahead in the final week.
After about 4km I got out of the saddle and my back wheel fishtailed behind me which told me it was a bit sketchy out there so I took it really easy on the descents.
The road surfaces changed from corner to corner really, with good grip in some places and none in others.
The memories of the Tour of Britain time trial, where I crashed and broke my collarbone on a wet corner last September, were still in my mind so I didn’t risk anything.
Eddy caught me just before the halfway point and I finished about six minutes down on stage winner Rigoberto Uran.
After the line, I rode about 2km to the team car as a warm down before heading back to the hotel.
With less travel and less stress today we were back in the hotel around 4pm, which is a lot earlier than normal so we took advantage of some more time to recover by relaxing in our rooms before dinner.
While, as a team, we haven’t achieved the goals we set coming into this race yet, we’re hoping for more out of the next nine days.
We know it will be tough but we’re all ready to give it our best.
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