After an aggressive showing in the last week, our man Philip Deignan admits he just had nothing left in the tank on yesterday's penultimate stage of the Giro d'Italia to Monte Zoncolan
Saturday May 31, Stage 20: Maniago to Monte Zoncolan (167km)
By Philip Deignan
As we waited for the start this morning, myself and Belkin rider David Tanner had a bit of a chat in the start village.
Like two people on a diet talking about what they’d really love to eat, we drew up a list of what we want to do next week when this Giro is over.
After three weeks of pretty miserable weather conditions, it’s no surprise that a day at the beach lying in the sun came out tops.
Before that though, today we had a brutal stage to the top of one of the hardest climbs in the world, Monte Zoncolan.
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We laughed this morning as we compared the size of our chainrings and rear sprockets but by the end of the day I would be very glad of my 34 tooth inner chain ring and 32 tooth rear sprocket.
The break went pretty early this morning, and we had Dario up there in a move of about 20 guys after about 10km.
Usually there is a rhythm to stage racing; when the break goes, it settles down for a bit in the peloton and you have time to eat and drink for a while.
But today when the break went, we slowed down for maybe five minutes before the Cannondale and Colombia teams hit the front and started chasing really hard.
Dario’s group got a gap of three or four minutes but with two teams chasing, but then we held them there for about 70 or 80km.
Because of the pace, I didn’t really eat or drink much for the first two hours today and, whether that had anything to do with it or not, I didn’t have a good day today, just didn’t have anything left in my legs.
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I went over the top of the first climb, with 60km to go, in the front part of the peloton and was okay going down the descent. But when we started the second category Stella Razza just 10km later, I found myself drifting out the back door with a group of mainly bigger guys, the sprinters group, and knew something was wrong.
Okay, I felt tired this morning but everyone is tired on the second last day of a three week race. When I looked down, my heart rate was pretty low but I felt like I was riding at my threshold and I think it was just a build up of fatigue over the last three weeks.
Once I knew I didn’t have it, there was no point in fighting it and disappointing as it was, from then on it was just a matter of getting to the finish.
We weren’t too far behind the bunch over the second last climb and down the descent, maybe a couple of minutes but I was pretty demoralised by the time I got to the bottom of Monte Zoncolan.
I had hoped to give it one last go today but at the end of the day if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. I had Swifty, CJ and Bernie in the group with me but while the guys were talking a bit, I wasn’t in great humour and wasn’t on for speaking to anybody.
From then on it was a matter of just trying to get up there to the finish, but the gradient was relentless and the climb went by really, really slow for me.
Monte Zoncolan is definitely one of the toughest climbs out there so to have it at the end of three weeks when you’re not on a good day is not very nice.
I looked down in the last 6km and saw that I was only doing 7kph. I was glad I had my 34x32 gear on then but the kilometres went by so slow that I was surprised we lost just 25 minutes today.
There was a good atmosphere on the climb but riding though the crowd was a bit chaotic. People are standing there all day and they get so excited that they just want to push you.
I’m sure there were some guys maybe who were on their hands and knees and wanted to get pushed but we just wanted to ride up today.
There were guys jumping out in front of you, trying to push you and then they’d push you into the back of somebody, exactly like what happened Michael Rogers and Franceso Bongiorno in the break earlier, with the Italian losing a chance of a possible stage win when he had to unclip after being pushed into Rogers’ wheel.
That happened me a few times today.
I wasn’t looking to get pushed but people just ran up and grabbed my seatpost and started running alongside me. There wasn’t really much I could do.
All in all, Monte Zoncolan was extremely steep, ultra loud and very chaotic, but I suppose that’s what makes the climb so special.
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