So often the protected rider, Sam Bennett yesterday stuffed bottles down his jersey and battled up the climbs weighed down to keep the team climbers hydrated (Photo: Martine Verfaillie)
By Sam Bennett
Stage 3: Newtown to The Tumble (179.7KM)
After two relatively flat opening stages at the Tour of Britain, today we hit the mountains, finishing with the first category ascent of The Tumble in North Wales.
With an 8km long second category climb coming right after the start, a lot of teams, including us and Sky, put in a good warm up on the turbo trainers before leaving Newtown this morning.
As my NetApp Endura team had four guys with the potential to win today’s stage, this morning the team plan was to make sure myself and our other non climber Scott Thwaites got them into a good position before the left hand turn towards the summit finish with about 8km to go.
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With the road narrowing considerably after that, we knew that if the guys weren’t at the front by then, there would be little hope of moving up for a while.
Thankfully, the break went really early today and having done the warm up things weren’t as bad as they could have been on that first climb.
As Bennett was sitting up and going backwards on the summit finish climb, Roche is seen here putting in the effort going forward; taking 3rd on the stage to add to Bennett's 3rd on stage 2 (Photo: Larry Hickmott – VeloUK.net)
Unfortunately for me though, there were plenty more hills to come, most of them not even categorised.
Having dragged myself over the third category ascents of Knighton after 35km and Beggar’s Bush after 41km, I tried to fulfil my role as domestique for the day and went back to the team car for bottles for the guys after about 50km.
Having stuffed four bottles down my jersey I made my way back towards the peloton just as we hit a very steep little uncategorised climb.
Because I was coming from behind the bunch, I had built up great momentum coming onto the climb and easily passed the guys at the back.
But within a few metres of climbing, I found myself going backwards, the weight of the bottles dragging me down.
Four bottles only weighs about 2 kilos but I thought I’d never get over the hill while carrying them and, on the verge of getting dropped, I actually thought about chucking them in the ditch and going back for more after the top.
The field split to pieces up The Tumble cat 1 ascent at the end of an undulating day; with Bennett simply riding up the climb as a warm down (Photo: Larry Hickmott – VeloUK.net)
The incline eventually eased off though and I managed to hang on and get the bottles up to the guys once I’d caught my breath.
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With long 400 watt uphill efforts being followed by downhill sections of zero watts for most of the day, the constant up and down nature of today’s stage began to pull the legs off me.
And with about 30km to go, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to help the guys at all coming into the final climb.
A can of coke and an energy gel shortly after though saw me come around and, with about 12km to go, I got a bit overexcited and hit the front in so that the guys wouldn’t have to fight for position.
After about 2km at the front though, I got swamped when Mark Cavendish came up followed by the Garmin Sharp team, Great Britain and a couple of other outfits.
I tried to bring the lads back up after that but there was so much chopping and changing at the front that I simply couldn’t get out.
While the attacks began shortly after we turned left onto the narrow road, as soon as I saw the ‘KOM Start’ sign I sat up and rode to the top at a comfortable, if slow, pace.
A couple of groups went past me on the 6km trek to the top, including the big ‘grupetto’ containing Marcel Kittel and the other sprinters.
It was a day of constant up and downs for the Tour of Britain field; a day when a rider like Bennett does what's asked of him by his team and tries to conserve as much energy as possible for the sprint and breakaway opportunities still to come in the days ahead (Photo: Larry Hickmott – VeloUK.net)
While I could have stayed with them without any problem, I didn’t even consider it.
I wasn’t going to win the stage, was never going to win the race outright and was well inside the time limit, so all I had to do was just keep twiddling my 39x 28 gear, get to the top and save my legs for another day.
While my teammates ended their day the same way as they started it, by hopping up on the turbo trainers to warm down, I’d already warmed down on the way up and just got straight onto the bus for a shower.
A couple of the guys hopped into the team car in order to get to the hotel quicker and get their massage done first after the stage, but I spent the 75km transfer on the team bus checking twitter, stuffing my face and catching up with the results.
It was good to see Nicolas Roche move up to third overall today while my former teammate Mark McNally also kept his king of the mountains jersey for another day.
My team leader Leo Konig got tenth on the stage and is now 26 seconds down. in eighth place overall. I’m not sure if he was entirely happy with the way things worked out today but he’s still in the hunt and seems in good spirits tonight.
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