After a rest day training spin with Team Sky, our man Philip Deignan is hoping for good weather as the Giro d'Italia tackles the dreaded Gavia and Stelvio climbs today.
Monday, May 26th, Rest Day: Ponte di Legno
By Philip Deignan
We had an hour and a half transfer on the team bus after yesterday’s stage so we didn’t arrive at our hotel until after 8pm.
When we have a late night like that we usually go down to dinner in two groups. As each carer has two riders to massage, we go down in groups of four depending on whether you’re first for massage or second.
If I’m in the second group for massage I usually just lie in bed watching TV trying to recover or maybe check emails or stuff.
For the last couple of nights we’ve had split dinners but massage goes on rotation each night so it’s pretty fair.
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As I had a poor sleep the night before, I gave myself a bit of a lie-in this morning and didn’t get up until 9.00.
This morning I give my daily urine sample to the team doctor to check I’m not dehydrated and he also checks our weight every day too.
I’ve been pretty stable since the start in Belfast and have been around 64kgs for the whole time, except maybe after a rest day.
Sometimes you can be a kilo heavier the day after a rest day as you haven’t done as much on the bike so you can retain a bit of fluid.
As our hotel is near the bottom of the Gavia today, we just rolled about 20km down the valley and rode back up again this morning for about an hour and a half, about a 40km spin.
Rest days at Team Sky are a personal thing really. Some guys like to ride hard, some guys like to ride easy, some like to go for a couple of hours and some just like a short spin. Within reason, you can pretty much do as much or as little as you like.
This morning I just rode steady and then spent 20 minutes riding up through my training zones, spending five minutes in each one to get a bit of a sweat going before heading back to the hotel for a shower and a lie down.
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After lunch I got checked out by the team physio again and had massage before spending the afternoon lying in bed watching The Butler, a film about a guy who spends his life working as a butler in the White House. It was pretty good actually.
We’re staying at 1200metres, just where the Gavia climb really starts, and it’s amazing how quickly the weather changes up here.
This time of year is really unpredictable.
You can go from 20 degrees and sunshine in the valley and then you go up to 2,500metres and it’s snowing and three degrees.
Out of all three Grand Tours this year, this is probably going to be the hardest final week, with three seriously hard mountain stages ahead of us, kicking off with the legendary Gavia, Stelvio and Val Martello stage tomorrow.
It was raining a bit this morning but it’s been snowing on top of the Gavia so there’s talk that there might be a bit of a detour tomorrow but we haven’t heard anything definite yet.
I remember doing the Gavia on the second last day of my second Grand Tour, the 2008 Giro. I was the first rider dropped and rode the whole 20km climb by myself.
It was snowing on the way up and I only caught the grupetto, the last group on the road, at the top because they all stopped to put on warm clothes for the descent.
But I felt pretty good on the bike this morning and hopefully I’ll feel the same tomorrow. I’m pretty confident that I won’t be the first one dropped this year.
