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One Giant leap: Ben Atkins' Giant Tour 2004
From his desk job in Brighton to the Tour of Germany. It's quite a leap for Gran Fondo lover Ben Atkins, who is one of a very lucky group of journos riding the Giant Tour, a toned-down version of the pro event as a guest of Giant Bicycles. Over the course of the next seven days, Ben will live and breathe the life of a professional cyclist, so follow him (albeit with a touch of envy) as he embarks on the experience of a lifetime.
Giant Tour 2004
Day 6 - Stage 4 - June 3: Bad Tölz - Landshut, 190 km
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Bad Endorf was living up to its name this morning... it was very Bad! Waking up in our nice country hotel, we were greeted by rain coming down in sheets.
This is the kind of day when you look out of the window and roll over in bed and decide not to go training today, or perhaps not to turn up at that race after all. No such luxury for us "pros", we all had to be up and ready in time for the 11:15 start whether we felt like facing up to the weather or not. By the time we had breakfasted and checked out, the rain had all but stopped, but most of us still took the start in our rain jackets.
Once the usual frenetic first few kilometres were out of the way and we all settled into our familiar groups, I felt hot and so took of my gloves and jacket. The second I got them safely stowed in my back pocket though, it started to rain, and when it rains in Bavaria it doesn't mess about, let me tell you! After a couple of minutes I was completely soaked to the skin, but as the wind was warm and I was working pretty hard, I didn't feel any the worse for it.
I don't know if it was Rudy's massage, or whether it's just inevitable to follow a bad day with good one, but today I was on flyer! I spent some time at the front of the group with Roderick and Frank Schreiner (Giant Germany) trying to teach the cyclotourists how to get a Belgian chain-gang going, but after a few fruitless minutes tiring myself out, I settled in the bunch to keep out of trouble.
During the middle part of the stage, I was making so little effort in the top 20 or so riders even though I was looking after Taufig Khalil, a huge former American footballer from Munich reporting for German radio, who's fairly new to cycling. I seem to have developed a sixth sense for knowing exactly where the wind is coming from then manoeuvring myself to a place sheltered behind at least one other person. I started to feel a bit cold as my heart rate dropped below 100, so I decided that some work was in order and put in a few small turns near the front to get my pulse running again.
I missed the feed zone, but we were getting bottles from the many official cars on the route and passing them round. Philippe was doing an especially good job riding the length of the bunch, handing bottles and bananas to Franck, Taufig and I. This for me, is one of the most exciting things about being in a race like this, taking bottles from cars, and especially passing them to team-mates is what the real pros do, so it's an integral part of pretending to be one.
All too soon - as I felt so good - we passed the 5km to go banner. At this point Philippe, Franck and I decided that we wanted to catch the group in front and so bury ourselves in the last part of the course to do so. Once we got on to the flat, straight run in to the finish in Landshut we had them in sight, and with the help of a few others we managed to get on the back of the bunch with about 600 metres to go. Philippe and I began to move ourselves forward, but thankfully reason prevailed as we were in a bunch of about 100 riders and the finishing straight was narrowing.
We cruised across the line, where I looked at my rear cassette to find hat I'd been using 53 x 14 for the last 3km! Although this bunch was a few minutes behind the leaders, Roderick won the sprint for umpteenth place, so it was a small victory for the Giant Media Team.
We rolled back to the bus, handed the bikes to William, and settled down for the drive to Nuremburg, hoping for fairer weather tomorrow. Thanks Rudy...
Photography
Images by Starshot Design Agency
- Stefan grins as he oils some legs, he doesn't have to ride today!
- Yuck! It's raining!
- One of the Giant Tour support cars.
- Loads of help is always around.
- Tom pulls the team along for kilometre after kilometre.
- After being so strong yesterday, Jo had a bad day at the back of the bunch...
- ... but he still put plenty of work in for the team.
- Half of the Giant Media Team hides at the back.
- See what I mean about Franck? He loves it!
- The crowd awaits...
