All in all, I'm glad things are about done. I'm getting a cold, which just makes everything else seem worse! The day went okay - it was super boring, which was surprising. A break went away, and everyone pretty much called it a day. We had Pieter in it for our team, so we were set.
Luckily, those Belgian boys really like suffering in long breakaways, which means I'm off the hook! I was positive, after getting into 20th overall yesterday, that a break would go away and get enough time for someone to jump over me and bump me back out of the top 20 (prize money only pays out to 20th place, so that's why 20 is the magic number).
It got close for a while today with Lars Bak from CSC in the break. He was only sitting about 14 minutes behind me in GC, and with the slow pace I thought that he'd jump over me for sure when the break started getting around the 13 minute mark, but then things sped up again for a bit and that saved the day. I sat in the field and cheered for everyone to go faster to help my cause and it all worked out.
Anyway, now there's only two more days to go - a TT, which is mostly a rest day and then the final parade and we are out of here! Wahoo! I'm a tired boy and ready for a few days away from bike racing. Now it's bedtime again, so I'm off. Thanks for reading!
Chris