The day that I snapped. We woke in our ski apartments on top of the previous nights HC climb to cold and rain. My cheery demeanour was slipping, with the thought of the 20km bonus decent to get us to the start of the course.
Having discovered the previous day that my long gloves seriously hamper my braking ability when going downhill on the drops I was left wearing every piece of clothing I bought, and fingerless gloves.
Riding through the foothills of The Alps, this countryside was just amazing, and some brief periods of not raining were great. Feed stop 1 went by: miserable cold, and an every man for himself setup. Feed stop 2 was halfway up our first Cat 1 of the day: a climb that topped out at over 2000m.
It took forever to get to, and then instead of the sweet relief of a gentle decent, it was a bit a of a nightmare. Pissing down rain my sanity was slowly ebbing away. I knew feed stop 3 was at the bottom, but as I cycled through yet another village and then another and another I broke down and started to cry.
10km of sobbing later I rolled into the shitty car park that was FS3, which I'm sure would have been quite nice on a sunny day. Ben (one of the tour staff, who are all absolute legends) helped me off my bike with a hug and bundled me into the heated cab of the truck.
Maybe this should have been a more difficult choice- I wasn't injured, and I wasn't shaking uncontrollably (as many others were), but I was not going to get back on the bike. As we drove the rest of the course I knew I'd done the right thing for me. The ascents are one thing, but the fear of descending in the cold and rain, your steering having the wobbles because you're shaking so bad, well I could be tough enough for that on the day.
To everybody who finished the stage, from Caroline who was in one of the front packs showing the boys how it's done, to Katrine-Mari, and Ivo and Ingo who slogged it through to the bitter end, hats off. That was a physical and mental challenge that had to be seen to be believed.
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