Coming around in Lisdoovarna

Stage 3: Tubbercurry - Lisdoonvarna, 156 km Again, we had a super fast day in the RAS for the third stage, riding 160km in 3hours 30minutes - pretty smoking fast. Given the speed you would have thought that it would be a tougher day, but it was tailwind and riding in the bunch was easy.

Yesterday saw a shake up on the GC and the Recycling Team taking the overall lead; they are about the only team at the race strong enough to control the field. With a climb 20km from the finish it was a fair bet that things were going to stay together until the base, at which point all hell was going to break lose. And that's the way it happened.

On the run -in to the climb we ran along the coast on some super narrow and 'heavy' (rough) roads, as the Irish would say, with everyone battling for position in the gutter. Zach was caught in a crash along this section which was a bummer; he hasn't had much luck these past couple of days.

I got to the bottom of the climb in great position and from there it was all out for 2km. At the top 11 riders, including all the GC guys like Newton and Elliot, had split off the front and it was a group of 20 of us left to chase. There wasn't much interest in getting back up to the front in the group so we didn't make it back to the front. But with only 5km ot the finish the race was still on. With just on 2km to go Andrew Roche and I got away from our group, holding them off as we sprinted to the line with them hot on our heels.

So, the legs seem to have come back after a crummy day yesterday, now it is time to see what I can do in the rest of this RAS.

results

1 Chris Newton (GBr) Recycling.co.uk 3.29.55
2 Malcolm Elliott (GBr) Trinity Capital
3 Malte Urban (Ger) Stevens von Hacht
4 Morten Hegreberg (Nor) Sparebanken Vest
5 Tim Barry (Irl) Dan Morrissey
6 Stephen Gallagher (Irl) Grant Thornton
7 Evan Oliphant (GBr) Scotland
8 Gabriel Rasch (Nor) Sparebanken Vest
9 John Tanner (GBr) Trinity Capital
10 Yanto Barker (GBr) Stena
11 Robin Sharman (GBr) Recycling.co.uk
12 Andrew Roche (Irl) Worldwide Cycles 0.41
13 Andrew Randell (Can) Jet Fuel Coffee
14 Simon Kelly (Irl) Nucleus
15 Daniel Lynch (Irl) Kanturk
36 Kevin Miller (Can) Jet Fuel Coffee 1.25

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