Race Days

I'm still sick. But in good news, I found a pharmacy yesterday, and they gave me drugs. Glorious, glorious pseudoephidrine. Graham found 8 cheese pizza, which is a different kind of glorious.

With me all drugged up, we headed for the big screen to watch the Galibier stage. It was an important day for the race, as with such close time gaps, someone needed to start thinking about making a move. Unfortunately, that was Andy Schleck. He put a bit of time on Cadel, but with a couple of stages (including a time trial) to go, it wasn't over yet.

There are so many crazy supporters on Alpe D'Huez – each time they race here they report that hundreds of thousands crowd the sides of the road to watch. When we arrived on Tuesday there were camps that were obviously very well established, and a constant stream of people since then. I didn't get to see the Dutch corner in full swing, but there was a very strong Norwegian and Luxembourg (-er?) contingent near the top. Both fanatic in their own way, the Norwegians always had a flag themed t-shirt or viking ears on, and the Luxembourgers had their faces painted and the Leopard 'O' tattoos on their hands and necks. Both always had a drink in their hands!

Still being sick, just walking down the hill to get a good vantage spot took it out of me. George and Graham wanted to walk a bit further to where the barriers stopped, but Ross and I stopped on a hill on a turn, about 3 kms from the finish (turn 2).

In the house behind where we were sitting lived some very enterprising young women, who had decided to set up a stall selling water, coffee and crepes. Ross bought us a couple of crepes, and reported some very amusing banter between the head and sous chefs.

We were lucky enough to find ourselves sitting next to a french lady who could get live tv of the race on her mobile phone, so we were given constant updates. As the race got closer we could see a fair way down the mountain, and could see the riders coming. At the dutch corner (Turn 9) all you could see was a sea of orange, with a space barely big enough for the riders to come through.

Contador was in the lead when he went past us, with Pierre Rolland (Europcar) and Sammy Sanchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) close behind. Rolland went on to win, which was great, and the rest of the general standing timings were pretty much the same.

This means going into the time trial tomorrow Cadel is 57 seconds behind. Not an insurmountable time gap, but enough to make me incredibly nervous! We're not going to see the time trial live tomorrow – we're leaving at about 5am to make the long trip back to Paris (631km) so we're there for the final stage.