Tour of Sweden – day 10
It was a special treat to spend a second night in the same room. Packing and unpacking, along with sink laundry, is just one of the daily chores of stage riding which adds to the overall sense of fatigue.
I popped down to the breakfast room for coffee and cereal at 6:30 am then met with Clas for a run at 8:00. I was concerned as I felt pretty icky after the greasy Mongolian buffet last evening, but once we got underway I felt pretty good. We ended up running 58:30, showered then had second breakfast to fuel up for the ride.
Our 87.5 mile ride started at 10:30 am. We were greeted with a fine mist, wet roads, 50 degree temps made colder by a strong, but thankfully favorable wind. We rolled out of town easy then opened it up once we hit the highway. I was concerned how my legs would handle a day off of the bike, having read how professional cyclist always ride on their rest days, but today the legs were good. Unfortunately, not for everyone. As the road climbed up through the northern forest, we lost a few off of the back, then a few more had to sit on so as not to get dropped. Bjorn motored away not to be seen again until the hotel. At a piss stop, Clas also left us to ride on solo so as to keep warm. During the stop, Joakim told me if we listened carefully we’d hear banjo music coming from deep in the woods where surely there was a still cooking up some 180 proof nightmare for a reindeer poacher and his kinfolk.
That left only a few of us left to work the front but it went fine and we averaged 22.5 mph for our “short” day, despite quite a bit of climbing. We checked in, got out of our wet gear, showered then walked over to a nearby pool. Jonas has been able to reserve lanes for us almost daily, and the facilities are always gracious in giving us our own lanes. Again, the doodes did their real workout while the other half of us swam easy. This pool had an aluminum body which was cool to look at and made for snappy flip turns. They also had a Jacuzzi. The jets were on some sort of random timer. Nicolas was quite surprised to find he was sitting on the main jet when it came on suddenly.
We walked back to the hotel just in time for dinner. I talked the receptionists into posing for Slowtwitch, and their lovely photo can be found in the Tour of Sweden thread on the triathlon forum. After dinner, we got our matching kits to wear on the next good weather day, hopefully tomorrow. The custom Tour of Sweden design kits won’t arrive until after we’re done, but Craft sent us matching kits out of inventory so we can have a team photo. And yes, the team photo will likely lack red bull podium girls but you can always click over to your favorite porn site if your office administrator isn’t looking.
