Ever heard the one about the cyclist visiting a doctor?

The headaches started last night closely followed by a sore throat. Five days into this thing and the immune system is starting to reject what the body is throwing at it. I woke up out of a slumber to the horrific sound of the alarm clock once again this morning and the last thing I wanted to think about was the unavoidable spectre of four more hours on the saddle. I needed to see a doctor.

Now, before you start leaping to conclusions by putting together the words cyclist, doctor, and medicine, this trip was strictly above board. He was the race doctor, there was no drip, certainly no needles and I came away with something to help my headache and throat but nothing that will help the legs.

The stage itself was flat for a long while before all the hills came to great us near the finish, but for the first 45 minutes I felt awful, doing my best not to throw up whatever was left in my stomach onto the riders around me. Thankfully I was able to hang in ok and gradually I came around, beginning to feel slowly better, or as better as one can expect to be in such conditions.



The cross-winds were strong today and the line-outs came hard and often. The accordion effect of the speeding up and sudden slowing down meant that I could move up the bunch when it eased off before being shoved towards the back when the hammer went down again. If I wasn't biting into an energy bar during the slow downs then I was biting the bars of my bike when the speed went up. A few guys lost out from these terrible changes in speed but I was determined to make it to the 100 kilometre mark with the bunch before the climbing started. If I got shelled out there then I could manage the last 50 kilometres on my own or find a group to ride with.

We hit the first climb -- a third category climb -- hard and I felt it right away. Thankfully it was just a third cat. climb and I was able to haul myself over the top still with the main bunch. The next third category climb I felt a little better and by the first category I felt like Alberto Contador after a day at the local stake restaurant. Alright, so that's a bit of an exaggeration ... I felt good by the standards of the stage and how I thought I'd be feeling this morning and despite going over the climb well for my ability I was still lost ground due to my lack of friendship with gravity.

The bunch fractured a lot here and so I was able to get into a group with some familiar faces including Fraser and my team-mates Dave and Stuart. Unfortunately Conor was five to ten minutes behind having been caught out in one of those dreaded line-outs. I really believe that after this event if I'm ever watching a Rugby game on the television and the commentator mentions the word 'line-out', I'm going to curl up in a ball and shudder with fear.

Another challenge that one does not consider before this kind of an event is relieving oneself of the build up of bodily fluid you take on throughout the day. Really you have two choices: Stop and do the decent thing by peeing into a hedge with the wind behind you, or hoist the shorts up and, on the fly, let loose into the oncoming breeze generated by a moving peloton and risk the baptism of any onlooker who happens to be standing at the side of the road cheering us past. As a decent man I done the safe thing and pulled over to the side of the road. Of course, with this comes the punishment of having to chase back on again which is never easy and only then do you understand the sense in just winging it from the saddle. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Once the climb was behind us we rode firm for a while catching a few more guys and then backed off, rolling lightly in for the last ten clicks.

I was no longer finished than the coughing began and the sore throat returned. I'm loading up with cold and flu tablets now and hope to get some proper sleep in before dinner before an early night. Fingers crossed I feel better tomorrow but the legs feel good so I'm determined to plough on and get to the finish. It's a seriously hard day tomorrow but if I can get over that then we're onto the final day. Just one weekend of hard riding to go and I'll have completed this Ras.

Despite the suffering on the bike and the recent suffering off of it I have to admit that I'm still truly enjoying the experience. I couldn't be riding with a better group of people and we all know that once the heart rates return to normal and the bodies recover that we'll be much better cyclists for it.