Matthew Teggart’s Rás Diary – Stage 7 Donegal to Ardee
The weather played a big factor on today’s stage. It was a typical Rás day. Everybody was feeling pretty low at the start with the rain bouncing off the ground. It was a long stage aswell and everybody is tired at this stage.
We planned on whittling down the bunch today as we thought it would be safer for one thing. After driving it for a while, we got the bunch down to about 60. Then about 12 of us got up the road including Damien, Mark Downey and the yellow jersey. The Aussies missed out though.
We started to pull out a gap and at one stage, we were told it was 50 seconds. I thought it was the break of the day, but then our gap came down to 45, 40, 30 seconds as the Aussies chased behind. I was told that the Australian team car had shot up the side of the bunch to give the riders hell and make sure that we were chased down.
After we were caught, Regan got away with four others and that was the winning move. To be honest, I was happy to see it go as my legs were fairly tired after a lot of attacking in the first half of the stage.
We had a real strong tailwind today and the pace was high. We ended up with an average speed of 47 kilometres per hour. Part of the reason for the fast speed was that the weather was so bad, that everyone just wanted to get the stage over with as soon as possible.
Coming into the finish, it was a bit dodgy. We were riding with low pressure in the tyres but even still, you could feel it being a bit slippy on some of the bends. On one of the roundabouts near the finish, I was up near the front trying to stay out of trouble when five guys slid out in front of me.
I just said to myself, “no braking, no sudden movements” and I somehow slipped through the middle of them. I decided to back off at that point and not contest the sprint. At the finish though, somebody let a wheel go meaning we lost six seconds. That meant Mark Downey, who’s one of my best mates from home, is just a second behind me on GC. He said he’s going to try and get that second tomorrow!
After laughing about Kasper and Damien losing their Oakleys during the week, today it was my turn. I had them stuck into my helmet as I couldn’t see with them on because of the rain. After about 10 kms, they flew off my head. There were no spectators around so somewhere on the route there’s a €200 pair of Oakleys.
Tomorrow’s stage is short so that means it’ll be fast. There are a couple of hard climbs along the way and Black Hills on the finishing circuit is tough, so I think it might be a group of just 30 or 40 at the finish which would suit me.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Skerries is always pretty special and I’ll have lots of family at the finish. We’ll be looking to give it a final go.
SUPER WEEK.