After nine days of racing, we had our first rest day close to Tarragona and we enjoyed it a lot. Easy two hours ride in perfect weather with a coffee stop. I would call it peace before a storm.
Our last three days of racing was pretty eventful. Three days ago was a stage for sprinters. So we controlled the stage from beginning. Lars Bak did incredible job pulling most of the stage from the front. In the finale, we could find each other pretty well to form a train for Mark. At the end it didn't worked out perfectly for us. Mark got second, but thats sport.
Stage number 8th was a real nightmare for us. Peter was involved in a mass crash few kilometers after the start. Needed a bike change, it was all the time up and down and full gas racing. We stayed together and after one hour it all calmed a bit down, but It costed a lot of energy both of us to reconnect with front group again anyway. The finale was really explosive with cat. 1 climb near the finnish, so the GC guys had their go. To make everything even more difficult, Peter got stomach problems thru the whole day, so he just tried to limit the losses. He managed to stay in top ten overall.
Yesterday was another hard and hot day with seven categorisied climbs. It was a selective race , but at the end there was almost no changes in GC. Martin had also his job to do during these stages. Keep Peter and TJ near the front and well rehydrated during the difficult moments. Very weird thing happened to him. In one of the ascents when he was coming up with jersey full of bottles, spectator accidantly kicked him in chest, so he went down again. He picked up also some kind of flu, so just taking it day by day and trying to survive and help the team.

greetings
Martin and Peter