After my efforts yesterday I was moved up into the Start Block B. The race started neutralised as always and we rode to Feldkirchen. Shortly after passing through the gun went. The first hill was the same one as yesterday but instead of passing 50 or so riders on the way up the exact opposite happened. My legs felt like they had nothing in them and I crawled up the hill loosing place-after-place. I hung onto a bunch and after maybe 45 minutes of riding and hurriedly downing a few gels my legs came right. I blame too much salad yesterday and not enough Hofer Nussbrot, which is by the way delicious.
Anyway, the bunch rolled along for a while and we could see another group ahead of us. We came to a small climb and my legs felt so frisky that at the top of the climb I towed the rest of the bunch for a while until we caught up to the guys in front of us. Soon afterwards we took a right for the “Gurker Dom ascent”. This one has been in, I think, every Tour de Kärnten that I’ve done. It winds up the hill for about 5km followed by a speedy descent. I managed not to die horribly and caught up to the front guys just after the descent.
The next major climb was at 71 km and it continued up for about 14 km. My legs were still ok. It had started to rain a bit by this stage and by the time we got to the unsealed section at the top it was raining quite a bit. Last year the descent here was very quick but with water everywhere we took it much more slowly. I had ridden off the front at the summit and descended a bit back from one other guy. A few others caught up and after more descending and a bit of rolling we came up to the last climb and caught up to the remnants of another bunch that had been in front of us.
The climb went ok and my legs continued to work unlike some previous years although the climb started from about half-way like last year but unlike 2013, 2014, and 2016. I had warmed up a bit by the top but it was raining heavily. Leonie was waiting there and after a bit of food we rode back to the Ossiacher See.
A nice stage but a pity that my legs were so weak on the first climb. Maybe I’ll end back in C tomorrow. Hopefully the weather improves for tomorrow too…
Above: The height profile for the stage.
Above: Strava says.
Tour de Kärnten – Stage 4 “Lokalrunde” Time: 03:32:52.2 Dst: 98km Avg: 27.5 km/h Max: 72.7 km/h Overall Men: 162 Category Place: 86
