In the Hurt Bag—Part Two:

After turning myself inside out yesterday I paid today for this effort. I guess some of you have heard of my saying, “Shut up legs.” Well today my body revolted. It protested. My body went on ” just stop working mode.” I think my body was trying to tell me that it had had enough of me yelling at it, had enough of my mind forcing it to do things it was not made for!

And since I struggled more or less all day long just to survive this stage, I started looking for some motivation. But then on the descent of the Port de Bales I found one thing that I kind of knew all along. I probably won’t surprise you when I say that I am not exactly a world-champion descender. I am a “careful” descender (I would not go as far as to say that I am a hopeless descender, just a careful descender).

But the grupetto normally descends pretty fast, because all the riders in there hate the mountains, but they are all pretty skillful in bike handing. And about three corners into the descent Bernie (Eisel) with Cav (Cavendish) passed me. I said, “Please Bernie, don’t drop me on the descent and leave me all alone behind.” And he turned around and said, “No worries, we stick all together here.” And in the process of trying to follow them I actually overtook riders!

Then when things went slower after the descent I rode up to Bernie and said, “Did you see that!? Me, I passed two riders on a descent, I must be a legend! That’s gotta be a first time ever!” And Bernie and Cav started laughing so hard they almost fell off their bikes…little fun things to keep the spirit up.

Source: Hardly Serious with Jens Voigt