By Cam Bayly ??@cameronbayly Sorry for the delay of the last stage diary, it was pretty busy straight after the race with packing bikes and luggage, late dinner and in bed for a 5am departure for a flight to Kuala Lumpur. ?I’m now sitting at the KLIA with 15 hours to kill before my midnight flight tonight back to Adelaide. So there is no better time to get started! Well yesterday morning I woke up feeling a little crook in the gut, something didn’t agree with me the night before, but at least I could still get some food down for breakfast. ?The race was a little later today at 1pm, but still a good couple hours earlier than the day before. ?It meant we had some time to kill in the morning to sleep in and play some music to Rico’s disgust (apparently he is more of a classical man), I think he’s just showing his age a bit. ?I also had a little bathroom injury in the morning, I swung around to reach for some toilet paper and smacked my elbow on the ceramic toilet paper holder. ?It really wasn’t that bad, but I kept complaining about it and asking for sympathy from Rico just to annoy him, as he could barely bend over without his ribs and the rest of his body in severe pain from his 2 crashes in 2 days. The race today was only 103km and the first 70km were on roads, but the rest was done around a short circuit. ?I was feeling a little worse for wear, so I just stayed in the car with the air con on until the last moment before race start. ?Once we got going I didn’t actually feel too bad, my legs felt suprisingly good for the 10th day of the tour, especially with a funny gut. ?Just before the flag dropped in the neutral section I got a flat, quick change and I was back on and chasing. ?Luckily I had a nice long descent that I could bomb down sling shotting off the slipstream from the cars to get back on to the peloton quite quickly. ?Straight away I moved up ready to follow some moves, it was a very unlikely scenario that a break would stay away, but why not, it’s the last day. ?I followed a couple but none were sticking, so I sat back a bit before having a little chat to Damien Howson. ?Both Damo and I ended up doing a big flyer attack from the back of the peloton, as we came up to the TPT train with a lot more speed than them, they looked over and accelerated up to the same speed as us sprinting from the outside and stayed at the same pace until we backed off. ?The TPT train then continued to go back to a nice comfortable pace of 50kph on the front. ?This kept going one after the other until finally they let a 2 man move get a very small gap for a while, once the 2 riders were up the road it was back to sitting single file in the peloton behind TPT dictating the pace. It was a repeat of the day before, a solid pace that was not very comfortable to sit at, but no one was going to get dropped. ?Before we got to the circuit, the move had been brought back and by this time a couple of Astana and Belkin riders came up to take over the control of the peloton. ?Once we got into the circuit Eric, Rico and I felt a little more at home. ?We were easily able to move up and sit good position through all the twists and turns, a handy skill we have learnt from so many crits back in Australia. ?Rico had already come up and told me he was feeling terrible on the bike and was in too much pain to get out of the saddle, this meant that Eric and I could be free to have a little crack ourselves. ?I was sitting good position and decided that I was going to have a little dig off the front just before we got to a technical section over a paved road with 2 laps to go. ?I went for it but once I hit the wind I had nothing, I felt empty and quite quickly had to settle back into the peloton. ?Eric managed to follow a couple of moves, but nothing ever got much of a gap and it was obvious it was going to come down to a bunch sprint. After my one little effort I was empty, I managed to just finish at the back of the splitting peloton before the finish, while Eric, Rico and Au Huat just rolled through mid pack. Overall this tour has been a good experience, while the team has had some ups and downs overall the team has had a pretty good tour with a podium placing, held the asian jersey for a while, held the sprint jersey for a while and a number of top 5 finishes. ?Overall my performance was nothing to rave about, having said that the race was never a suitable race for me to really do well unless I found myself in one of the two early breaks that stayed away and unfortunately sometimes that’s just the luck of the draw. ?Lucky for us both those days we still had a rider in the break. It’s now time to head on back home to Adelaide and get some good training in before my next block of racing, I’m motivated and ready to start getting some results. Thank you to those who read my daily blog (if there was anyone besides my mum) Until another time! Cameron
