How does one feel the day before their first Grand Tour? Joburg-born and bred Daryl Impey is racing the Giro d’ Italia which kicks off tomorrow. In his first blog, he fills us in on what goes on the day before the start of the longest race of his life.
- By Daryl Impey
Hi guys, I am hoping that you will find my blogs during the Giro d’Italia interesting and entertaining and more importantly that I can keep you up to date as much as possible.
As most of you know, this is my first Grand Tour ever so I am pretty nervous as I am not sure how my body is going to react to a 3-week stage race. The longest Tour I ever did was the Tour of Portugal in 2008 which was 2 weeks long so it’s just another week right?! The final week is quite heavy on the body but at the end of the day, its the same for everyone and we’re all going to arrive tired at the end.
I have done some great races leading up to the Giro d’Italia and my condition is good. My team Orica-GreenEDGE will also be making their first grand tour appearance and all the boys are looking good. I am proud to be a part of this team here and we have a really good chance of some stage wins this year. Our team is not riding for a GC rider so our objectives are stage wins.
Yesterday was my first day in Horsens, Denmark and we’ll be up here for the first 3 stages before making our way down to Italy. We focused on specific Team Time Trial drills yesterday and ended up with 150km on the TT bikes. We were working on things like who should be the starter, rider order and most importantly one final check up on our TT equipment as we won’t have much time on the rest day on Tuesday.
Now that all the hard work is out the way, we’re off for a final 2 hour easy ride and then get ready for the Giro presentation and finally come back for a nice massage, dinner and then race time the following day.
Last night I had time to catch up with Robbie Hunter and it’s great that he’s going to be racing the Giro as well. I know between the 2 of us we can make SA proud.
Cheers from Denmark
Daryl
Born and bred in Johannesburg, Daryl Impey has come a long way since he first signed with SA pro team Microsoft in 2003. He has since ridden for Team Barloworld, Radioshack and NetApp and most recently Orica-GreenEDGE. Daryl will be blogging exclusively for Bicycling for the duration of the Giro d’Italia, giving us an insight into what goes in to such a big event. Log on daily. The 2012 Giro (Tour of Italy) kicks off on Saturday 5 May in Herning, Denmark, and ends three weeks later in Milan.
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