"I would like to thank
all my friends and fans for their support through this year’s
Giro. It has been a hard race from the start and I am happy with
the race. From the get go, my
job was to support Savo and this I did day in and day out. I came
to the race with good form and I showed this by my 5th place general
classification result halfway through the competition, while at
the same time I was working for my leader.
I learned a lot from this race, as my endurance and peloton skills
have improved greatly. By riding along the side of Savo, I learned
how to understand the race much more as a whole. My race became
even more difficult when I came down with a fever and the flu on
stage 12. I fought through this still riding for Savo on the climbs
and keeping him in position for the other stages. Racing 6 hrs.
everyday is hard work and trying to overcome the flu with your
heart rate at 170 all day is really hard work. Every night I would
go to bed with a cold sweat and wake up the next morning ready
to fight another day weak as a kitten. My health really took a
turn for the worst in stage 16 as a sinus infection set in along
with my fever because of my weakening immune system. I still pushed
on thinking the next day I would wake up and it all would be gone.
Full of medicine and antibiotics I was really weak. I rode stage
17 in the freezing rain and that night bronchitis joined to make
a trio of forces against me.
Seeing the end of the race near, I had a
lot of motivation and wanted to show I could fight both the incredibly
hard race and
the family of critters living inside of me. Stage 19 was the end
for me. My bronchitis had cleared up, and so had my sinuses, but
this virus was worse then ever. From the beginning my body was
shutting down as my immune system needed more energy to fight this
thing. My head, however, had other plans and I fought through to
be there for Savo and pulled him the whole last climb, after 7
hrs of racing, to finish just over a minute behind Basso and Simoni.
I was too focused on doing my job and was not listening to my body.
That night I became the most ill I have ever become as I had no
more energy left to
fight this virus off. |
