by My hernia recovery is almost complete – I’ve had a couple of twinges when stretching or moving awkwardly which have set me back a couple of weeks, but the wound is fully healed. It’s just a case of being patient and letting the internal layers knit back together. It’s been pretty difficult, especially with the recent warm weather, to not get on the bike, especially when I got them out of the shed the other day to brush all the cobwebs off! But I’m going away in a couple of weeks and need to be able to drive, so I don’t want to push it just in case I set it back.
In the meantime I’ve had the Tour de France to distract me. The GC has been pretty boring – none of the other teams can touch the Team Sky mountain train. Froome has massively gone up in my estimation with his attacks on the descent of the Col de Peyresourde and his attack with Sagan on stage 11. His time trialling is obviously a level above the other GC contenders regardless and Quintana, notably, has been very quiet. It’s great to see Adam Yates performing so well at this level though, hopefully he’ll be a contender in future years.
The main event for me has been Cavendish being back to his best. You would not believe how happy I was when he won the first stage and clinched the maillot jaune for the first time! The track training seems to have given Cav some of his edge back and it’s been great seeing rack up the stage wins. Patrick Lefevere must be ruing the decision to stop Cav racing on the track whilst he was with Omega Pharma-Quick-Step. I must admit I didn’t think Cav would ever get back to this level but to see him win four stages has been brilliant!