From Limon to Guapiles, stage 7 was mostly rainy. Cory and David from Ride for the Planet team were in the move.
By Cory Wallace
After the altercation the evening before, Stage 7 started with the Yellow Jersey team protesting the race and pulling themselves from the competition. I don't know the whole story behind it so won't make any assumptions or uneducated comments on this. It was a sad day for the race nonetheless to lose the competition from this team. The race itself was a flat day as we raced 135 km back up the Caribbean coast to the town of Guappiles. The day started with a flurry of attacks and eventually a lead group of 10 was off the front, another chase group of 8 including my teammate David was in no mans land and then myself and two other riders opted to get into the action. The 3 of us would chase for 1.5 hours and finally catch Davids group to make a chase group of 11. This is where road racing gets weird as only 4 out of the 11 of us were doing any work in the group as the other guys just sat on. After all the effort attacking to get up the road I don't understand why these guys would just want to cruise all of a sudden. Nonetheless we eventually got caught by the main peloton about 15 km from the finish and then the guys that just sat in the peloton all day out of the action had the freshest legs for the sprint. Road racing is a weird game when your use to the pureness of mountain biking in which results are generally reflective of who has the best fitness and can grit there teeth the hardest. After the finish we road around trying to find our team car and then we drove and road around trying to find the hotel for the night. We did circles around town for an hour before coming to our home for the night. Eventually we settled in for the normal afternoon routine of rice and beans, massages, naps, more rice and beans, and then finding a way to clean our laundry. On top of eating rice and beans the Ticos serve us a different coloured sugary drink with every meal. Today was the green one, we think its kiwi juice but no one really ever knows. Tomorrow its back to the mountains.
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