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Stage 12 - Friday, July 16 2010, Bourg-de-Péage - Mende, 210 km
July 16, Stage 12: Bourg-de-Peage - Mende 210.5km
1 Joaquin Rodriguez (Spa) Team Katusha 4:58:26
2 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana
3 Alexander Vinokourov (Kaz) Astana 0:00:04
4 Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto 0:00:10
71 Chris Anker Sorensen (Den) Team Saxo Bank 0:04:15
Time to punch the time clock Chris!
Big Day for Chris and he rode very well. He had to ride right at his threshold and above for the first two climbs in order to set pace and keep things together for Saxo Bank. He set a new record for this years Tour with his 60 minute Normalized Power at 358 watts, and that's impressive considering it includes a 17 minute downhill! So, obviously not his best 60 minutes by any means, but still worth mentioning.
Chris didn't have enough firepower to bring back the break and his efforts along with Jens Voigt, Nicki Sorenson Jakob Fuglsang, Matti Breschel, Fabian Cancellara and Stuart O'Grady just couldn't do it, so luckily Lampre and Cervelo pitched in a hand and helped bring the time back from the initial breakaway.
Once over the first two climbs, Chris was done and just rode at tempo up the long Cat 2 climb of Suc De Montrivernoux and the final climbs. He just didn't have much left in him and that was that. Time to limit the losses save some for the next couple of days and get back to the hotel.
Even with Chris shutting off the after burners, he scored 320 TSS, with a normalized power of 303 watts for the entire stages, burned over 5000 kiloCalories and climbed nearly 10,000'
