The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 6

On Wednesday Catherine and I played the next two stages of our Flamme Rouge Tour de France. Both stages were relatively flat.

Stage 12 runs from Aurillac to Villeneuve-sur-Lot. This starts with a useful descent, but is then a flat run with three small cobblestone sections.

I took a risk and put my Sprinteur into the breakaway. Naturally the red rouleur joined him.

The weather consisted of a tailwind followed by a patch of rain. The rain was on a fairly open stretch of the stage, though, with little chance of crashes.

My sprinteur got off to an OK start, but found himself alone in second place, picking up a lot of exhaustion cards. My rouleur somehow ended up at the back. Mind you, so did Catherine's sprinteur.

As we neared the home-stretch I pushed my sprinteur forward. My rouleur responded by lagging even further behind.

A win for my sprinteur, but at the cost of a heap of exhaustion cards. In this shot my rouleur is still last, but I put on a burst of speed at the end and managed to finish eighth. Catherine picked up a third place but her sprinteur was eleventh. 

This put me into the lead on team points, but only by a margin of two. And both of my riders were now loaded down with exhaustion cards after a race in which I found both of them running alone for a lot of the time.

Stage 13 is similar to the last one. It runs from Agen to Pau. It lacks the descent of Stage 12 but has a supply zone in a similar position. There are two small cobblestone sections. So this would be another sprint.

The weather consisted of a crosswind on the supply-zone, which would prevent any early race slipstreaming, and a headwind a little further on. Red and blue took the breakaway.

The peloton team (white) dominated the race, pushing ahead early on and staying there until at least halfway. Catherine got herself up front as well, whilst my exhaustion cards caught up with me and left me lagging in the rear group.

The positions hadn't changed that much as we headed towards the run for the finish.

Despite appearances at this stage, with that front group almost at the finish, blue finished well. Catherine won, and my rouleur picked up second place. However my sprinteur brought up the rear, whilst Catherine's finished mid-table.

So at the end of Stage 13 I am still ahead of Catherine (by one point) but blue had taken the lead

Team Scores are:

Blue (Bot team) - 185
Pink (Me) - 183
Green (Catherine) - 182
White (Peloton) - 169
Red (Bot team) - 153
Black (Gruppetto) - 64

So red is beginning to look like it's going to pick up last place (the gruppetto doesn't really count, being more moveable terrain than an actual team), but the first place is still up for grabs. White is starting to slip, thanks to a poor shoeing in Stage 12, but may come back in later stages; the Peloton is full of surprises.

We're into some serious mountains for the next two stages.