Garmin TransPortugal Mountain Bike Race
Stage 4 - The Tejo River and beyond
Louize HIll/Agnelo Quelhas / 04.06.2008
The first 25 km of the stage cross open land and olive groves and are flat. The racers worked together in groups to cover the distance as fast as possible, trying to minimise the energy they spend as they all know tomorrow is a hard stage. Dominiek “Domie� Sacre protected Peter “Pepe� Paelinck for this distance, but then suffered for the rest of the stage and by 35 km from the end he was really in pain. He didn\'t have enough time before the race to train properly, and is not doing as well this year as he did last year.
Joâo Marinho, José Silva, Pepe and Ricardo Melo thundered through the village of Perais in a tight pack, hot on the tail of Leon van den Schoor who was riding alone. By the time they hit the next off road section they had closed the gap on him and all finished ahead of him. When Leon finished he said he too had been suffering, feeling the accumulated tiredness in his muscles which left him with no strength and he had found the stage very hard.
After the section of flat there is a more undulated section of about 30 km, down to the River Tejo. Much of this area was river bed in the past, and so the terrain is sandy with lots of loose stones. Streams have cut deep valleys, so not only is this section shaky, it is also continuous up and down. Jonas Larsson said he found all these short sharp climbs really hard work.
The route follows the main road across the bridge over the River Tejo with spectacular views downstream of the “Portas de Rodão� cliffs. These two rock walls plunge into the river creating a narrow passage at a place where the river is already quite wide. A short climb up from the bridge and the route heads off road again via a stony descent on to a narrow track above the river bank. The views from here are stunning, only trouble is they are behind the racers, so not many people actually get to appreciate them.
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