Pots of gold? Cold Showers.

I've been officially "guttered" since stage 3 and it seems to only have gotten worse. Yesterday's stage five marked a return for typical Irish Ras weather... A ridiculous amount of wind and rain hit the peloton from the start along the coast and it shattered the field up the first climb. Normally this would not be a problem for me but I started in a rather precarious mood and that meant not dealing with raging cross winds and cold very well. I ended up relegated to the last group within about 20k or so. The roads were absolutely brilliant, though. They were picturesque Ireland - rolling and narrow through the hills and fields with with stone-wall fences spanning the vibrantly green landscape. The last 50 kilometers actually took us over some large exposed climbs. At that point my group was thoroughly drenched and miserable just pushing it's way up and over the misty mountains heading towards the coast which also meant plowing through a stiff headwind. The penultimate climb of the day was a narrow and roughly paved goat-path of a road. It was a Category 1 climb with a 20 percent grade (think the steepest part of Sugarlands road by the cemetery) for two kilometers. The guys running 11/23's were quickly spit out the back as well as anyone without extra soft compound rain tires. The caravan vehicles were spinning tires around all the switchbacks.

On my way up, many minutes out of contention, I noticed all the trickling streams flowing down the mountain beside me and thought, "Oh, I get the whole Irish Spring Clean thing now". Yeah, product of commercial brainwashing I suppose but I'll probably think about that stream every time I see a bar of Irish Spring soap. Over the top of the Cat one sent us sailing down an unbelievably sketchy decent. The road was narrow, strait and windy as hell. I must have hit close to 60k an hour. Luckily I was alone as the deep dish carbon wheels I was running were all but stable in the crosswind.

I finished the day soaked, cold and sore dreaming of a hot shower. Since foreign countries are rife with inconvenience that dream was quickly dashed as I was greeted with 30 seconds of luke warm followed by cold.

Today was an easy and beautiful 97k stage that took us almost all the way North.

Two to go. 167k tomorrow and 177k for stage eight on Sunday. I'm feeling rough but I'm still in it...

Hey Matt Marcus and Jason Cyr! Flipping good work at Tour de Lake last Sunday!

Time to roll into bed for me. There are a bunch of drunk Irish couples getting crooked in the lobby. I've found it tough and a bit funny just trying to understand the Irish accent since I've been here but when they're drunk, which seems to be often you can forget about even trying to understand them! Ok, I'm really out now. The hotel pub just started blaring Garth Brook's "achy breaky heart". You can only imagine what the people singing along sound like...