On stage 17 of the 2017 Giro, I found myself halfway up, on what was our second ascent of, the iconic Stelvio. I had been dropped from the break, and then dropped from the chasing peloton. I was completely hunger flat and was riding in silence with a group of other broken men on what would be a 7-hour day on the bike.
Suddenly, in an abrupt breaking of that silence, my director, Fabrizio Guidi, came on the radio and, in his Italian accent, said, “Dumoulin has just stopped… he has just stopped to take a shit!” It’s a moment I will never forget — Fabrizio was laughing over the radio, and so was I. On this grueling stage, the race’s leader had to pull over and crap. What made it even more impressive was that, despite doing this, he managed to hold on to the race lead.
This is how demanding doing a grand tour is on the body. The stress of racing doesn’t just kill your legs; it can also wreak havoc on your guts, especially in this era of heavy doses of carbohydrates.
In 2017, I would regularly race on 30–40 g of carbohydrate per hour. In many ways, it was awful and you finished most days cross-eyed, but it was definitely easier on your stomach. Instead of having to digest upwards of 120 g per hour, your gut would more often be screaming for any morsel of food. Hunger flatting was a terrible experience, but over time, you learned to manage it, push through it, and even squeeze out some superlative performances. I definitely don’t want to go back to those days, but racing under-fueled was far more of a mental game, and I actually enjoyed that aspect.
One of my favorite former teammates, Alex Howes, said to me when messaging after yesterday’s stage, “[carbs are] definitely part of the reason why the young guns can come from juniors and go straight to the top. They don’t need 10 years of bonking before they’re in the game.” It was a line I saw fully displayed a few hours earlier.
For the first time since we started this grand tour, stage 10 finally saw us ride into the mountains. This race had certainly been lacking in the climbing department, but it made up for it in spades on yesterday’s stage. With eight categorized climbs and a strong chance of the breakaway winning, I was tickled pink to finally not be getting my ass kicked by rouleurs.
From the drop of the flag, I felt great. I moved well and had a lightness in my pedal stroke. On the day’s first climb, I was certain I would find my way into the break — and I did. However, despite my great sensations, the pace of this stage was insane.
The IPT boys managed to stack the break with three riders — myself, young Joe Blackmore, and Alexy Lutsenko — and as we sped up and down the first categorized climbs, I was optimistic about our chances for the day. The only issue was the unrelenting pace set from behind in the peloton. Due to this pace, we were forced to push on in the break. EF, with Ben Healy, Harry Sweeny, and Alex Baudin in the move, and incentivized to ride Ben into yellow, took up much of the work. In a pre-high-carb era, the speed at which we rode would have been unsustainable, but instead, we just pushed harder on the pedals and pushed down the gels.
(Here is what I ate for the day on Stage 10)
The Dumoulin Moment
After each successive climb, my confidence and power began to wane. We were flying, and maybe it is the fact that I am so under-raced (due to a collarbone fracture and illness) this season, or maybe that I am just getting old, but I couldn’t believe how fast we went. Finally, at about the 135 km mark of the stage, my legs began to cramp, and my stomach started to gurgle. I was spent, and all I could do was watch as Healy, chasing down Quinn Simmons, pulled Thymen Arensman, Michael Storer, Ben O’Connor, and the stage’s eventual winner, Simon Yates, away. Defeated and dejected, I rode at a pace I felt I could hold, but the knot in my stomach only got worse. I tried to breathe, I tried to ride through it, but I was hit with the realization that I was about to have my Dumoulin moment.
Now, doing a number two on the side of the road, at the Tour de France, is just not really possible. There are too many people. Even stopping for a pee is challenging enough. So, as I started to think, “Am I going to shit my pants?” I had a wonderful realization: “RVs have toilets!” and the Tour has more RVs than Burning Man. Within seconds, I was riding past an RV, and I shouted, “Toilette, toilette, toilette!”
To the poor, very kind, and dumbfounded man who opened his RV door to me, I want to first say thank you, but also apologize profusely for the state I left your bathroom in. Let’s just say, 120 g of carbs per hour for four consecutive hours does not come out nicely.
As a crowd of confused fans watched, I finally, and embarrassingly, left the campervan, I jumped back on my bike and realized I had no idea where I was in the race relative to the rest of the peloton. I’d been in the camper for longer than I care to admit (unlike Dumoulin I didn’t have a jersey to defend and was in less of a rush), and when a group of riders caught me, I told Julian Alaphilippe, “I have no idea if I’m still in front of the peloton or behind.” I explained why, we both laughed, and then talked about how much easier racing used to be.