Team Wednesday time-trial their way to the top of the Tour

There was no messing about today. Team Wednesday sent Iain out at time-trial pace and he simply refused to come back down again, posting the fastest leg of the entire Tour so far at 26.8 km/h. Five personal bests fell in one ride, which for a mid-week team built on short, sharp efforts is about as complete a statement as it gets.

The segment that told the story best was Shields Road Incline, that long false-flat drag out of Byker where legs that felt fine on the bridge start telling a different tale. Iain took it in 3:25, a personal best on a stretch that punishes anyone who has already spent themselves on the climbs before it. It is not a hill in the way Gibson Street is a hill, but it does its damage quietly, and today it did none at all.

Elsewhere the numbers kept coming: personal bests on Coast Road Short, Morning Blast In, Tobacco Sprint and the Coast Rd Cycleway stretch to the railway bridge, some of them well over two minutes quicker than before. Overhead the sky stayed overcast and a following wind did Team Wednesday a favour they will not complain about. Out on the bridge itself the crossing was as exposed as ever, though today it was mercifully quiet, and down on the Quayside the gulls carried on regardless of what the clock was doing.

On general classification, this ride vaults Team Wednesday straight to the top of the Tour, their single leg enough to head the whole field ahead of Team Monday and Team Friday. It is early days yet for a team that only gets one shot a week, but if The Puncheurs can find this kind of form again, the rest of the week has a serious problem on its hands.