Team Friday saunter home, Gibson Street nearly cracks

There was no fireworks display on this Friday leg, but Team Friday found a bit of zip when it mattered. Iain, racing for Team Friday, eased through the ride home in 24:07 at 22.2 km/h, the sort of pace that says the legs were willing even if the day’s mood was strictly weekend-adjacent.

The story of the stage was written on Gibson Street, that short, brutal ramp that is over in under a minute and felt for ten. Iain came in just 2 seconds off his personal best there, then went even closer on the trimmed variant — 1 second down — and matched that margin again on the Half Climb, missing it by a single second. Three near-misses on the same lump of road in the space of a minute is the kind of stat that makes a directeur sportif chew a pen lid. The lights partway up, as ever, had the final say on whether it was a climb or a standing start.

Elsewhere the legs told a gentler tale: Shields Road picked up 47 seconds on last time, and the long drag out along Etherstone and Coach Lane added a few seconds too, the sort of numbers that suggest Friday’s engine was cruising rather than racing. Out on Byker Bridge, the westerly breeze sat behind and across the rider, a rare bit of good fortune on a crossing that usually gives nothing away, while dry skies and a mild 19.9°C kept things comfortable rather than dramatic.

On the general classification, Team Friday now sit second overall at 25.3 km/h, a tidy 49 seconds per 10 km behind the imperious Team Wednesday, who still lead the Tour after their six-PB demolition job. It’s a gap that Gibson Street alone might have closed had those three seconds gone the other way — proof, if any were needed, that in the Tour de Toon, glory and disappointment can share the very same hill.