Team Monday finally remember how bikes work, PB smashed on the way home

Team Monday arrived home in style, Iain clocking the quickest return leg the Tour has yet seen at 24.2 km/h, full time-trial pace from the first turn of the pedals. Gone was the wandering headwind malaise of last time out; this was purpose, and it showed everywhere on the road.

The headline act came late, out along the flat drag towards the top of the ride, where Iain took the Local Legend crown clean off the Hedley Hammer segment. It is a title that sits and waits for months, ignored, until someone finally puts the effort in on a stretch nobody else fancies attacking, and today that someone wore Monday’s colours.

But the number that will have the other teams checking their files was set earlier, out along Byker to Four Lane Ends: a personal best of 7:14, a full 42 seconds quicker than his previous effort there. That is not a shaved fraction, it is a leg being properly emptied on a stretch that usually just gets survived. Everything after it, through Benton Road and the short rollers beyond, was ridden on the fumes of that effort and still came in quick.

The bridge crossing did what bridges do, wind on the beam, a breeze behind and across for most of the leg, gulls somewhere off towards the river as the tyres changed note onto the deck. Warm, dry, nothing to complain about, and a tailwind that Team Monday, for once, actually used properly instead of wasting.

In the general classification Team Friday still lead, untouched at the top, but Team Monday’s charge lifts them to fourth, up from fifth, and closes the gap to a mere 119 seconds per 10 km. Team Thursday drop to fifth as a result. Nobody has taken yellow off Friday yet, but for the first time in a while, Monday look like a team building towards a fight rather than drifting through one.