Team Weekend amble to the slowest leg of the whole Tour, and love it

There was no urgency to this one, and Team Weekend never pretended otherwise. Iain, racing for Team Weekend, produced the slowest leg of the entire Tour at just 6.5 km/h — and yet buried inside that gentle amble were flashes of real quality, a reminder that even a guest-team Sunday ride can throw up a genuine highlight or two.

The standout came on Station Rd, where Iain clocked 14:42 for third best ever on that stretch — a proper number dressed up in a ride that otherwise had nowhere to be. It mattered because it showed the legs were never really the problem today; the pace was a choice, not a limit, with three separate podium-splits (Take the Verge not the Path, Coast Road sprint from cut through, and It doesn’t get smoother than this…) all landing second-best-ever, each just seconds off the outright record. A rider dawdling home does not usually keep finding this kind of form in the sprint pockets.

A westerly wind of 26 km/h sat behind or across for most of the day, dry and mild at 16.8°C, which no doubt helped keep things comfortable rather than heroic. There was time, too, for a first-ever crack at the Slip Road sprint and the speed-bump tests, novelty additions to a route Iain otherwise knows by heart — no mention here of gulls or bridges, just a rider quietly exploring new corners of the map at his own pace.

None of it counts for the general classification, of course — Team Weekend rides for fun, not points — and the table is untouched by today’s meander. Team Friday still lead the Tour at 25.1 km/h across four legs, with Team Wednesday second and closing best of the chasers at 102 seconds per 10 km down. Team Tuesday, Team Monday and Team Thursday round out the group, all still hunting the pace Friday have set. Sunday changed nothing at the top — but it gave the Tour a smile before Monday’s racing resumes in earnest.