After stage 2: 166km Utrecht to Zelande
ZELANDE: As the early nerve-racking days of the Tour de France unravel, I'll be keeping my eye out for something that I noticed in the first open road stage on Sunday.
That being how the leaders from some teams that would normally be organised were happy to surf off the Team Sky train as we upped the tempo in the first half of the helter-skelter 166km second stage from Utrecht to Zelande, forcing the race to split - which isn't normally how it works.
Some of those leaders who were marking us would usually sit with their own team.
Why did they not this time?
I can only assume that it was just so hectic and hard for teams to get organised in a stage that saw the weather Gods throw everything at the peloton that those leaders - who I won't name - felt that rather than call on their team to get organised in a train of their own, it was a better option to get a ticket and ride ours.
On a stage like Sunday's, which dished out strong winds, rain and hail before it finished in sunshine, they probably knew Sky would be organised with the team we have brought for this race.
In the end, it was still a fantastic day for us with our hope for the Tour win, Chris Froome, being one of only three of the overall contenders to make that final split - Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Tejay van Garderen (BMC) being the others.
But I don't think what happened on Sunday will be isolated to that one day in the Netherlands. The uncertainty and trepidation that was felt in the bunch then is destined to continue right up to the stage nine team time trial on Sunday.
Sunday's stage was probably as stressful a day as you are going to get, and the massive crowds made that stress higher. It's nice that so many people are coming out to support us and everything, but gosh it was dangerous.
They crowds move back as we approach, but many leave their kids there standing and then there are people leaning out to take photos. I am surprised there went more crashes, to be honest.
The only thing that was close to certain on Sunday was that the hammer would go down as it did when the peloton reached the road junction at the 108km mark.
However, that a crash happened just before then made that less straightforward. Hence, soon after, the final group of 24 riders formed and rode away to the finish.
I was one of those left behind, and finished in that second group at 1 minute 28 seconds behind .
But it was interesting to see how the group I was in reacted to the move.
It's a massive mental switch-off when you know your team are up the road and you have done what you have got to do for the day, compared to the Astana and Movistar boys who were just going nuts trying to pull it back and stop their leaders – Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Nairo Quintana (Movistar) – from losing the time that they did.
For me, it didn't matter that I was back in that group then. On the flatter classic style stages like Sunday's there is not a lot I can really do with we have big riders like Ian Stannard, Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe to do that hard, griding work up front.
My main job is going to be to help Chris in the mountains later in the Tour.
So my goal now is to get to the mountains in as good a nick as I can - and without crashing, because trying to recover from a crash as well as accumulated fatigue is going to knock you around.
* Australian Team Sky rider Richie Porte is racing his fourth Tour de France
