Its racing as hard training, they didnt want to leave too big a gap from Catalunya to the Tour without a race in-between for him and he's basically starting from scratch, his form is nearer the 7min he lost the day before, not what he had.
As he also said post stage he got dropped on the first climb,wasn't sure he'd even be in the mix at the end but the team committed to it.
Apparently he wasn't allowed to do any training for 11 days, which is possibly first time in his racing life he'd done that , probably hence the stress fractures on the scan too