Tour Of Tasmania: Stage Two and Three.

The Tour kicked off in great fashion for the team, with Kemps taking out the win and Bernie also up there on the box.  Can't ask for much more than that!  It was a pretty aggressive first stage with lots of fresh legs ready to throw their hat in the ring and with no real selective climbs ended up a bunch sprint.  The run in to the finish itself was perhaps the most bizarre I have experienced, with under 1km to go turning into what seemed like a driveway wide access road with lots of loose gravel.  Awesome.  Either way we did a great job of taking control and stamping some authority on the race.  

The afternoon's stage  was sure to play havoc with the bunch.  Featuring two significant climbs that no doubt were going to whittle the field down, I was looking forward to seeing how things panned out.  With some ordinary road surfaces, the day didn't start out great for me, flatting my front tire only 10km in.  At this point the pace was on as the early break was trying to establish itself which Tito was able to jump into.  However all this made for a not very fun chase back through the cars back to the bunch, and I wasn't too pumped on using up the energy stores before they were really needed.  Hitting the first 4.5km climb it was game on as expected, shelling much of the field and with an average of 7.5% I to was in the red for all of it.  I scrapped over the top with the lead group and although pretty ragged was happy to make the first selection of the day.  The second major climb was just as nasty and with the legs running on empty at the bottom I got gaped pretty much right at the base thanks to a lightening attack from Dale Parker that split the bunch. It took almost 2km to creep my way into the second group, swapping off with Mark O’Brian who was suffering just as bad. It was a real grovel in the group to the top, but making it over we soon caught the front group once more.  At this point there was around 10km to go, and in making contact again with Bernie the news came in the Camo was going full gas up the road solo!  There seemed to be no major chase and with a fast finish he was home free, taking 1.10sec out of the field and straight into the yellow jersey! 

 Boom! Photo Credit: Shane Goss/Licorice Gallery