Tour of Southland 2012

After a long season overseas its always hard to pick up the motivation for 'southland' just for the fact that its such a brutally hard tour with the Xwinds and rain and everything else in between !!

For myself I was extremely lucky to be riding with a group of mates on Ascot Park Hotel-Kia Motors Southland-NZ bike Mag (long name, i know)

As a lot of us said through out the week, this team was far more organised and looked after better than a lot of teams in Europe, - from the quality food (steaks)(nutella & banana sandwich's for on the bike) to the massages, and the team hair dresser !

Nelson crew 2012

Racing itself was really good. We had 6 guys all pretty much with reasonable form willing and able to lay it down, and throw a bit of spice around !

Prologue:  4.2km It's always hard to pull off a good result in the teams TT, because the body and mind aren't ready to fire up. but I think we left it all out on the road and came within 6 secs of the fastest teams. Which we were pretty happy with. (6th)

Stage 1: 160km finishing in Lumsden, this stage always has the potential to be ripped apart near the end if the wind gets going in the last 40km. but it stayed calm and myself and Sean Joyce pulled back the remnants of the E.B and set it up for our Sprinters Clint and Piet...(3rd & 4th)

Stage 2 (Bluff): Was always going to be a hard day at the office, our plan from the get go was to try and slip either myself or little Sean in the E.B
Eventual after the heat from the start died off Sean went at the perfect time and slipped into a good sized break with only Subway not up there. This moved stayed away to win the stage. Which has never really happened before but we were still ok

Stage 3: '48km Smash fest' from Riverton to Tuatapere. This stage always had danger signs around it when the wind was going mental before the start. It took a while to get the break formed though. As it split on a fast descent we had 4 guys in the front group of less than 20. This looked really promising for us so I drove in hard trying to set up the stage and get some time gaps for Sean and our Sprinters.
In the end the chase group caught us with 2km to go.
Clinton took 2nd in the stage but we were happy with moving Sean into 5th on GC

Stage 4: Tuatapere-Te Anau 100km Really hard stage with a decent little climb at the 50km mark that normally chops the bunch in half. then 50km of X-wind into Te Anau. but Node4 had the early break under control and there was never much danger on this stage. So when it all came back together with 3km we were in with a grin. When Clint took the last turn into town in around 5th wheel I knew he had it...Stage Win !

Stage 5 (Crown Range) 180 km:
After a mint night chilling on a boat cruise, we had to tackle the Queen Stage.
My job for the day was to make the E.B, but in the first 15km the pace was so fast I couldn't get to the front. Luckily I took my jacket off cooled down then went to the front and got across to 'the break'
This break ended up being a suicide mission, because Node4 were never going to let us get too far in front. I decided I would go for all the Sprint and KOM point on offer. In the end a few of the guys in the break way group started getting pissed off, but thats racing !

Stage 6 (Gore): Last year, this was a bloody hard day. This year was the same. it was split into bits and pieces after 20 km and luckily it slowed down upfront about an hour later... A group of 4 got away with Clinton in there, so our job was pretty straight forward look after Little Sean and Piet and make sure that when it splits they stay in the front group...With 25 km to go Node4 went on the attack to unsettle Bissell and we had Sean and Piet well positioned to follow the moves (hard day at the office)

Stage 7 (ITT): For me I didn't go to hard, just to save the legs for 'the arvo' but unfortunately for the team Sean crashed unexpectedly on the greasy right hander. This bumped him down the GC and left  the team gutted.

TTT WarmUp

Stage 8 (Back to Invers from Winton): Everyone in the Peloton knew this would be a hard 1. But i didn't think it would rip to bits so early on. but hats off to Calder Stewart and Roly for playing their cards right. and shattering the bunch. and then TTing away from the yellow jersey.
We were a little bit gutted about how the final day panned out but to be honest we didn't have a lot left in the tank. 

Now that I have finished this blog update, its probably time to forget about cycling for a bit and go into hibernation ('get euro' and pretend its winter).

Huge Thanks to Avanti + Richmond for getting me onboard this Scott Foil 

Huge thanks to all managers/support staff, Team Sponsors (Peter, Bobby, Matt). Mum&Dad for coming down to watch. And everyone else that makes it such a mint week.