Tour de Timor
Stage 2
After a solid day in the saddle shredding the gnar for 130kms I was deffinately feeling a little worse for wear, but with Neil in Yellow and myself in the Dots performance wasn't a question of maybe, it was a must.
The stage from Baucau to Loihuno was a shorter stage of 65kms with steady winding climbs over the moutain range with a 20km decent (with a few undulating pinches) to the finish in the village of Loihuno. The climbs were mostly on bitchuman but the decent was on some of the harshes off road conditions I've seen.
The plan was to keep Neil in Yellow, so Pete and I became domestiques, with the aim to control the pace and cover as many break attempts as possible. So with the first 40kms up hill the pace needed to be high. With myself on the front driving the pace, Pete was kept on his toes by covering all the breaks. Pete did a fantastic job covering the only break that got away, and thanks to his efforts the day was definately a success for us. Beeing such a difficult stage to defend the yellow we only lost a tiny bit of time over our closest rival at the time in Ben Mather and we lived to ride in Yellow for another day.
With Pete and myself in the Box from the gun it was no surprise that our overall GC was going to blow out as we would ride ourselves into the wall in order to get Neil as close to the line as possible as protected as possible. Having said that Neil was definately the stronger rider and this was no holiday for him either, when the breaks would get more frequent towards the top of the mountain it was neil that was having to cover while I was busy running on fumes, hitting the red zone. Yep the King of the Mountain wasnt going to be able to defend his jersey in these sircumstances, and Pete and myself were more then happy do sacrifice our results for Neils chance at taking the event out.
ScottyL
After a solid day in the saddle shredding the gnar for 130kms I was deffinately feeling a little worse for wear, but with Neil in Yellow and myself in the Dots performance wasn't a question of maybe, it was a must.
The stage from Baucau to Loihuno was a shorter stage of 65kms with steady winding climbs over the moutain range with a 20km decent (with a few undulating pinches) to the finish in the village of Loihuno. The climbs were mostly on bitchuman but the decent was on some of the harshes off road conditions I've seen.
The plan was to keep Neil in Yellow, so Pete and I became domestiques, with the aim to control the pace and cover as many break attempts as possible. So with the first 40kms up hill the pace needed to be high. With myself on the front driving the pace, Pete was kept on his toes by covering all the breaks. Pete did a fantastic job covering the only break that got away, and thanks to his efforts the day was definately a success for us. Beeing such a difficult stage to defend the yellow we only lost a tiny bit of time over our closest rival at the time in Ben Mather and we lived to ride in Yellow for another day.
With Pete and myself in the Box from the gun it was no surprise that our overall GC was going to blow out as we would ride ourselves into the wall in order to get Neil as close to the line as possible as protected as possible. Having said that Neil was definately the stronger rider and this was no holiday for him either, when the breaks would get more frequent towards the top of the mountain it was neil that was having to cover while I was busy running on fumes, hitting the red zone. Yep the King of the Mountain wasnt going to be able to defend his jersey in these sircumstances, and Pete and myself were more then happy do sacrifice our results for Neils chance at taking the event out.
ScottyL
posted by Scott Liston at 1:36 pm
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