Day 2

165km Invercargill to Gore

The plan today was to survive, if my legs were today were as bad as yesterday then it was going to make an interesting ride. Again there was significant wind but luckily the it appeared fine enough at the start. The first hour was pretty fast with us covering 46kms which included a hell for leather chase after a pile up in the middle of the bunch. Then after the break had been established we had an hour or 2 of tempo which was appreciated. It was a bit disappointing to hear one of the tv commentators giving us a bagging for cruising, but i guess when you have a 6 day tour with 5 man teams sometimes its best for everyone to let the breaks stick if they dont effect GC.

I went back to the car during the middle of the stage to give them my vest as things were starting to warm up a bit....what a mistake, within 5km it was hailing! not a great deal but just enough to momentarily freeze you.

There were still moments of madness as over the top of ever KOM there seemed to be nice bits of flat cross wind sections where the race was splintered before coming back together. Ended up getting canned over the last KOM and came in with the first group of the peloton.

Went down to the pub, we are staying at the middle pub for the tour, to watch the Melbourne cup and rub shoulders with the locals but we all lucked out on picking the winner but it was still pretty cool catching up with with the locals as they all were interested and had good stories to tell of previous tours.