Day 5

This is normally a stage where all kinds of strange things can happen, its 165km from Winton to Te Anau with a decent climb 50km from home to split things up.

Mum and Dad had come down he night before so was good to get sent off by them and a group from the pub. The stage was in memory of Scott Peoples who races Southland last year and cleaned house on a couple of stages. He was killed a couple of months later when he was driven into whilst training...pretty serious stuff and brings home the risks of what we all love.

The stage was pretty uneventful for the first few hours with nothing major to really put you in a massive world of pain. In saying that you can go to sleep down here cause next thing you know you'll turn out of a head wind and be in the gutter for the next 15kms so even when 'cruising' its still taking a bit out of you.

About 20km from the climb I went to go back for bottles and Joe come back too, but those boys at the front must have heard cause the gc boys starting playing their cards. I was 20m of the back when this happened to had to flag the feed and hit the survival button, Joe was less fortunate and went shit can. It never really let up and we hit the climb pretty well warmed up, somehow I managed to climb with a group of 15 that thanks to some hard riding and easing off up the road, we made contact with 25kms to go.

I ended up second group on the road at the end cause as we hit the lake front we were doing 50Kms+ in the crossies and as like the rest of the days i was lacking that little bit of snot needed. Still a pretty good day and the legs felt better again so that promising. Last year i never made it to Blackmount with the front group let alone being front group on the other side.