Tour of Southland day 3

This is the killer day with back to back stages from Invercargill to Tuatapere then from Tuatapere to Winton.

Surprise surprise it was windy and wet for the first stage so i rugged up super warm with pockets full of food. One thing i learnt last year on these double stages is that if you don't keep warm in the morning and eat all stage then your going to blow in the arvo. Good thing i rugged up warm as it was shit can for me as soon as we hit the first bit of cross winds, big time shit can too early. So we formed a laughing group of about 14 and were managing our losses in the beaut conditions until 2 twats hit it over one of the KOM's and split the group. I was out the back with 3 others with the legs protesting in a major way when 2 of the guys jumped in the sag wagon, so 40km from home it was me and another champ trying to make time cut. We had both given up hope until somehow we made contact again with the group and made time cut...just.

We were looked after mint between stages with Chub and Nancy organising us a hotel to go back to and Dale feeding us and Paul making sure the morale was still there. Its amazing how when you hit rock bottom all you can do is laugh.

The afternoon stage started dry and probably because the fact that it felt like we were going home the morale was high, and i rode very high up in the bunch all day. In fact i saw the break go on the climb and just about rode across to it but thought better of it. I was riding pretty strong and when i did look back the bunch only had half its riders left so we mustn't have been mucking around. Got shelled not far from town in the crossies but felt pretty good about life again and it was mint seeing everyone from the pub at the finish, being able to ride up to your bed was pretty cool. Maybe things are starting to come right.