Wellington - Auckland day 4

Stage 8 Wanganui - Kakatahi School



Well bit of a sad start with the news that Rob and Eileen would not be starting. Hopefully he will recover quickly. I caused a bit of an upset by grabbing the hill points on the first climb. Consequently when I launched an attack after the sprint they were not keen to let me go and chased me down. There were words at lunchtime where I learnt two things. Firstly a deal had been on on who would get the KOM jersey and by taking some of the first points I was mucking up their calculations. The other thing that I learnt was that they were suprised that I rode from the back of the group through them and then took the points - oh well.


The Kakatahi school had put on a nice lunch for a donation and also let us use their pool which was a nice.






Stage 9 Kakatahi School - Ohakune


This was quite a hilly stage with a climb early on. After the lunchtime talking too I just rode tempo but when Tom and Lynton accelerated towards the summit I bridged across to them. There was a small moment when they wondered what I would do but I sat up at the top and said "after you" and took points for 3rd place. The descent was a little tricky and we were joined by the usual contenders. I drove the pace for a bit and then set the majority of the tempo on the climb where I was asked to slow down. I visibly slowed for the next summit and let them get their points as agreed. The rest of the terrain was rolling and with about 15km to go there was an attack by Ben Knight. I went to bridge and was joined by one of the MyBike guys. I just kept on riding and eventually the rest of the group came over where I was told that they wanted to make one of the other tour leaders work and chase. It was all getting to political for me so I sat on the back for a bit. When Neil started to pick up the pace to gain some extra time I lapped out with him and did some big turns. Eventually the sprint came and I stayed with Neil and helped drag him to the line. Unfortunately there had been no marshal on the corner when the stage leader came through so he had taken a wrong turning and ended up coming in behind us. He was given the same time as us.