Tour of Canberra: Stage 1

I like coming to the nation's capital because, living in Melbourne like I do, it's nice to be reminded that there are other cities in Australia other than us and Sydney. And I have a soft spot for Canberra, because when I first came to Melbourne to start uni, I got teased mercilessly about being from Adelaide, and the only comeback that worked was that at least I didn't come from Canberra.

Jokes aside, I think Canberra is a pretty cool city. Andy is trying to convince me to move here for a year and I have to say he is doing a pretty good sell. Andy is working here for a few months so my trip here to race could not have been better timed.

Back to the Tour. 3 stages, all hilly, all hard. Today was only 45km and I thought from the course profile that it looked pretty gentle. It wasn't. It ended with a 7km stretch that was mostly climbing. It hurt a lot. I will leave it to the others to give you a more detailed race report (Bec Domange's blog is pretty good for this!), but the skinny is that we were pretty much altogether until we hit the 7km climb, then Jo Hogan, Alex Carle and I got a little gap, then Alex faded and Jo and I were left battling it out. this is jo's last race with Prime Estate before joining me at VIS- I am looking forward to racing with her and not against her! I got the KOM and got a gap over Jo so kept going and stuck it out to win by 30secs. It's a handy time advantage to have- I'm going to need it over the next 2 days.

Bron Ryan outsprinted Jo on the line to take 2nd, after having 2 MECHANICALS and chasing back on both times. What a machine, that is truly impressive.

Alex told me today that she has been invited to race for Colavita-Sutter Homes in the US before she joins her pro team there, which means she is flying out on Sunday night, straight from the tour. She only found this out on Tuesday and I imagine she has had a lot on her plate this week which would have taken the edge off. Alex and I rode together in NZ and she is a gun rider, she is going to have a ripper time overseas.

Tomorrow is 91km of hills, will test the legs. That's it for me, I'm off for an ice bath.

Gunz