Jock Stage 2

The morning started with having to rush Kevin to the start
to get him to accept his leader’s jersey at the prize giving before the stage.
Everyone reminded Brendon to put his Cadence Carbo fuel in his bottles in the
morning, even though a five hour ride with recovery drink would be funny!

We rolled through the neutral zone at the start and as the
flag dropped two of our riders went off the front to see who was keen to go.
After 5km the boys came back to the peloton. The bonkersness of the stage
reared its head when we had only done 20km and climbed 250m! Delano was not
feeling well and dropped off after 35km as he is fighting off a cold.

The rollers continued to suck the life out of the legs until
60km where we had climbed 900m and were at the bottom of Spitskop pass. Kevin
and Marcus managed to make the break on the pass and Brendon, Calvin, Johann, Stephan
and the leading two females formed a chase group which would take us to Long
Tom pass.

Kevin managed to stay in his group until half way up Long
Tom pass when they pushed on to leave Dolley to march to the finish on his
lonesome! Kevin managed to keep the tempo up on his new deep sections and
finished in 4:40.

Behind him Calvin had a near miss at 70km/h with a dog in
the road, when the dog decided to play chicken with Calvin coming into Sabie.
That near miss was the last excitement we saw from Calvin as he then went very
deep in the pain cave up Long Tom. Then at the top he was on his own and
decided to go straight instead of turning left and ended up doing another 5km
of climbing up Long Tom! Calvin came home in 5:02.

Brendon, Johann and Stephan climbed well together up Long
Tom Pass and formed a good little group with the leading lady. The group worked
very well together going over the top of the hill and on the descents and sat
together on the rolling hills. They picked up a few guys who had gone in the
earlier break. Johann and Brendon were cramping from just over Long Tom but carried
on some savage hammering. Kudo’s to the winning lady for putting massive
efforts in the run down from Long Tom by putting big turns on the front! The
three Savages came over the line together with the group at 4:46.

We found our way to the food table and demolished the
burgers at the finish.

So far the tour has been amazingly run, timing accurate,
great race communication and awesome camaraderie from the riders that were
sitting on our wheels.  

*Apologies for lack of pictures, too busy suffering today.