I've been in Perth for nearly a week now and I'm loving it here so far... the weather has been great and it's an awesome spot for training and relaxing.
The Team hosted a camp over the weekend where we rode with some of the locals who were keen to build on their skills and ride with the guys. It was great to see so much support for the Team and everyone looked like they enjoyed their time riding with us.
Yesterday afternoon we packed our bags and headed over to Rottnest Island to prepare for the first road stage of the
Tour de Perth which started today.
Interesting ferry ride with the logistics of transporting all of our gear over to Rottnest Island – this is the first time an NRS race has been based here and the organisers have done a great job of putting it all together. AJ from our team is pretty pleased to have a tour in his home town too.
Anyway to the race action... felt a little sluggish to start, but found my legs and made the winning break of 8 riders a little after the 20km mark. It was fast and furious out there as we knocked out the 80km stage in a little over 1:40. The break held off the main peloton by 37 seconds and I rolled across the line in 4th place on equal time with the stage winner Jack Anderson (Budget Forklifts) and fellow Kiwi Sam Horgan who was 2nd.
Tomorrow's stage is a 20km Individual Time Trial which I'm really looking forward to... it's always good to get back into racing and after a few weeks down time since Tour of Taiwan the Huon Salmon-Genesys Wealth Advisers boys are looking to get the NRS season off to a good start!
Will hopefully have a chance to write an update as the Tour goes on and keep you all updated.
Cheers
JC.
