News from Joe Martin

So here we are after Stage 2 of the Joe Martin Stage Race and we have something to celebrate: Peter won the race today - solo of cause - and is now leading the GC! He was sitting 5th after yesterdays TT. The plan for today was to just sit back and see what would happen. 110 miles are a long time for events to unfold. Andrew got a flat and thanks to some "awesome" wheel-changing-action, where he lost about 2:30 minutes, he didn't finish today. I was a little more fortunate when a spoke on my front wheel broke and I needed to get a wheel change. I didn't loose too much time and was able to catch back on. So with a little less than 10 km to go we got to play out our little tactical game we had layed out before the stage: I was to attack first, maybe get away - but the likelihood of that was pretty slim - but mainly to give Peter a chance to counter as soon as I got caught. It worked perfectly and Peter was off the front solo for the last 6 km. I made sure no one would pull him back and covered moves. I still managed to come in 5th of the day, barely missing top 3. It would have been nice to finish in the time bonuses (top3) but Peters win compensated for that.

The only unfortunate thing about the whole situation is that we only have two guys left in the race: Peter and myself. Sooooo, tomorrow will be a hard piece of work...