TDC Day 5 Corryong – Wangaratta
Hump day.
Hi everyone. Hope you are all well and enjoying my news every day from the Tour.
So the veterans on the Tour tell me that Day 5 is always the toughest. It’s normally where you need to dig deep and battle through some niggles and the mental barrier of getting back on the bike. Fortunately for me I was feeling good this morning and despite another early start was raring to go at Corryong Public school first thing.
You’ll be glad to know the famous scones and sponge made an appearance ( more on that later). The kids were very excited to see us and were walking around taking photos and selfies aplenty with all the riders. They were very sweet and we had a great send off with placards etc as we rolled out.
It was a fresh start but as the sun rose it got a little warmer and the peleton rolled along effortlessly toward our first stop about 60kms down the road. Just a quick rest stop whilst the first peleton took care of the school presentation. Our peleton rolled out quickly and we headed another 40 kms down the road to Yakandandah. The kids went nuts when they saw us. The whole school came out to greet us..there were high fives aplenty, loads of questions about where we had come from, where we were going, what we were doing. The Spirit of Tasmania team did a great presentation to the school spreading our Be fIt, Be healthy, Be happy message and the kids loved it. Especially the goodie bags. We broke for lunch and the principal told the kids to leave the riders alone whilst we were eating. Not a chance! We were surrounded and they wanted to know everything about us. I got to try the famous $1000 sponge cake. Not sure it was worth $1000…but it was very very good.
As we rolled out there were hugs and high fives all round. Bless. It was fantastic.
65kms then to Wangaratta via the very pretty city of Beechworth. It started to get quite warm but the front six did a great job managing the group all the way home…even if I do say so myself.
As we rolled into Wangaratta we made a corporate visit to the local CBA branch ( 7 signatures Macca…more to come…) where we were warmly greeted by John and his team with some cool drinks and a couple of photo ops. (For every CBA employee I manage to get to sign a jersey the Markets team will donate a further $20 to TdC).
Dinner tonight was at a local pub…another 200 turned out including 6 from the local CBA branch. I should mention our team captain Heidi won the pink “inspiration” category jersey yesterday so had the honour of wearing it today and passing it on to another one of the riders tonight.
For the first time my body started to complain this afternoon about it’s recent mistreatment with a bit of a niggle and soreness in my left knee. Nothing some taping won’t correct tomorrow though. 200+kms and 3000 metres of vertical climb on Day 6 …I think hump day will actually be tomorrow.
Night all
All my best df
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