Phil Gallant's Blog

Today was a shorter day – only 130km from Benalla to Albury. The terrain is still very flat terrain, however that’s 6 days in a succession over 100km and the shorter distance was very welcome!

It’s cold! As we move towards the mountains it has officially got cold … we breakfasted outside at six this morning – and even with gloves, leg warmers, arm warmers & 4 layers of clothing on it still felt seriously cold. The good news, as you can see from the picture, is that when the sun comes out the weather is stunning and once we’re moving we warm up pretty quickly. The bad news is that we generally have around 2 hours standing around in the morning whilst Channel 7 do the live crosses for Sunrise and by the time we roll everyone’s in need of defrosting. The worse news is that it’s going to get colder as we get higher!

Tomorrow we move into the Mountains. There are quite a few tired legs and bodies in the group, so it will be a real challenge – but one that we’ll rise to. The long days, like the 225km stage 5, and the mountain stages are where all the training rides and the punishing hill repeats around Sydney come into their own – hopefully! Amazingly tomorrow is our 8th day of riding ; the Tour is flying past but every day we pass through stunning scenery and have been lucky to have had great weather.

Time to sleep and dream of effortlessly climbing mountains tomorrow!