The GuitarGym-Orbea Team arrived full-of-beans for the commencement of the Canberra Tour, our first National Road Series (NRS) race as a team.

Stage 1 was a 68km flyer, with an 8km climb at the end at a gradient of over 10%.

It’s fair to say the size and depth of talent of the field came as a surprise to the team. The early kilometers of the stage we found it challenging to maintain good positioning in the bunch. As we approached the base of the climb, we managed to move up to around mid field, even though we were moving at around 55km/h. Reaching a large climb at that pace makes settling in to a climbing tempo challenging, but we managed not to lose too much time, coming in around 3 minutes behind the stage winner, positioned from around 30th.

Much was learnt in Stage 1 about team racing, tactics, and positioning. Although we felt we could have significantly limited our time loses of Stage 1 had we been slightly more experienced in these areas, we were ready to take the lessons learnt into Stage 2, with an improved result the goal ……

Guitar Gym – Orbea Mothership courtesy of Jim and Donna