Stage 1 35km: A bit of everything - steep climbs, bits of single track and plenty of hurt. A good way to get into the tour, a group of 5 of us rode together for a majority and I finished around 5 minutes off the leader to take 9th place.

Stage 2 375m: Short, steep and painful hill climb. After seeing dudes smash up there all night, reverse order starts saw me go after 250 people had already. It was going to hurt; and hurt it did. The massive gear jump mid way ended up with me nose wheelying and I had the crowd cheering as they thought I was over the bars! Not so. Just a pretty average time, 18 seconds off the winner, but not doing too much to harm my overall standing.

Stage 3 49km: The first time we hit the singletrack and it was a bundle of fun, another OK start saw me getting around in the top ten all day, with a 7th place finish (and move up a spot on GC - now sitting in 6^th).

Stage 4 70km: (May as well have been a road race) With a 5:30am bus ride to the start, then told the stage had been cut short 8km because of land issues we started 8km closer to the finish. An early group formed in this stage as there were a few dried up creek and gully dismounts. Once the lead group of seven had formed I tried to skip the group and spent 10km or so off the front, but with the flat open terrain and strong headwind I didn’t get too much advantage. But after hitting some sand sections just before the first 20km feed zone, I had dropped back but was in the bunch containing the top 5 in GC. We hit a 15km bitumen section and swapped off turns until the top few guys thought they didn’t need to anymore! Once we turned off onto the dirt it was on again, but nothing really happened until around 6km to the finish when race leader Ben Mather laid it down in the sand, allowing the 2 riders in front to ride off, and causing everyone else to pile up. He got back on and rode quickly across to the leaders to win the stage impressively – after a 100 meter run across the dried up Todd River. I ended up 5th (a minute down) after falling to avoid t-boning Mather in the accident. I had also moved up to 5th on GC.

Stage 5 23km: A 23km time trial loop of some really cool singletrack. We would start at 30 second intervals in reverse order. My goal was to not get caught by the 4 riders behind me. Unfortunately it didn’t happen! After going too hard in the opening fire road section I was hurting by the time we got into the first singletrack. I was caught by Matt Flemming first (around the halfway mark - he started 2 mins behind and went on the win the stage by 1 second over Mather). I was caught by the rest of the riders who came through as a train. I jumped on, but Mather then rode off from us, leaving Shaun Lewis, Adrian Jackson, Brent Miller and I to ride to the finish (this actually helped my time a little). I did drop a spot to Pez Delacour from Yeti. 12th place for me on the stage.

Stage 6 23km: Night massed start XC – the same course as the morning, but pitch black (and a lot of fun). After a pretty crazy start (dudes just going flat stick and all over the place), I got my self into the top 10, but a fall on a descent took a bit out of me, and then a few more stuff ups saw me lose a few spots (and my rhythm). I managed to finish OK in 12^th, and keep my 6th on GC.

Stage 7 37km: Final stage - you would have almost thought you were in 2 different places, the first half was a heap of awesome single track followed by some absolute rubbish tracks, if you can even call them that! I had abit of a shocker early on picking my way through a few fences, following wheels that climbed over the fence when 20 metres away the gate was open! I found myself at the back of the 2nd group and needing to move up quickly to hold my overall spot, but on the sweet single track there was no opportunity to move at all. I found a fire road climb at 10km a perfect place to move to the front and give it some stick, a few risks (and some bashed pedals) on the descent on the other side, and I was on my way to getting across to the chase group of five who were busy chasing Dennis Van Mill and Brent Miller (who were off the front together).

The group of five were making yellow jersey Ben Mather do all the work and he was content to ride his own pace - this allowed me to make contact about 20km in. Once we got off the singletrack we hit 4wd tracks with a heap of sand, and all of a sudden Ben’s race lead was in trouble. Matty Flemming had him stretched a few times, but another sand run through Emilys Gap saw us all back together.

I picked a good line and ended up on the front from here, but a heap of barb wire fences meant I wasn’t getting to far and lost time at each trying to find a gap for a 6’5” guy! With 8km to go, a good run through some sand saw Mather and I off the front of the group, with Matty Flemming still pinning it just up the road, but now Mather was pulling everything out to bring him back. So, I had the luxury of sitting there as I had been rooming with Matty for the week and had no incentive to chase, I was actually hoping we could pull time to jump me a spot on GC.

The last barb wire fence we hit was brutal, Matty lost a bit of time finding a spot to cross and and Mather got a good way through, I lost contact crawling under the fence, then lost the track and was caught by the chasing group.We rode into the finish. I for another 8th place finish, and to hold my 6th spot on General Classification.

This was the best stage of the week, in a race where no mechanicals greatly assisted my result. The amount of broken chains, punctures and bike failures was amazing, but the ever reliable Shimano XTR, Kenda Small Block 8s and Nevegal tyres, and the Amazing Scott Spark 10, I had not one mechanical issue all week!

A big thank you to Tony and Jason from Endura who had a seemingly endless supply of Endura Optimizer, Gels and Electrolyte for me. Stage racing is something I hadn’t done for a while, but to feel so good after five days of racing was due to these excellent Endura products.

Thanks also to Trent and the Jetblack Products guys, for the super bright Niterider Trinewt lights for the night racing stage as well as the new comfy Jetblack Gloves. I also rocked out the Champion System “SpeedSuit” for the hill time trial - which gained a lot of comments on the night, as did the Rockstar Racing jersey during the whole week of racing!