Stage 2 of the tour left from Ossiach as usual and headed over rolling hills and along flat bits for around 100 km ending at the Alpine Arena in Villach. I started in Block C and we cruised off neutralised towards Villach. Annoyingly, many people rode on the left side of the road which meant that whenever a car came they had to squeeze onto the righthand side with the effect that there was a lot of sudden braking in the peloton. I behaved myself though and kept to the right. As the race started I moved up a bit but it was not possible to catch the big mass of cyclists up the road and I ended in a smaller bunch. Things went ok. At some point on a climb I looked back to see another bunch nearing us so decided it would be safe to take a pee break. I lost the next group and rode with the following one but they were a bit slow so I rode away on a hill. Riding by myself was a bit tiring though. A few caught up and I rode with them to the finish. At one point I rode off the front again with another guy but it was 25 km before the finish so we eased up again. Not optimal for getting a good time. Optimal would have been to ride in a large group that was much stronger than me and be towed along with them. Oh well. An ok stage.
Interestingly, I got a warning in the results that I hadn’t been following the traffic regulations which is funny because I definitely had been. It looks like a good proportion of the field got warnings so perhaps they used a random number generator. Who knows.
Above: Finishing at the Alpine Arena in Villach.
Above: Strava says…
Tour de Kärnten 2018 – Stage 2 “Ironman Runde” Time: 03:03:50.3 Dst: 103km/1100m Avg: 33.8km/h Max: 63km/h Place Men Overall: 229 Place Category: 108