Sweet As.

And so it begins... Last weekend Tasmania's Mersey Valley Tour kicked off the National Raod Series for 2011. The 2 day, 3 stage series is one of the shorter tours of the series but certainly one of the toughest!

This years revamped Bundy Sugar Team consists of Myself, Loren Rowney, Amy Bradley and Maddison Vit (who for this tour raced separately in the U19 division) and Trish Palmer (who is unfortunately currently out of action with a broken shouder from a training accident, she is healing well and will be back on board soon).

Stage 1 of The Mersey Valley Tour began early Saturday morning in the town of Forth. A relatively short 15km out and back course with a fast down hill start that we would need to save some legs to get back up at the finish. We know that in a tour every second counts, so we were all hoping for some strong times to give us a good position going into the what was going to be a tough afternoon. We achieved mixed results with Loren doing us proud with a podium 3^rd place in the TT. Myself placing 9^th, Amy 17^th.

Going in to the second stage, a short but certainly not flat 60km road race with a hilltop finish ending a grueling 6km steep uphill climb we know from past experience, that this stage can be a decider for the tour. The plan was to race smart, position well, make the splits over each of the climbs and QOM’s, and to be at the front of the bunch going into the steep 4km descent to give us the best position possible heading into the toughest climb of all the road series races.

All the girls achieved this and we made some good time up on the GC. Myself getting 4^th place and Loren 7^th and Amy 14^th. This put Loren and I up to 4^th and 5^th place on GC respectively.

After a hard day in the saddle, and on our Super Soignny and Tassie local Mark’s recommendation the team went for a well earned recovery/carb reload feast at local favourite, The Red Grasshopper. Then it was home to bed to rest up for what would be a tough final stage.

Stage 3 left from Sheffield, an 80km road race with 2 x laps of a 20km circuit with some tough climbs and fast down hill sections. In this race the plan was similar to Stage 2. Cover all breaks, make the splits over the QOM's, be aggresive ourselves if we had the legs, or win the bunch kick if it came to a sprint. I was feeling positive when i made the first breakaway of the day over the first QOM about 30km's into the race, unfortunately though it seemed the girls were nervous to push it hard this early in the race and we were caught on the fast down hill section of the course. The race stayed together until the second QOM when Taryn Heather from SASI made an impressive attack that blew the field apart! Grace Sulzburger and a few under 19 girls were able to go with her, while myself and two others were just off the mark. Unfortunately for me, i was not able to catch the break like the other two in front of me, and waited for a chasing group to work with. Despite all of us working hard to catch them, we were eventually caught with 10kms to go. That meant we had Myself, Loren and Amy all able to pull turns with the rest of the peleton to close the gap as much as possible.

As we were unable to see a GC before the start of tour, it was important for us

So with the Final General Classification released. Bundy Sugar has come away with a 5th, 7th and 15th place, and 2nd in the Teams competition. We are happy with a strong start to the year, keeping in mind there is still a long season ahead. The team worked well together, and we will only get stronger. With Canberra Tour less than two weeks away, the girls and I are already excited to get out there and do it all again. This time we're coming home with a win!