Stage 1- 126km Rochdale to Blackpool

Dan's Comments:

TOB Stage 1

132 km

1x3 cat climb

2x2 cat climbs

Rolling day but no major climbs.

Fast start as first sprint after 2km then first kom after 24km, steady for the next hour until the 3 man break got to 6 minutes then the pace was fast to pull them back, team sky rode well keeping the pace very fast on the flat but steady on the climbs then fast again once on the decents.

Break pulled in and big bunch sprint to finish.

I felt a little blocked at the start (no opening intervals yesterday) but came around in the final hour.

Glad to get the first stage in the bag, from tomorrow the terrain gets toughter for the next 4 days.

Many thanks to Quarq Power meters  www.Quarq.com for their help and also to TrainingPeaks.com for their support"

Hunter's Comments:

"Dan has been really focusing on this race now for quite a while and he has been doing a ton of ten minute intervals in order to prepare himself for the short hard climbs that are in the Tour of Britain. His FTP is up and some of his recent motorpacing sessions have been excellent. Right now, he's very light and his FTP is as high as it's been in a while at 405 watts.

Stage 1 was not unlike any other first stage of an important stage race with nervous riding and some crashes. There were three KOM's in today's stage and like most of the KOM's in the race, the climbs are relatively short with the longest today taking about 10 minutes. Again, great job to Dan for preparing well for these shorter climbs.

Nothing super exciting about today's stage and Dan was easily within himself today on the climbs. His TSS for the Stage was 191, which is the equivalent of nearly the same training stress as two hours at threshold, so it it was a good quick stage, but not outrageous. The hardest parts of today's stage came at either 'end' of the stage. The first ten minutes were the hardest ten minutes of the stage and then the last ten minutes were also quite difficult.

I expect the next couple of stages to be a little harder with more wind, weather and hills. Stay tuned!"

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