Tour of the Gila, Stage 2

Super tough day. As you can see from the profile (the low point is 5,750 and it tops out at 7,500 feet), we had a lot of climbing to do over the course's 80 miles.

The quick and dirty highlight reel: Lunning bombed down one of the most treacherous parts of the race, the Sapillo descent, in the lead with Chris Horner glued (and frequently unglued) to his wheel and went on to finish with the pack and maintain his awesome 46th place GC standing.

Tuttle suffered a flat just after the descent and had to chase the entire middle-section which left him exhausted for the final climb. He lost 11 minutes.

The massive first climb smacked Turner around a little and he came in 2 minutes after Tuttle in a small group.

While suffering up the last climb all by his lonesome, Tuttle looked over to see Johan Bruyneel in the Mellow Johnny's team car. Johan leaned out the window and said, "keep it up! Nice work!"
In the Cat II's Van Orsdel finished 22nd and moved from 11th to 12th overall. A large break went up the road and Van Orsdel stuck with the 1st and 3rd placed GC guys. The break ended up putting in over 7 minutes which upset the GC standings. Van Orsdel is sitting cool though, looking forward to Sunday's final road stage which is packed with the type of climbs he excels at.

Johnson is getting knocked around by the magnitude of this one, and even so pulled out a 33rd place finish. Keep in mind that he has only 3 months of road racing in his entire life, and he's hanging tough!

That's it for now. TT updates to follow.