Qinghai Lake: Stage 5 & 6

Kiel has continued to get second, in both stages 5 and 6. That makes it 3 in a row! I think he may be getting a little frustrated that the win keeps escaping him, but the rest of us think he's done incredible. He is second in the points competition as well after today's stage, and probably remains 9th on GC.

Stage 5 was a 200km trek with the last climb around 30km from the finish. It was a pretty small one anyhow, so we came to the line with basically the whole field, which includes a lot of quality sprinters. We had Aldo there, but just in the last 5km or so he made the call that he wasn't feeling up to a good sprint and instead switched to a leadout role for Kiel. With a little rise in the finish and the altitude to deal with, I don't think any of the "pure sprinters" had much of a kick at the end. Luckily Kiel is good at altitude and can do everything... Climb, sprint, ride a crosswind, etc.

Today, stage 6 was a bit of a bear. We started on a climb right out of the gate, continued slightly uphill for most of the stage until reaching the climb that took us to what I think was the highest point of the race, 3850 meters. From there it was just a 15km descent to the finish where Kiel out sprinted all but one in the 40 man front group to take his 3rd consecutive 2nd place.

We raced through some incredibly beautiful landscape today. I wish I could raced with my phone to take more pictures of such huge, green mountains. The way of life in the finish town today looked so simple and peaceful. The land was scattered with Mongolian cowboys (a name I made up for them...I actually have no idea where Mongolia is) eager to keep pace next to the race on horseback, as well as numerous tent settlements of nomadic yak, goat, and sheep shepherds.