Whisper it quietly, but there’s a bit of northerly stuff late on in stage 651. That’s good because the land gap across the Great Lakes is about 250 miles north of where ATW currently sits and the route really needs to regain those northern miles, and quickly. The stage is a belter: there’s one foot between ascent and decent, in favour of the latter, and actually, looking at the profile, it’ll feel even like more of a downhiller than that. As the geography goes, it’s east. north, east again, north again then finally north east. All of that is good.
The rollout from east of Granton on Highway 10 climbs gently on a straight run to a left hander at Granton Road. The highway then dives down fifty feet in the blink of an eye to the lowest elevation of the stage where the road hangs a right and starts heading east again. But around that corner it regains all of the elevation, and more, before starting a ten mile descent that doesn’t end until the left hander where Highway 10 meets Highway 80 coming up from Pittsville to the south.
One might have expected a river at the corner because having descended for ten miles, the road then starts climbing, albeit lumpily, to the highest elevation of the stage at nineteen miles in Marshfield. The road passes by the Municipal Airport on the left a couple of miles before the town, then having peaked at the crossroads where Highway 10 crosses Highway 13 to become Highway 97, the road descends just as lumpily down the other side. The descent is interrupted by nasty bumps at nineteen and twenty one miles but the run to the finishing line approaching Staadt Avenue is a fast one.
Distance: 23 miles / 37 kilometres
Ascent: 302 feet / 92 metres
RGT Magic Road: GTBHqrzLhFO4
Max elevation: 1232 ft
Min elevation: 1153 ft
Total climbing: 301 ft
Total descent: -302 ft
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