Peter Sagan of Liquigas-Cannondale enters Stage 2 of the 2012 AMGEN Tour of California with high hopes after capturing the yellow jersey on Stage 1's route through Santa Rosa and then Sonoma County. On Monday, Sagan and the rest of the field will start in San Francisco's Marina District and head south on Highway 1 until turning inward around Santa Cruz. That marks the two King of the Mountains climbs the riders will deal with this time around.
The first test will be on the Bonny Doon, which reaches over 2,500 feet in elevation. Once the cyclists make it past there, they still need to get through another 2,000-plus feet mountain as they make their way to Aptos. Once that obstacle is overcome, the last 25 miles or so are downhill. In all, 117.1 miles will be covered on Monday.
Garmin-Barracuda had a good showing after Stage 1. Heinrich Haussler is in second place, trailing by four seconds. Andrew Talansky, Tom Danielson, David Zabriskie and Alex Howes are all 10 seconds behind and still great shape to compete until the final finish line next Sunday.
Check out the complete map of Stage 2 here (PDF). NBC Sports Network will once again have live coverage of this event at 3:00 p.m. MT. The race begins at 12:00 p.m. MT and is expected to end around 4:53 p.m. MT.
Stick with this Tour of California StoryStream, cycling blog Podium Cafe and the Tour of California's official site for more.