Need help splitting a field with XML-like data in SQL Server 2008

Need help splitting a field with XML-like data in SQL Server 2008

I have a varchar field in a table, which contains a string of XML-like
data. I say "XML-like" because the string usually gets truncated before I
get all of it. I need to pull the and sections out of the string.
Here is a sample of the beginning of the string I need to parse:
1679098 172 6028afdc-bc5c-4d3c-b39f-6709ab6ae4d2
I have tried substring(), but I can't always identify the endpoints
correctly. I think there should be an easy way, since I know the beginning
and ending tags around the data I'm after. Does anyone have any
suggestions?