My apologies that it’s been a while since I’ve updated
here. I could make excuses, but I
try to avoid those. I’ll just tell
you that I couldn’t be bothered to blog during the 5-day long Tour de la
Province de Namur. The racing was
going well so I conserved energy by limiting myself to 140 characters at a time
on Twitter. Allow me to bring you
all up to speed before some delayed race reporting. I feel like I’ve got some good fitness again and the team
has asked me to stay in Europe longer.
After Namur finished I got in a car and drove to Switzerland. I’m now staying at the top of Bernina
Pass, about 7,500 feet high, in the SE corner of Switzerland. I’ve never been
this high before in my life with the exception of airplanes. But there is pretend air on airplanes
and also no stairs to walk up leaving you out of breath. There are 5 other
riders here doing a little training camp.
On Sunday we will do a one-day race in Italy. Then after that my future is pretty uncertain. I might be staying longer and doing
some big bike races, or I might be headed home. I’ll let you know as soon as I know. Here is part 1 of my report from Namur:
Stage 1
The first stage of any stage race is always a little crazy
and this was not exception. The
first hour of racing was fast with lots of attacks, but nothing stuck. The biggest climb of the day was midway
through the race and I hit that in good position. I followed a guy on the Fuji Test Team and before we knew it
we had a small gap to the field.
Then shortly after none other than Kennett Peterson had come across to
us. This being the only “Cat 1”
climb of the day I knew the first guy over the top had a good chance of taking
the KOM jersey at the end of the stage.
I sprinted for a red polka-dotted sign after we’d been climbing for a
while. That signed turned out to
be informing us that the real line for the sprint was still 1000m away. Then Kennett sprinted for some other
white line on the ground. Then
shortly there after that the Fuji guy sprinted for a white line at the ground
where a moto official had stopped to watch the proceedings. He was the true winner and would go on
to take the KOM jersey.
 |
| Kennett "Catfish" Peterson racing for the Flanders team in red. |
What happened next is sort of the important part. I guess we’d gone up this climb pretty
fast, and what was left of the field behind had also gone fast in pursuit of
us. We were left with a group of
about 40 riders over the top and down the other side of the climb. There was some pretty disorganized work
to keep us ahead of the main peloton, but soon enough our gap was up to about 2
minutes. We still had about 75k to
the finish so we needed to get a little more organized. Fast forward through a lot of Belgians
yelling, gesturing, and not doing their share of the work. There was a short steep climb with 20k
left in the stage where it split again.
I dug deep to make the split of 16 riders and most everyone worked well
to establish our new gap.
Attacking started again with just under 10k left in the stage. I was feeling good and didn’t want to
let anyone get away. I covered
move after move in what turned out to be the hardest finale I’ve ever taken
part in. I think I was a bit
gassed for the sprint and too far back.
I finished 11th on the stage and in a great position for the
rest of the race.
 |
| Trying to keep the front group moving up a small climb with a ways to go still. |
Stage 2
For whatever reason I don’t remember a ton about this stage
while writing about it a week after it happened. Perhaps the most memorable moment was arriving at the race,
unzipping my bag, and immediately realizing that I’d forgotten to bring bib
shorts. Real terror and panic!!! If you don’t race bikes, imagine if you’d
shown up to your quarter-final high-school basketball game and forgotten your
right hand. Yes, you are right
handed too! I needed some bibs
like you needed your right hand.
One of my teammates had an extra pair, thing is they were size
large. So 40min before the start
and the photograph below is where I’m at.
Thankfully with the help of our director I was able to get
some slightly smaller plain black shorts before the start. The feeling of forgetting your shorts
is terrible. Probably almost as
bad as forgetting your shoes. I’m
knocking on wood right now though cause I’ve never done that, yet. Okay, so then the race happened. I made a huge effort to get across to
what I thought was another winning split through some crosswinds with less than
20k to go. Unfortunately we hit a
less windy part of the course and it all came back together. We finished up a very gradual 2k
climb. I finished somewhere in the
30’s on the same time as the other GC contenders.
Stage 3
This was my favorite stage of the race. The flattest of all the days, we
thought it would probably end in a bunch sprint. Think again!
There was a rather small climb 25k into the 150k stage that turned the
race absolutely upside down. We
went up the climb pretty hard, hard enough to string out the pack. It was really over the top of the climb
where it was windy that things got crazy.
Before I knew it I was rotating through in a lead group of 35 riders
with one of my USA teammates, Eamon.
The yellow jersey wearer had been caught out along with a few other fast
guys. Almost immediately we had
2.5 minutes on the chasing field and the group was working well together. With still 125k to go I did my best to
save energy, but also not let the group slow down much. The gap grew a little bit more as we
rode through head or head crosswinds for most of the day. By the time we reached the 20k finish
circuit I knew the damage was done and our group would go all the way to the
finish. There were some attacks in
the last 15k, but nothing gained too much ground and the Rabobank Off-Road team
seemed in control of the group. I was really looking forward to giving the
finish a go. There were several
turns in the final kilometer and I thought my chances this group were decent. There was 1 rider off the front by
himself by a handful of seconds when we hit 1k to go. He crashed in a narrow corner with 800m to go and I got
shuffled back a bit too far as we navigated around him and his bike. Eamon tried his best to move me back
up, but I had to do most of my sprinting to close a small gap with 600m to
go. I think I finished 11th
on the stage again. Great day for
my GC position, moving me into 6th overall. I was a bit proud of myself for riding
so well in the wind today as well.
I felt like I’d really used the skills I’ve learned over the past
several weeks in regards to positioning and recognizing the key moments of the
race.
 |
| Take a moment and look at everything going on in this photo. They guy(s) with the yellow flag ride ahead on motorcycles and stop in order to signal turns or traffic furniture. If you can find me in this picture you'll see there is no way my bike is pointed towards the apex of that corner. I made my own apex on the sidewalk. I've learned some things the Belgian way. |
No comments:
Post a Comment