North Germany

This weekend we drove an hour and a half south to northern Germany where we did the Rund um Ascheffel on Saturday and the Giro Nortorf on Sunday. The races were pretty small and were basically dominated by 3 Danish teams and 1 German team. So although there were 100 guys on the start both days, the race was really about 30. The first day the weather was pretty terrible, it was about 40 degrees (5* C) and raining pretty hard. The course was a bit rolling and had a good hill right after the finish line, we did a total of 7 laps. The first half was pretty hard with non stop attacks. I put in a few good efforts and followed countless others but all that really happened was that we dropped 70% of the field in that first hour. Then eventually a 9 man break did go and we had Luthando and Nicolai there, so we were pretty happy at first. However, Luthando had a wheel problem and had to stop to fix so he was out of the break. Back in the field we started to ride a false tempo to try and stay warm and to give our guy in the break a reason to sit on so that he could say we were riding behind. Regardless, I froze solid and for the last 45 minutes I was having a hard time peddaling my bike. I was dressed well for NorCal rain, but this was significantly colder so once the race slowed down, it was definitely not enough. At least I learned for next time. Anyway, the break stayed away, but Nicolai cracked a bit and only managed 7th.

The Giro Nortorf was held on a super flat course. I mean Davis flat, there were two overpasses per lap over the freeway and that was the only elevation change on the whole course. We did 11 laps that were 11km each. At least the weather was better, it was a few degrees warmer and dry, the sun would even poke through every now and again. Basically it was a bit of a repeat of the day before, with countless attacks in the first hour and a half untill a break of 7 went and we had Ricky Enø in it who is one of our better sprinters so we were pretty happy. Once that happened we focused on following any attacks that went from the peleton and trying to go off in small groups to give our guy up the road more excuses to do less work. In the end the break stayed away, but only by about 5 seconds on the line and Ricky got 2nd. Berling tried his hand in the sprint and finished up there, but I am not sure exactly where. I rolled in mid pack for like 30th place.

Overall it was a pretty good weekend, but I was hurting a bit on Sunday. I think freezing on Saturday definitely hurt my body a bit for the next day. That and I felt like I swallowed a gallon of muddy water, which may not be far from the truth, so my stomach was feeling a bit wierd for the rest of the weekend. This is a much needed rest week so I will chill for a while, but then this weekend I am doing Mergelland which is going to be quite wickedly hard. Probably the hardest race of my life so far. Its going to be sweet.

Well at least its not raining....

....even if it was snowing. That was the view from the front window of my house this morning. It got me a bit worried, but actually by about noon the snow was basically gone and although I got hit by a couple of light flurries in the first hour of my ride, the day turned out to be pretty nice by Danish standards. It was like 36 and sunny after about 1 or 2pm.

As you can see today I actually went to the store and got a download cable for my camera, so this blog will have some visual aids from now on. Although I admit I'm pretty bad about taking pictures, so don't expect that many. While I was parking in front of the store to go buy said download cable I managed to completely ignore some signs and park in a space reserved for something or other. So in the half hour I was inside the store I managed to get a 510 DKK ticket, which is about $90. When I came back I looked at the signs and they clearly said that the space was reserved for something, I didn't really figure out what, but I was pretty clearly not supposed to park there. You'd think after living in Berkeley for 4 years with its "interesting" parking system, I'd have learned to look carefully at the signs, but no such luck. Oh well, you live you learn.

Tomorrow we have the team presentation where we get to ride our bikes onto a stage and then mingle with important people afterwords. Should be fun times.

End of the honeymoon

Well the honeymoon with the Danish weather ended today. So far the weather has been basically pleasant everyday. We've had a lot of sunshine and even when it was cloudy it was still pretty warm. Today, however, that changed. It is currently about 36 Fahrenheit and raining and snowing at the same time, not perfect cycling weather by any measure.

It doesn't help that yesterday I crashed again, the second time in 9 days. It was completely idiotic too, I was taking off my cycling hat from under my helmet since I was getting too warm. Then soon after I put my helmet back on, but still when I had both hands off the bars I came out from the shelter of some trees and got hit by a 20 mph crosswind gust that just sent my front wheel skipping away from under me. I am not quite sure what I was thinking riding with no hands on a day that had 20 mph winds gusting up to 30 mph. Basically it was stupid. I usually crash about 3 times in a season. In the last month and a half I have now crashed three times. At this rate it means I am either going to have a really painful season, or I am done crashing for the year. I am hoping for the latter. I just need to remember to not be an idiot.

Oh well at least I have all day to ride and considering my crash yesterday its only for two hours, so I am going to wait it out and see if it gets better, the forcast seems to think it will be done before 5pm, so I may sneak in my ride then, before dark.

Just training

Did my first real training ride since Croatia today, the hip felt basically fine, but my legs were pretty heavy. Its amazing how much not training for 3 days can effect me. It seems like the more work I am doing in training the better I feel... recovery just makes me feel tired. Anyway, I rode up to the highest point in De, nmark today, its at a grand total of 560 ft above sea level, and the longest approach takes about 5 minutes of not steep climbing. It is quite a change from California I admit, even in Davis you can ride up Mix or Cardiac or Cantilow. All of those hills are bigger then anything here. That being said, I did find one good steep 4 minute climb, so I can still do those VO2 intervals on an uphill, which is good. The only problem is that the climb is right on the edge of a big town called Velje, so I will have to deal with traffic, but nothing is perfect.

Still the roads here are amazing, I rode for 4 hours today without seeing any stop lights. I hardly saw any centerlines for that matter. But it is definitely going to recuire some transition to learn how to train on rolling roads. Luckily I have access to motorpacing basically whenever I want so that will be hugely helpful I think, although I have never really done it so it will be a learning experience.

I have been checking out the course and past results Mergelland, and that is going to be one hell of a hard race. Four of the teams on the start list are going to the Tour and there are usually about 40 finishers from a field of 180. I can't even begin to imagine how hard the battle for the front of the peleton will be. All you can do though is show up with some good legs and stay focused. When the racing is tough I can usually get to the front and stay there so there may be some hope for me. Of course if its too tough then I don't have a hope of ever getting to the front in the first place, so you never know. Its definitely a bit more difficult having never done any of these types of races, I have no idea what to expect and I have no idea how I compare to the other rides. At least in American I know where I stand in any given race, here I really have no idea. I guess I'll know after a few months of racing over here.

No racing this weekend means that I can get a really solid block of training in so hopefully the good legs I had before my crash will come back soon. I think the story of this season is going to be... wait and see.

Racing Schedule for the first half of the year

Well I have a provisional race schedule for the first half of the season now, so here it is:

March 28, 29 Races in North Germany
April 4 Hel van het Mergelland UCI 1.1 (Ned)
April 5 Grand Prix de la Ville de Nogent-sur-Oise UCI 1.2 (Fra)
April 10 Esbjerg ITT
April 11 Esbjerg
April 12 Varde
April 13 Holsebro
April 19 Postcup Røde Kro
April 26 East Midlands International Cicle Classic UCI 1.2 (GBr)
May 2 Grand Prix Herning UCI 1.1 (Den)
May 3 Randers (Den)
May 10 Omloop der Kempen UCI 1.2 (Ned)
May 16 GP Copenhagen - Odsherred Classic UCI 1.2 (Den)
May 20-24 Flèche du Sud UCI 2.2 (Lux)
June 1 Rogaland GP UCI 1.2 (Nor)
June 3-7 Ringerike GP UCI 2.2 (Nor)

Its a good schedule with plenty of races, but not too many. I am looking forward to doing them.

As the toto turns

For those of you following velocitynation.com you may be interested to know that Salvatore Commesso is not retired, and that I crushed him on 3 of the four stages in Istria. Check it out, he was way down in 124th on stage 1 whereas I was in a commanding top 100 position.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road.php?id=road/2009/mar09/istrianspring09/istrianspring091

http://velocitynation.com/toto?page=42

Istrian Trophy

The stage race was 4 days but the first day was a 1.3km prologue. The next day was kind of rolling and finished on a steep 500 meter cobbled climb. Stage 2 had a big climb with 40km to go and then a 3km climb up to the finish, and the last day was basically flat.

Well the prologue was a prologue and I basically suck at prologues so I got 108 out of 170. But I also messed up the last turn and lost a good 2 seconds there. Those 2 seconds would have given me about 20 places. Still not as bad as my team mate who crashed in the same turn. One team mate was 6 seconds up and finished in 23rd. Overall I'm like 14 seconds down so basically, who cares. The legs felt really good, I just don't have enough power for such a short race so what can you do.

There is another American here I know from racing with the national team and stuff. His name Tejay Van Garderen, he rides for the D3 rabobank team, I am sure a good number of people who might be reading this have heard of him. I find it funny that among all of these people from a whole swarm of European countries, there are just two americans who have decided to leave the comforts of home and try to make it big overseas with a foreign team. I didn't get a chance to say hi but I am sure I will tomorrow. He'll probably be surpised to see me here.

The first real road stage had some good news and bad news, the good was that my legs felt pretty sweet and I was ok at moving up and staying up. With like 10 km to go there was a gradual 3 k climb and Rabobank started attacking. I was right at the front following the moves and it was hard but totally doable. At one point they sat up a bit and so I looked back to see the damage over my left shoulder, just as I did, the race leader came by on my right and hit my bars with his hip. I went straight down. Luckily, I didn't have too much road rash, but I pulled my left glute and groin muscles, it pretty much hurt to walk or do anything. It was just a racing incident, but it was definitely annoying to go down like that, especially when I had good legs. In the end I finished in a group about 2 minutes down.

Stage 2 went basically as I expected, the legs felt like crap and my pack skills were terrible since I was a bit freaked out. I started the big climb at the back of the field and rode my way up to the third group. We caught the second group which had our GC guy Chris in it, so I got to the front and helped with the chace back to the front group of about 30. After that I was basically done racing physically and mentally and sat at the back untill the 3k climb up to the finish and then just rode ME up it to finish about 80th. Chris rode pretty well and finished around 30th, not bad considering he's been the only guy on the team who's spent most of the time at the front and going with attacks. I was too useless to do that today. I wonder how it would have been on a normal day without the crash the day before. Still it was not too bad considering I am still walking with a limp.

Then stage 3 was more of the same. The first hour was crazy fast with non stop attacks. The guy who won yesterday was not on the strongest team so the big teams wanted to test him to see if they could take back the yellow jersey. The leader's team held touch through and eventually let a break go of 8 guys who were not a big threat to the overal and then kept the gap at 1:35 for most of the day. With 40km to go the attacks started again, but still to no avail. When a field sprint looked inevitable we decided to ride for Linde who was our best finisher in the Porec trophy. I tried to get him up to the front, but we sadly got stuck about 70 guys back and could not find any room in the road to move any higher.

So although there weren't any stellar results, it was a good experience and I can't wait for some more races when I have completely recovered. I think it will be sweet.

Porec Trophy

First we did a one day race a few days before a 4 day stage race.

The race started off super fast. There was a decent hill 10 min into it and I went waaaaaay too hard up it. I kind of torched myself there a bit so when the final break went I was in 5th wheel but choose not to follow it. I thought it was too big and I expected the pelaton to jump right on it. But of course they didn't and for the first time in a long time the break stuck at this race. Still, I was up there and active, but I just should have been a bit more relaxed in the first 20 min. It didn't help that I was the only one up there for those first 20 min but we were going so fast I am not surprised they couldn't get up there.

The last 20k were the most sketchy of my life, guys were all over the place and doing some dumb shit. Also we were gutter to gutter on this narrow road doing 30 mph. But amazingly no one crashed that I saw. I managed to find a team mate to tow up to the front and left him there with 2 k to go. Two of them ended up there but finished 20th and 21st. Still not bad considering we don't have a field sprinter. I sat up after 2k to go and finished safely at the back of the group.

Croatia

So I've been racing in Croatia for the last 10 days, I had internet connection, but I had to pay by the minute so I was a bit lazy to update this blog. I was writing emails to some special people with my race reports so I will basically just post them up here. I did take pictures, but I do not currently have a cable to download my camera to my computer, so you are going to have to wait and they will probably end up on Facebook anyway. Overall, the racing was a great way to get the feet wet. I saw that I had decent form compared to the Euro guys but I didn't get any real results due to a crash at the end of the first stage in which I pulled some muscles in my hip. Still, it was a week of great weather, beautiful training, and fun racing.

27 travel hours later.....

I'm in Denmark. I went to bed at 12:30 and woke up at 7:30. I like getting on a normal schedule right from the start, it makes getting over the jetlag easier in the long run. Today I get to start settling in, I only have a few days before we leave for a race in Croatia so its going to be pretty busy. Setting up bikes and stuff... fun times!