Me and My Knee

After I crashed at the Tour de Suisse, the team ordered me to take a week off the bike. Although I knew I needed the rest, for some reason when you’re forced to do it, it feels like work. Maybe because I worried about the knee—which I’d smacked hard—constantly.

When I decided to start racing again back in the fall of 2006, even as an amateur, one of the things I worried most about was keeping my knees healthy. With the workload that I knew I was going to need to get back to anything resembling race fitness, I wondered not if but when would I start having knee problems. For some reason, the problems never came. (I’m convinced that one of the reasons is because pedal technology has come a long way since I was last doing big miles, in the ’90s, and because I started using Speedplay pedals for the first time. They just work for me, and it’s the one brand of equipment I’d really have a hard time changing.)

Now, here I was not riding—and filling all that free time by thinking about my knees. For me, the pain was a continual reminder not only that somethat was wrong with my body, but that I didn’t know if I’d ever get it back to the way it was before the wreck. For the first five nights I kept getting woken up by the pain everytime I turned at all. During the days, if I’d sit or lay down for some relief, the pain was repay me by becoming almost unbearable when I got up. Finally I decided to just get on my bike and at least ride down to the bar in Lecchi, a solid 4 km from my house. My knee felt better on the bike than it did at any other time, so I took that as a sign that I was doing the right thing.

I decided to start training. Actually, it was more like I just started riding again: I was looking forward to a week of pedaling along without having to worry about doing intervals, without staring at a power meter. I live in one of the most beautiful areas in the world. You know those postcards of Tuscany? That’s my view. But for some reason, I pretty much stick to different variations of about 3 rides. And each of those rides starts with a stop at Paolo’s bar in Lecchi for an espresso, and a climb up to the Badia a Coltibuono, where my wife and I were married six years ago. It makes me feel closer to her when we’re an ocean apart. (The climb, not the coffee.)

I planned to use my free week to ride some new roads and explore the area a little more. But it didn’t work out that way. The first ride back was not very much fun. My legs were stiff, and whatever little power they had wasn’t much. My heart rate was also about 20 beats higher than normal, and I realized that even in a week you can lose a lot of fitness. Actually, I think it was less the knees than the combination of the little breaks I’ve been taking since the beginning of May that were finally catching up to me. Or at least that’s what I was telling myself as I slowly made my way up the climb to the Badia, praying that no other riders came by me. I guess I just felt more comfortable staying on roads I knew. After about five days, things started coming back to normal. My power wasn’t great, but it was good enough that I was even starting to think I might recuperate in time for the national championship in Portugal. But four hours of serious riding set me straight: I was toast. The knee was improving each day, but I was nowhere near ready to race.

I’m finally ready to start structured training again. My first test will be some SFRs (low-RPM, high-resistance training on a hill), which will show me how the knee really feels. I go to Basel for a power test after that, then off to Livigno in the northern part of Italy for 3 weeks at altitude before the Tour of Poland and the second half of my season.

An Unforgettable day

I had just gotten back from a four-hour ride where I had felt pretty good when I got the call that told me I was racing the Tour of Switzerland.

I was excited. Thor was going to be there and we hadn’t raced together yet. That was good. Andreas Klier was on the roster, too; the last time I raced with him was in 1992 at a junior race in Holland. I got a top ten. He won. Like Inigo Cuesta, Andreas is one of those pros who has been around so long that he can tell you what’s going to happen in a race before it actually happens. In the Classics he is irreplaceable. (Have a look at these episodes of Cervelo’s Beyond the Peloton to see what I mean.)

It was also the last race before the Tour de France, and everybody on this team except me would be going to the Tour, so it was important. That was good, too.

But the Tour of Switzerland is mountainous, and that was bad. I haven’t exactly been climbing well. I decided to consider this a test of character.

The Prologue wasn’t an easy one. It was just over 7k and it had a 2.5 km climb and a 2.5 km technical descent. I’m no prologue specialist, but I can hack 7k no problem. Prologues are usually decided by seconds, and if you are really going for it then the warmup and review of the course is critical. It’s about saving half a second here and half a second there. You often see guys out on the course riding and re-riding particular turns looking for the best line through it, the one where they can carry the most speed—and that usually means how fast can you get through the corner without crashing. You think of the gearing, and where to stand up and where to sit, where can you catch your breath for a few seconds, and where you have to give it 100% to pick up time. For me it wasn’t like that. I did the course a few times to warm up and did one dangerous turn on the downhill just to make sure I didn’t overcook it. I was going to ride the prologue all-out, but I wasn’t going to be taking any chances on the dangerous descent. (And just on that descent I probably lost 10-20 seconds. My time was about 1:35 second slower than the winner, Fabian Cancellara, and good enough for 145th place. I joked that I’d cracked the top 150.)

Stage 1 from Ascona to Sierre was 167k, with one Category 1 climb over the Simplon pass at 2005 meters, and a Category 3 climb just before the finish. Just before the start, I found a shady spot under a tree and sat down. Thor was talking to Tom Boonen and fellow Norgewian and super nice guy Kurt-Asle Aversen. All around there were small groups of racers catching up with each other. Out of nowhere, a spectator walked up to me and asked me to sign a cap. “I’ve been looking for you all morning,” he said.

“Are you sure you have the right guy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re Portugese, and I am Portugese.”

Ah. Switzerland is full of Portuguese people. If you walk into a hotel, there is a good chance that the hotel is full of Portuguese people doing the service jobs. I even ask for things in Portuguese since the likelihood of the person being Portuguese is fairly high.

A break got away and stuck quickly, so the pace was brisk but not chaotic, and I was feeling good. It rained, and I made my way back to the car to grab my new Castelli Gore-Tex rain jersey (one of those articles of clothing that just makes you go “wow), and got on the radio to see if anyone else wanted anything. I ended up carrying a cap, another jacket and some bottles back up to the pack. I was next to one of my Spanish teammates, Xavier Florencio, when the road starting going up. The Cat 1 climb, I knew was 20k long. I found a rhythm and stayed next to Xavier and we rode up and up and up.

I knew we’d gone at least 10k, and was feeling good about reaching the top with the group when the radio told us that the climb was about to start—20k to the top, I heard.

“What was that we just did?” I thought.

It was getting colder and colder as we went up. About halfway up, I started to go a little backwards and as I passed Thor he looked at me and said, “If you lose my wheel I will smash you.” I took his wheel and found an extra gear.

With about 5k to go Andreas, came up to Thor and said, “Let’s move up.” On a small false flat section when everybody kept the same rhythm, Andreas moved us up to the very front in a way that only a guy with that experience can do. He just knew the right spot to go past 50 guys without really making much of an effort. We’d been climbing for an hour. About 3k from the top, I lost contact with the front group and found myself in a group with about 10 riders. I wasn’t worried. I’d heard that Cavendish had been dropped earlier, so I knew his guys would wait for him and, if worse came to worst, I could hitch a ride back on his train.

We crested the top of the climb about 15 seconds behind the main group and went hard on the descent. (Later, I would look at my computer and see a top speed of 120k per hour.) It was cold and the roads were wet. I was gaining slowly on the front group, and as long as I was there by the bottom I’d be fine. Just as I was catching them at the bottom, my back wheel started going out on a slippery roundabout, and as I put my left foot down I kept going into a complete 180 and rear-ended the crowd. Nobody was hurt, and I just remounted and gave chase. The pace was fast. The pack was stretched out, and I made my way up through the cars. As I passed ours, I took off the rain jacket and threw it to the mechanic in the back seat, then went to the drivers window and loaded up with bottles. I rode into the group and passed the bottles to my teammates, working my way up until I found Philip Deignan. We were moving around 65k per hour and I was feeling good.

Then all of a sudden I got a cramp on the inside of my quads. I couldn’t pedal. I had to swing right to let the rider behind me by. In about 60 seconds I went from being in a good position, flying in the peloton, to back in the cars. There was about 40k of racing left, and I stayed in the cars until the base of the last climb, with 20k to go. All I could do was ride my own tempo. About 1k from the top I could see that the gruppetto had formed and they were about a minute ahead.

One more time, I found myself chasing hard on the downhill.

Coming around a right-hand bend, I saw a Rabobank car and an ambulance stopped in front of me. (Apparently one of the Rabobank riders had gone down hard.) I locked up the brakes, hit the Rabobank car then careened straight into the back of the ambulance in a sideways slide. A stretcher was sticking halfway out of the ambulance, and I hit it dead on, just below my knee. As soon as I hit, I thought I’d broken something for sure. I remember being on the ground, moaning and saying, “Give me my bike. Give me my bike.” I wanted to make the time cut. The first person to get to me was my old doctor Dion Van Bommell who is now a doctor for Rabobank. It was odd to look up and see his face after nearly 20 years.

When Jean Paul, my team director, got there he told me to take it easy. “You have plenty of time,” he said. I could stand up so I knew my leg wasn’t broken, but I was barely able to get on my bike and had an even harder time clipping in. I started riding toward the finish, and I started to weep. Every time I tried to push the pedals hard, a pain shot from the side of my leg to my quad.

About 5k from the line, Jean-Paul pulled alongside me and said, “You want to hear some good news?” My first thought was, “What could possibly be good news now?”

“Heino won,” Jean-Paul said. Heinrich Haussler, my teammate, had won the stage, and I did, after all, smile. Somehow that made the pain bearable.

As I was finally about to finish, a guy crossed the street in front of me. “How about a little respect,” I thought. I could see him looking at me. I looked at him. It was my godson’s father. Another Portugese living in Switzerland. That was good for a few pedal strokes, too.

Our team doctor, Lorenz, drove me to the local hospital. There were a few crashes that day, and in the lobby there was another rider bloodied waiting for care. As I was waiting for my turn, an ambulance driver asked my doctor if I was number 72. I was.

“He scratched back of my ambulance on impact,” the driver said. “Does he have insurance to pay for it?”

That pretty much summed up my Tour of Switzerland. I couldn’t start the next day, and also lost my chance to compete in the Portugese National Championships, which were just two weeks ago. But I left with all of these crazy, funny, unforgettable memories that somehow make it all worthwhile. I think.

Decisions of the heart

After leaving the Tour of California early, I was pretty fried. I don’t think anybody likes to quit, regardless of the reasons, but it was extra hard for me because one of my goals for the year had been to finish every race I entered.

Obviously, I’m working on some new goals now.

I’m also trying to fix whatever it was that was broken in California. I called my nutritionist and asked what else we could be doing: Okay, I said, let’s try this whole gluten-free thing and see where it goes. I feel confident that my training is pretty dialed in, but when Philippe told me to rest, I said, “I’ve been resting. Let’s try working even harder.” Philippe mentioned that he’d rather not kill me, but I told him not to worry about it. To offset the higher workloads, I resolved to start sleeping more, and making sure I took a nap every afternoon.

And I topped off my new start by staying home for a week before going back to Europe; taking my son to school in the morning was the kind of simple joy that lays a foundation strong enough to withstand anything.

I followed my heart in another important way, too: I moved my European training home to Italy.

I’ve been living in the south of France. It’s a great place for cyclists since the weather is great and there are plenty of riders around, good roads and lots of mountains. But my heart has always been in Tuscany. I’ve been coming to the area around Siena since I was in college back in 1998, and I love it so much I got married there. Earlier this year, when my wife asked where we should go on vacation I said, “What about Chianti?” She replied that we go there every year, and suggested Turkey. “How about Chianti?” I said. She mentioned Japan. “Fine,” I said, “Let’s compromise: We’ll go to the Tuscan coast instead.” It’s that kind of love. So I decided to move here, to a little town called Galenda.

I packed the car and drove to a house I rented. I was sad to leave friends like Thor and Richie Porte, but they understood why I was leaving. Thor even said he knew I needed to be around my olive trees—I bring a bottle of olive oil from Castello di Ama to every race I do and those guys devour it. Last time I also brought Tuscan honey from Montalcino and Parmigianno Regiano. (And the mechanics and soigneurs have at some point gotten either a bottle of Chianti or a bottle of Oline Oil.)

The riding is fantastic if you like going up and down. There are not really many flat roads in Chianti. My new schedule is up at 8:30, a little core work, some oatmeal preparation (which is now truly gluten-free Bob’s Red Mill). At 10 or 11 I get on the bike and head down the hill to Paolo’s in Lecchi for a cup of coffee, hen I’m off on my ride. I like to start with the climb up to the Badia a Coltibuono, where Tiiu and I were married, then from there it’s various combinations of loops. Some of the towns that I’ll hit include Radda in Chianti, Lucareli, Panzano, Castellina in Chianti, San Donato, Siena, Castelnuovo Beradenga and Gaiole in Chianti.

I felt like I was living the dream again. My plan was to refocus and re-energize by riding like this for awhile, without any racing. I was doing some pretty good rides, starting to feel good again. Then one day after getting back from a long ride I had a message from my sports director, Jean Paul Van Poppel—look him up he’s won 20 Grand Tour stages.

His message was short: Do you like Switzerland?

I knew what that meant: I was living the dream, but I also still had a job to do, and the team needed me at the Tour of Switzerland. It was time to find out how far my heart could carry me. As it turns out, a crash would keep from the finding the answer—but that’s a story for the next time.

Recalibration

Stage 4 of the Tour of California taught me something important about the difference between the other racers in the pack and me: I have to be absolutely on my A game to be part of the action; they can fake it—find a way to hang in there when they’re feeling bad.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise, because it makes sense. I’m not exactly coming off the couch—I was at a level that let me race domestically in the United States last year and in the Portugese national time trial championships—but I don’t have the continuous years and years of racing in my legs that these guys do. Some of them have a 10-year base to rely on when things get tough. Some of them have more. I’m basically relying on the racing I’ve done this year in Europe, which is enough when I’m physically sharp and mentally focused.

But it’s not enough on days like today. Unlike when I had to abandon the race at the Tour of Romandie, I didn’t run out of power today or completely fall apart. I just didn’t have what I needed to stay in contact with the group when I ran low. I’m lighter than I was last year at this time, and I have much more power, and more miles in my legs and, thanks to the staff and my teammates on Cervelo TestTeam, a level of support I couldn’t even dream of before I joined the squad. But even so, I still don’t have that reserve the other pros can find.

In a way, it’s good that I’m struggling, because now I understand what I need to do to keep the dream alive: Recalibrate my way of thinking, so that I forget about all the gains I’ve made and start over as if I’m at square one. I need to build from where I am now, not from where I was. That means altitude training, probably in Boulder, a harder look at my diet, and more focus on my core. (Now that I’m doing so much racing I can feel the wear and tear on my hips and lower back; sometimes it feels like I’m locked down.)

Someone asked me if I was thinking of quitting, if I’m discouraged, if i ever think of just going home. But this isn’t a time of retreat. It’s more like a rebirth. For the first time since I started this lifestyle, I can see truly clearly where I need to be—and where I am. Quit?

No way, man. That doesn’t make any sense: I just got a re-start.

Goals and Gruppetos

When a teammate wins a stage or a jersey—or does both, like Brett Lancaster did for Cervelo TestTeam Monday during Stage 2 of the Tour of California—there’s always a bonus to go along with the feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction the whole team experiences: We know that the next day we’ll be riding with a definite and important purpose.

Maybe it’s just my status as a new member of the peloton, but I always find the racing better when I have a goal for the day. On Monday, for instance, my job was to stay with our top sprinter, Theo Bos, the whole day. Wherever he went, I was with him. On the climbs, I stayed with him, and when we came off on a climb I stayed with him and worked until we got back on the descents. That’s how the day went for us: Off on the climbs, back on the descents. Finally, when we got to the climbs of Oakville Grade and Trinity, the pack split apart for good and we were in the gruppetto—the group that bands together just to make sure we all get to the end within the time cut.

It was a big gruppetto, maybe 40 guys, and we ended up coming in around 17 minutes behind Brett. Technically, I think we were even past the time cut—the official gap you’re allowed before getting kicked out of the race. It’s calculated as a set percentage of the winner’s time. At the Tour of the California, the cuts seem small to me, like 7 percent instead of the 10-15 percent you usually get. But the cut can be adjusted if the group is simply too big. And with that many guys, and riders such as Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish in the gruppetto, we knew we were probably safe.

I was looking around the gruppetto today and thinking: I’m always there. At most races, my job is to cover the early breaks or do the early work, or do something like stay with Theo, so late in the race I end up in the gruppetto. Everyone else seems to rotate in and out. I’m like the only permanent resident in a vacation town. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the gruppetto with Boonen before—and it was only because he went down really hard yesterday—but it was . . . it was sort of awesome.

Tomorrow will be interesting because—I’m guessing—I’ll spend most of my time at the front covering breaks until one that’s acceptable gets away, then I’ll be setting tempo to try to help the team defend Brett’s jersey. I mean, I love my gruppetto, but I love having something that makes it all worthwhile even more.

Crowds and Crashes

During Stage 1 of the Tour of California, the first thing that struck all of us on the Cervelo Test Team was the crowds. There were an unbelievable amount of people on the course, thousands and thousands all along the road—not just the start and finish, which were packed, but basically the whole way there were fans. I’d say there were probably more people lining the roads today than any other race I’ve done in Europe outside of Germany. It was impressive to see the turnout, and it’s fun to race in front of huge crowds.

We expected a field sprint, so the team’s plan was to work for Theo Bos, our sprinter, the whole day. My job again was to cover the early moves, along with Oscar Pujol. Basically, he and I had to cover every move, especially if one of the teams with a dangerous sprinter got a teammate in it. I jumped with some, Oscar did the same, but nothing stuck. Finally, a good break got away that Cervelo and the other sprinters’ teams were happy to let go. Columbia-HTC controlled the field from then on with a steady tempo. I went to the front and did some work, and Oscar helped, and by the end the pack had shut the break down and we were all ready to work for our sprinters.

Unfortunately, the finish was marred by some crashes, and Theo got caught behind one. Columbia had their good leadout going and launched Cavendish to the win. They’ve done this a lot, and they had the finish under control, but after all our hard work, Oscar and I would have loved to do what we could to give Theo a shot at the line.

It was a shame to see the finish get so dangerous, especially since the course wasn’t at fault. The crash that happened in front of Theo occurred on a straightaway. The problem was that in a race like this that mixes some of the biggest and best teams with some smaller ones, everyone on the smaller teams is desperate to win. There was one team in particular—not a domestic American team, by the way—that was taking unnecessary chances and taking a lot of risks that aren’t professional. Among the European teams, everybody respects everybody else’s work in terms of what we all need to do; we all understand that the other guys are just trying to get their sprinter into the line—but you don’t try to break into somebody else’s leadout, you don’t take risks that are going to cause a crash. We’re respectful of the fact that the other guy is just trying to do his job, the same way we are. We all do our jobs and the fastest, smartest guy wins, most often.

Some of the big riders, the big names, are unhappy with the behavior of that team, and my understanding is that tomorrow the team is going to get a talking-to from some of the more senior guys in the peloton. Hopefully, they’ll understand we all just want to do our best to get back to work tomorrow and every day after. We all want to get to Los Angeles.

Waking Up

You leave stage races fairly exhausted, and you begin preparing for another one right afterward, so the riding you do in between is fairly easy. But it didn’t feel that way to me after Castilla y Leon.

The normal schedule after a stage race is that after traveling home, on Monday I do a coffee-shop ride. That’s an hour and a half, and the whole time I wonder how it was possible that I rode so fast just the day before. Normally on every little climb my legs ache and I’ll look at my riding buddy (usually Richie Porte from Saxo Bank or Tim Gudsell from La Francaise de Jeux) and say something like, “Man this is really bad today.” They’re usually in the same situation, so we go out 45 minutes then stop for coffee (for about an hour), then ride back, another 45 minutes. We are constantly getting passed by other riders. Tuesday is off, preferably with a massage. Wednesday depends on how I feel; if I’m recuperated, I’ll go out for two to three hours with some light intervals, and if I’m not then it’s another easy spin. Thursday is a long ride of four to five hours with an hour of motorpacing at the end. Two days before a race, it’s two hours easy, and the day before it’s two hours with some openers.

After Castilla y Leon, I might have gone a little too hard on the long ride, because the day after I had serious bonking issues on my easy two-hour spin. I got to a point where I was so empty that I had to go into a coffee shop for a Coke and an espresso and some chocolate. It got me home.

When I got to Switzerland for the Tour of Romandie I noticed I was a little more tired from traveling than normal, but I shrugged it off. Romandie is a Pro Tour race, so the competition is high. Some of the best riders in the world were there and some were using it to fine-tune their legs for the upcoming Giro d’Italia. The course is mountainous—I think the flat day had 7,000 feet of climbing or something ridiculous. The first day was a short, flat Prologue, and I thought I’d ride it all-out to open up my legs for the race. Once I looked at my power numbers from the ride, I noticed that I had only done about 400 watts for a little over five minutes. That’s not terrible for a rider my weight, but it isn’t what I’d expect from an all-out effort.

The following day included two Category 1 climbs and a Category 3 climb, for about 11,000 feet or so. Normally when the gun goes off, there is a flurry of attacks until a breakaway sticks. This time, we rolled out for a few miles at 15 mph and everybody had a chance to catch up. A few of the Spanish riders from Euskaltel and Caise d’ Epargne come up to me and said they saw an interview I’d done in a Spanish magazine and thought my story was cool. That was nice. After about 10 miles three guys jumped away and that was the break of the day. Once the break had seven minutes Columbia went to the front and set tempo for the rest of the stage and I passed the day in fairly good spirits—except the 63-mph downhills.

Stage 2 was semi-flat—the one with 7,000 feet of climbing. Along with Oscar Pujol, I was told to try to cover early moves. The stage started fast, but nothing abnormal, and though I tried as best as I could to get to the front I just didn’t have the power to get up there. A break got away and the race settled into a nice tempo, and I remember thinking to myself I should eat. It was a hot day and I was trying to drink a lot as well. After about 80k, I just fell apart.

The pace wasn’t very high as we started on some slight ups and downs—not even really climbs—and suddenly I couldn’t follow even the slow rhythm of the pack. In situations like that you try to find everything that will help you to keep going. You tell yourself a lot of things. A few that crossed my mind were "Don’t feel sorry for yourself and push harder, it will pass," which was good for perhaps 5k, and "Do it for your teammates, you need to be there for Apolonio on the cobbled climb—pre-stage strategy—after that you can let go," and that one gave me strength to move forward and take Marcel with me.

One that threw me into a panic, and wasn’t very helpful, was, “Christ, what will all the people that follow you think?" I also tried, "Don’t let go or you’ll be in the cars seeing people you know, doing the walk of shame". I looked at the words on my shorts, especially “Sacrifice,” but nothing was helping anymore.

I started coming off. I remember the moment exactly because Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’ Epagne) was talking to Sergio Paulinho (RadioShack) and fans were yelling Philippe Gilbert’s (Lotto) name, which made Gert Stegemans (RadioShack) start to make fun of him. I heard all that and I thought, "We’re not even going hard," as I was rolling off the back. I fought back on a few descents, but finally on a climb I came off for good.

I faded through the cars with my head hung low. Marcelo, our sports director, offered me a gel but we both knew a gel wasn’t going to help. A few directors offered encouragement as they passed, which almost made me feel worse since at this pace nobody gets dropped. Jose Azevedo, a former racer who is now a director at RadioShack , slowed when he came by and spoke to me a bit, telling me it happens to the best of them and to everybody.

I kept thinking about not being there when I needed to be there for my teammates, about having to walk into the room that night as the guy who dropped out, about not being able to look the mechanics in the eye.

As I rolled off the back of the caravan, Phillipe, our second director, stayed with me until I entered the circuit, where I would pass the finish with 50k still left to go out and do. I was already 10 minutes back and knew I wouldn’t make the time cut, so I just quit.

That night, I kept my spirits high in front of the guys since nobody wants to be around a teammate who’s feeling sorry for himself. I had a good talk with Marcelo and Philippe. Their support and words that night were irreplaceable. They knew what was happening, that it really does happen to everybody, and that there was no way I could simply push through it. After nearly 30 days of racing, my body was just too tired. Philippe ordered me to take five days completely off the bike to rest, and to not be hard on myself.

I took the five days off, and I tried not to be hard on myself. I got to surprise my wife and son by coming home to New York three days early (before the Tour of California). I was able to be the parent who gets my son out the door in the morning and off to school. Now at the Tour of California I’ll find out if Philippe and Marcelo were right. And I’ll find out if the dream is still alive.

Champagne and Suffering

After the northern races that gave me such a hard time, I was glad to be getting back to Spain for the stage race Vuelta Castilla y Leon. Our team was built around sprinter Theo Bos, who already has three wins this season. We were hoping to get him some more stage victories.

The race starts on a Wednesday and finishes on a Sunday, with four road stages and a time trial. For me, that would mean four days of racing and in the TT a medium effort that would cut back on the exertion while being just enough to ensure I’d make the time cut. (That’s the slowest time you can ride without getting kicked out of the race; it’s set at a percentage of the winner’s time.)
The first two stages were fairly flat. The first day had a Category 2 climb, but the real danger was in the wind since it could split the peloton at any moment. For us, it was a matter of bringing Theo to the line in the best possible position to dispute the sprint. As usual, a break got away early, and the pack was content to let them escape for now. Once we got over the Category 1 climb, Cervelo stayed close to the front whenever it looked like the crosswind could play a role; a few times the group split, only to regroup later, and we were doing our job. About 50k from the finish, Cervelo had to go to the front and start working to bring the breakaway back—or else Theo would never get a chance to do his job. The task was granted to me, Ignatas Konovolovas and Joquin Novoa. My legs weren’t super. After a bit of work on the front, we hit a small hill and I started to go backwards. From then on the race didn’t really stop, and when a crosswind split the group with about 20k to go I was in a small group off the back: My day was done. Theo ended up winning the sprint, and because this was the first stage he also donned the leader’s jersey. It was nice to sip some champagne that night.

The second stage was the longest of the race at 210k. It was another flat stage, with just a 3rd category climb, so the likelihood of a field sprint was high so we would have been one of the active teams anyway. But with the leaders jersey in our hands, the responsibility of controlling the race was ours. The beginning of stages are generally very fast until the break gets established. This one was, like usual, nonstop attacks with the field stretched out for miles on end. The fact that it was raining and cold didn’t help, but knowing that we were working the front for a teammate in the leader’s jersey made everything easier. A break finally stuck after 25k of racing, and at 45k it had a 7-minute gap so the three of us hit the front again and brought the gap down to 5 minutes then just kept it there. At this point we were taking roughly five-minute pulls, and after a bit Oscar Pujol came up to rotate with us as Ignatas was told to rest. The weather became better and better, and the day felt as if it were passing surprisingly quickly. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to have a teammate in the mix. After about 100k, Astana put one rider in the front to help us (they were there to help Contador win the overall). After about 160k I was cooked. From there on, I was just sitting at the back and thinking about getting to the end saving as much energy as possible. But with about 15k to go, I was out the back in the crosswinds. Teddy King and Stefan Denifl shouldered the last of the heavy lifting for Theo, and he made a clean dash for the line after a perfect lead-out by Stefan to win the second stage. More champagne.
Stage 3 was the big mountain day. I was tired. With two Category 1 climbs and a Cat 3 it was going to be challenging. The last climb was the Category 1 up to Alto del Morredero, which is a 20k-climb that finished above 1,700 meters. The team had two goals: get to the bottom of the first climb with Theo in the group, and make sure Stefan, one of our climbers, didn’t spend too much energy until the last ascent. Teddy and Inigo Cuesta took care of Stefan, and the rest of us were assigned to Theo. The stage started out fast: in the first 90 minutes we averaged 54 kph. Four of us crested the first Category 1 climb with Theo and another 10 riders, and came back to the main group just before the Category 3 climb, where we again came off the back together and chased until about with 25k to go to the final climb, we rejoined. It’s a living, man.

As soon as we hit the Cat 1 climb, the gruppeto formed—the pack of those just trying to survive, like me—and in 20k we lost close to 35 minutes to the winner. We managed to finish inside the time cut. (Though, with the big group we had, of about 40 riders, there’s a chance the organizers will extend the cut to avoid losing so much of the field). The climb was made even harder by freezing rain, and because we could see most of the climb from miles out. But it was a good day for the team. We all got to the end. Theo lost the leader’s jersey, but retained the points jersey. Stefan did an amazing climb and finished in the top 10. I’d say a top 10 in a Grand Tour is in this young mans near future.

Stage four was the time trial, and for a rider like me it can also be like a day off or a recovery day. You can get up late because the stage start is well into the afternoon. And I knew that all I had to do was make the time cut — I wouldn’t have to chase breaks or control the front. I could peg my heart rate at 160-165 and put it on autopilot. The surprising thing is, in a stage race that still feels hard no matter how easy you try to go. I got caught by my minute man—the racer who’d started 60 seconds behind me—but it didn’t matter: I did my job. I was rested enough that when the last stage came the next day, a long and brutally hard one at 171k, I was able to ride it out to the end. I’d finished another stage race, helped Theo to two stage wins and the points jersey, and Stefan into the top 10 on the GC. Along with Inigo Cuesta, I’ve been part of five of the six wins the team had to that point on the year. Not bad for two old guys, and a lot of solace for seeing your name so far down in the GC every time.
After the race, it turned out that while we’d been immersed in our suffering there had a volcano eruption somewhere in Iceland. None of us could get flights home. It’s always amazing to me how little of the real world penetrates a stage race while it’s going. Life doesn’t really exist for us outside of sleep, eat, race, recover. (I also happened to miss the whole Tiger Woods thing by about a week.) I heard that Geert Steegmans from RadioShack had a car and was going my way, so I tried to bum a ride, but my sell wasn’t very compelling: “Hey Gert you don’t know me but any chance I can get a ride with you back to Monaco?” He said he’d get back to me. As it turns out his car was full with other riders trying to get home as well.

Still, it was a great race.

A Tough Week at Work

I’m a little self-conscious about complaining too much, since I’m living the dream of many cyclists, so I realize that saying I’m tired can easily come across as seeming whiny. But I am.

I have more than 20 days of racing already this year, and although my body has been recuperating better than I expected, my mind might be starting to crack. I was able to finish my first stage race, the Etoile de Besseges, this past February in France because my will was unshakable. My body was okay for that race, but it was my head that got me through. In contrast, at my last race, the GP Pino Cerami in Belgium, my body was as good as it’s been since I’ve arrived in Europe. But my head wasn’t.

Transitioning from stage races in southern Europe to the one-day races of Northern Europe is never easy under any circumstance. The style of racing is completely different and the roads are usually tiny. In Spain, for example, the biggest obstacle is usually the mountains; in the one-day races of northern Europe, the tough spots are most often the small roads, steep climbs, crosswinds and crashes. Add to that my current mental state, and it’s no surprise that my week of one-day races in Holland, Germany and Belgium started off poorly.

I’m not doing the big races that are household names, like the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix or Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Instead, I had the Hel Van Het Mergelland, Rund Um Koln and GP Pino Cerami. There are usually a few big teams at these races, but mostly it is small continental pro teams. But what some of the small teams lack in depth, they make up for in aggressiveness and hunger. It’s as close to hand-to-hand combat as I’ve seen in races so far this year.

My first one-day race of the week was Holland’s Hel Van Het Mergelland, a hilly, 200-kilometer circuit race. It’s the mini Amstel Gold Race, and was important to me because I spent a few years racing in Holland during my first stab at cycling, and I still have many friends there. We started in drizzle, and the pack was fast and nervous. It was going to be an up-and-down, crosswindy day, so getting to the front was important. But from the beginning, I was having a hard time moving up. I felt like my legs had cement in them. When I wasn’t able to move up on the flat section, I figured I’d do it on the first climb. But as soon as we hit the climb I felt terrible — worse than I had all year, and not only could I not go advance, but I was going backwards really fast. Soon I was dropped—in the first 15k. As our team car passed me, Alex, our sports director, asked what was wrong. I shrugged because, to be honest, I was as confused as anybody. All I knew for sure was that I was in a world of pain, going as hard as I could but my race was ending no matter what I did. I hit the next climb on my way back toward the start/finish in the little ring, and I started to do that thing all riders do when they’re feeling bad, imagining that I was getting a flat, that my brakes were rubbing, that my cranks were coming off. I looked down at my rear wheel, and it was rubbing.

Somehow, I hadn’t even noticed. All those times I’d been fatigued in races and blamed the bike, and this time I was blaming myself and it was the bike. Far from making me feel better, this made me feel worse. I’d done nearly one complete lap without bothering to look down. It was a stupid mistake. I failed to finish for the first time because of a mental breakdown.

After a recovery day, I went to Germany for the Rund um Kohln in Cologne. This is the oldest race in Germany, and has live national television from the beginning to the end. Although the course has a few hills, it was most likely come down to a sprint. So our strategy was to cover early moves if there were more than 5 riders, then work for our sprinter, Davide Appolonio, in the finishing circuits. Determined to make up for my last race, from the start I stayed at the front ready to cover moves. The break of the day got away within the first 10k, with one of my teammates, Oscar Pujol, in it. (He’d go on to win the Mountains Classification for the day.) With Oscar in the break, the rest of us basically had the day off and could wait until the finishing circuits to work hard. I felt good.

I’m one of those riders who, before a race, says a little prayer. I don’t ask for a victory, since it seems to me not only a little trivial, but as if I imagine God for some reason likes me more than the other competitors and wants me to win. Usually I just say, “Please let me finish this race safely and not crash.” My prayer wasn’t answered.

As we were going through the feed zone after 120k, I grabbed my feed-bag like I’ve done all year and threw it over my shoulder. Feed zones are usually fairly hectic and dangerous. Guys are diving to get their bags, then once they get them are trying to get out of the way. Sometimes the pace is slow, but other times it’s 50-kilometer-plus, or times when you grab the bag, throw it over your back then ride with it for another 20k before you can eat anything because the speed is so high. At Koln, the speed was so high the pack was stretched out. I was in the first 50 riders—normally out of harm’s way. I grabbed the bag, threw it over my back and with my right hand on the drop I took a bottle out with my left. I put the bottle in the cage and started digging in the bag for food when the rider in front of me swerved to avoid a bottle someone had dropped. I rode over the bottle and in the next instant was on the ground. Most of the time when you hit a bottle, they open and it’s no big deal. This one didn’t, and, I’m telling you, it was as I’d ridden into a brick head-on.

As soon as I hit the ground, I got up and was knocked back down by somebody’s hand banging off my helmet. I must have been getting up in somebody’s way (there were about 130 guys behind me) and one of the riders put a fist out to keep me away, and it felt like I’d been punched in the head. The blow spun me around and sent me back down, where I stayed for about 20 seconds. As soon as most of the pack had passed me, I got up, grabbed my bike and turned it around to get back to the race. My chain was off. I was a little disoriented and couldn’t manage to get it back on. By now, Sander, our mechanic, was there and he put the chain on. As he was handing me the bike, I told him to check my wheels, check my wheels. “We’ll do it in the car,” he said.

I was confused by that, too, but I got on the bike like you’re supposed to and headed off again. I could see a few groups up ahead and started to chase them. Just as I was getting up to full speed, I saw Sander on my left, half-hanging out of the car saying, “Let me check your wheels.” He grabbed onto my seat post and Jens, our sports director, hit the gas. I don’t know how fast we were going but it was fast.

Once the wheels were “checked,” I was on my own. The caravan had broken apart, so I couldn’t draft any vehicles, but the adrenaline from the crash was working in my favor and I passed a few small groups and rejoined the back of the peloton at the bottom of the next climb — just as the leaders splintered the group. I couldn’t make it over the top with the front, and the group I was in chased hard for the next 20k hard to no avail. After 100 miles I was toast. When I got back to the finishing circuits, my day was done. Second race that I didn’t finish.

After Cologne, I went back to the team’s Classics base in Melle. I was supposed to do the Schlederprijs in Belgium, but I was taken off the roster. The next race, the next day, was the GP Pino Cerami in Belgium. I was a little sore from the crash but something besides that had me feeling off. It was cold and threatening to rain, and I was lining up for yet another semi-flat race, and maybe I was feeling like I didn’t want to crash again. The race started, and I tried to cover some early moves, but there wasn’t going to be an early move. Everything was getting shut down. My legs were good—I was pedaling effortlessly and didn’t feel any stress until the first cobbled climb, after 90k or so. That one just beat the crap out of me. I’m sure there are ways to ride the cobbles, and the next time I’m riding with Thor or Roger Hammond I promise to try and pick up some tips, but in meantime, man, I was sucking wind.

The race broke into a few groups and I ended up in the second one. We got back on, then we hit crosswinds and I was out of position — in the gutter slugging it out. Gaps were opening and I was managing to come around and stay in there. The chaos stopped, and I knew I had to eat something. I remember it was a waffle with Nutella in it, and I remember it so well because I had the waffle halfway in my mouth when crosswind started and it stayed there a few kilometers, then was stuck in my throat for another 5k. The field was thinning and few times I got dropped then found a second wind to come back, but eventually I paid for all the efforts, and entering the final circuit I was gone for good. Third race that I didn’t finish.

I know I’m still living a dream, and that even in a dream there are going to be days, even bad weeks. I know I am lucky and I am thankful. I have the Vuelta Castilla y Leon up next, and I’m going into it trying to think the best. I mean, it wasn’t a totally horrible week: A few days before my bad stretch started, I’d somehow lost one of my gloves — the right one. Then, when I crashed in Cologne, guess which glove got ruined as I slid across the asphalt: My left. So I was able to combine the two surviving gloves into a proper pair.

It all works out in the end.

Pack Skills

As a pro, I’m getting in big miles — and I’m not talking only about the 20 days of racing I already have in my legs. I’m talking about the travel.

I've just embarked on a two-month trip. I left Nice last Wednesday after being home for two days after the Volta a Catalunya. And when I say home, I don’t mean my real home of Brooklyn, but my European home just outside of Nice. On Wednesday I arrived in Melle, Belgium, where Cervelo is based for the Spring Classics campaign. I’m not really part of the team that does the big classics such as the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, but it was nice to meet up with those guys for a few days, since I hadn’t seen most of them since the first training camp. From Melle we went to Maastricht in Holland for two days and then to Cologne in Germany where I am now for the Rund Um Koln. From here it’s back to Melle for the Schledeprisj then the GP Pino Cerami the following day. After Belgium, I’ll go to Milan for a Cervélo event, then to Rome for my Godson’s baptism, then Tuscany for three days before going to Spain for the Vuelta Castilla y Leon. Then it’s back to Tuscany for a week before going to Romandie and New York after that (yeah!) then across the States to the Tour of California, back to New York and over to Europe on June 1 to prepare for the Dauphine.

One of the things you can’t understand about being a pro, until you’re living the life, is how hard it is to figure out how to pack for all this travel. I have one suitcase, and it needs to be 20 kilograms or less because of airline restrictions. (Also, the masseurs on the team generally lug the suitcases around, so you need to be a little considerate of them.) I think for my first race I had something like three bags — with a yoga matt, the roller, coffee, olive oil . . . obviously a rookie.

Now that I understand a little more what’s going on, this is my entire packing list for two months.

For normal racing: three aero race jerseys, three race shorts, three race socks, three race gloves, TT suit and TT overshoes. I only bring three in case of crashes; I did all of Catalunya on just one set of clothes, since after the stage you give the masseurs your clothing and the next morning it miraculously arrives back to you clean. If the race number is in good enough shape to be left on the jersey, then you get really excited since you won’t have to pin it on every day for a week. I can also get away with this because we have Castelli as a clothing partner — the clothing not only looks really good, but it’s super functional. Some examples are our aero race jersey, which has fabric and stitching technology that can save about 15 watts compared to a normal race jersey, and the five-level base layer system.

In case it’s cold — and since I’m doing races in Belgium, Holland and Germany this week it probably will be — I also pack in two pairs of arm warmers, leg warmers and knee warmers and Belgian booties, and two caps. (Even though the early spring, I’ve started only one race with knee warmers. I see guys race in long sleeve jerseys, leg warmers, winter booties and all sorts of cold weather gear, but I’m not a rider who has a personal Sherpa to go back to the car, and anyway I’m generally not cold after the start of the race since my heart rate is close to max.)

For rain, I pack rain booties, rain gloves and a rain cape. Every rider has two rain bags, one that goes in car one, and another that goes in car two. (At big races, each team has two cars in the caravan.) In each of my rain bags I have spare shoes, a jersey, shorts, undershirt, booties, long sleeve jersey, vest, rain jacket, gloves, cap and glasses. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’ve been told that on terrible days of weather the riders stop in a tunnel or something and change.

For the training in between races — which at this point is basically coffee rides and the occasional long ride, I pack a thermal jacket, two long sleeve jerseys, two training jerseys, two wind vests, two jersey vests, winter tights, winter shorts, winter booties and about three different types of caps, although I always wear a helmet anyways.

Then there’s the clothing for when I’m not riding. This is where I’ve shaved the most of my excess. At races, we wear track suits most of the time. (Again, we’re lucky since our stuff looks great.) I pack one track suit, one sweatshirt, two polo shirts, two recovery tights from 2XU that double as underwear, three pairs of underwear, three recovery socks from 2XU that doubles as socks, one Northface winter/rain jacket, Diesel jeans and Nike shoes. I have that background selling fashion advertising, so I also can’t stop myself from bringing one outfit that is regular civilian clothing — that’s all Zegna Sport, except for a Mellow Johnny’s t-shirt I picked up in Austin last year and a pair of boots made by my buddy Alessandro Stella in Siena. Sometimes I just don’t feel like walking through an airport in team clothing, so the Zegna stuff is great since it’s super-comfortable yet fashionable.

All of this is folded neatly and sometimes bagged in Ziplock bags for easy access.

Outside of the clothing, there’s an assortment of Zipvit Vitamins and the roller for my IT band. That thing takes up a lot of space. I’m doing without the yoga mat, but I insist on having my shaving brush and heavy razor with me. You need to keep some sort of civility in life. Then there’s the big book I drag around just to impress people, which currently is the Clinton Tapes by Taylor Branch. And I have my laptop, iTouch and cellphone.

It sounds like a lot of work to maintain, but a fringe benefit of traveling so frequently is that, being home only two to four days between trips, the suitcase pretty much stays packed.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day

When I was back home in New York for six full days after the Tour of Murcia (hadn’t spent much time at home since the beginning of December), one of the highlights was the breakfasts I was able to have with my son — such a change from the team routine that I was even Tweeting photos of it. I’m a big breakfast fan. (At one point, during my former life in publishing, I even blogged a Battle of the Breakfasts, in which I weighed the pros and cons of three places I frequented, including a corner cart guy.) So I was ready to

My son, Liam, on our way to breakfast.

indulge on my vacation, with Liam as my excuse: I’d ask him what he wanted and, in the name of a little father-son bonding, I’d have to go along with it.

The first morning, however, Liam wanted something I should be having, anyway, Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal, which he calls “crunchies.” The Kashi still more or less fits into my regimented training-and-racing diet, not as good as the custom Oatmeal mix I rely on, but not actually bad for me. By day three, I was in business. Liam asked for a scone and a bagel. I walked down to a place called Cranberry’s and got a raspberry scone for the little guy, a blueberry scone for my wife Tiiu, and a bagel and a mini chocolate chip muffin for me. I ate the muffin before I got home. (I love Cranberry’s, by the way: The baked goods are awesome, but more important, it’s one of those places that has been family owned for generations and they still believe in house accounts. We’re starting to lose unique places like this.)

By the time the weekend rolled around, I had gotten far enough out of my racer’s routine to look forward to a Sunday brunch at our family favorite breakfast spot in Brooklyn, Buttermilk Channel . Every time we go there, Liam asks me to take him to the bathroom so I can read him the poem about Buttermilk Channel (an actual channel in Brooklyn) by the bathroom door. One of the options was a really healthy granola plate. I ordered the house-cured lox, onions and cream-cheese scramble. It tastes great, so I’m sure there’s a pound of butter in it. It comes with toast (yum) and hash browns, which I don’t touch in order to feel justified inhaling the side order of bacon. Liam likes the short stack of the buttermilk pancakes. And, only in the name of bonding, I went ahead and ordered a short stack, too.

It’s not really like that when I’m in Europe, of course. But there’s more variety than you might think. When I’m at my Europe home and not racing, I have three options: “The ideal,” the “I’m in a hurry and Thor is going to be pissed because I’m late again,” and the “it’s an easy day and I’m going to enjoy life today.”

The ideal starts with my own homemade coffee, which has been a hell of a lot easier to pull since I got a French press from my teammate, Ted King , for my birthday, and a supply of Stumptown coffee, another

Liam and me enjoying our breakfast.

great gift from an aspiring writer buddy. I fight not to put sugar or milk in it. I usually lose the milk battle (2 percent). I win the sugar war because I am a brilliant military strategist: I refuse to buy sugar for the house. Next, I fix my beloved Oatmeal, a recipe given to me by Nanna Meyer, a nutritionist I’ve been working with for four years. It’s simple: oatmeal, 2 percent milk, half an apple, a banana, salt to taste and raisins. I also add honey. I don’t have a toaster in Europe, so I can’t have toast, which is good since I really need to cut down on my intake of bread, but in the ideal ideal scenario, I’d have a piece of toast.

If I’m running late to meet my teammate, Thor Hushovd, which happens a lot, then I just get up and ride down to the Planet Café , where we all meet for training most mornings. I have coffee and a croissant there, which would make Philippe frown. By now, Thor expects me to be late, and although he did threaten to leave me behind once he’s never had the heart to do it. Instead, the big guy has taken to ordering for me, using the same kind of instinctive timing it takes to win a sprint to work it out so the coffee arrives at the table just as I do.

The third breakfast option is the coffee shop ride. That’s when we just go out for a two-hour ride and go to a coffee shop. Generally, this happens the day after a race. I meet the group at Planet anyway, but we leave and ride toward Italy. If it’s cloudy in the direction of Italy, we head toward Nice. The pro life is brutal. One of my favorite stops is Roquebrune Cap Martin , for a baguette with butter and strawberry jam. Then I ride to Ventimiglia in Italy, and to a coffee shop owned by the 1996 Milan-San Remo winner Gabrielle Colombo and have coffee there. And I put sugar in it as well.

Technically I should be eating breakfast based on how long I’m going to train, but I generally eat the same amount, then vary how much I eat on the ride.

At races, breakfast becomes a job. One of my personal fears is not eating enough and doing poorly in a race because of such a basic mistake. We generally eat three to three-and-a-half hours before the start of a race. (If you’re in Spain, it’s great because the races don’t generally start until one o’clock in the afternoon, so you can usually sleep until nine.)

All the teams have their own tables at the race hotel, and for each team there is usually a table for the riders and a table for the staff. This is done to reduce the risk of riders getting sick, although I think it’s usually the riders who get one another sick. At the Cervelo Test Team table we have about five different kinds of cereals, honey, Nutella and all sorts of other goodies. Generally there is also a buffet with breakfast items as well as rice, pasta and sometimes meat. Our team masseurs make really nice oatmeal with all sorts of things in it. I don’t know all the ingredients, but it includes lots of fruits, nuts and yogurts. It’s really yummy, which is important when you’re eating to race. You have to consume so many calories that if the food isn’t tasty you will have a hard time eating enough — then you will pay for it in the race. I start the morning with a plate of oatmeal, then have some bread with jam, cheese and ham (or Nutella), plus either an omelet or a plate of pasta or rice. With all of this, I drink two cups of coffee. (I’ll have another espresso in the bus before the start.)

I’ve heard that some teams will have a person at the head of the table who acts sort of like a waiter, getting the riders whatever they need so they can sit and conserve their energy, but I haven’t seen it, and I find it a little ridiculous — even by my over-the-top breakfast standards.

Bike for a Cuban - DELIVERED

Some of you may remember the post I did back in February 2009 about trying to get one of the Cuban National Team guys (Lisuandy Alonso), whom I met at the Tour of San Luis in Argentina a bike.

Basically I got an e-mail from a buddy of mine who owns a bike shop in Mill Valley (a little place I like to call heaven on earth) while at the race talking about this picture he saw of a Cuban guy riding an old Scott at the Tour of San Luis. I had been talking to him that very day and Chad and I decided we'd get this guy a new bike. A few folks pitched in some cash and a few others helped securing the bike and bingo we were good to go. Getting the bike was the easy part. We had it in about a month or two. The hard part was getting the bike into Cuba.

We tried finding people going to Cuba that could take it. That wasn't so easy but finally through a Cuban mechanic at Strictly Bicycles who was traveling back to Cuba we were able to get the bike there. Or so we thought. The bike was driven to Canada (flight was leaving from there) only to find out that it would cost $900 to get the it on the plane. So it set in a parked car in the parking lot for the next 10 days. Then it was back to New York.

I promised friends a plane ticket if they were willing to take the bike to Cuba but had no takers. I almost got on a plane myself to deliver it but couldn't really take a week to do it and I thought that if I showed up with a bike in Cuba with a return ticket for the next day it might be a little too suspicious.

Finally through the good graces of my buddy Andy Guptil we were able to get the bike to Argentina for the 2010 Tour of San Luis and then the Cuban national team took the bike back to Cuba to give to Lisuandy this February. Here are some pictures that were just sent to me of Lisuandy, his family and the his new bike. Not sure how I feel about the open jersey on the podium though.

There's a lesson here. Persistence pays off just keep moving the ball forward.

Murcia - Feeling Stronger

Going over the climb on stage one, giving my roommate a little hand on Stage 2 and with Victor Rodrigues the other Portuguese rider in the pack just before the start. Thanks to Tim de Wale for the race photos.

With one more stage race down—the Tour of Murcia—feel stronger. That’s a good sign. For a while, I was starting to think that if I spent any more riding among the cars, I was going to be given a caravan number the next time I entered a race.

Murcia was a five-day stage race. The first and last days were considered the sprint stages, so Cervelo’s plan was to concentrate our effort there for our fast man, Theo Bos. My job was usually to cover the attacks in the beginning and, if we didn’t get a rider into the move, to work at the front as needed. Unlike at my last race, Besseges, I was able to cover the moves.

None of the attacks I went with stuck, but I was happy just to be able to mix it up. On the first stage, along with my teammate, Marcel Wyss, and two riders from Rabobank, I worked hard at the front for most of the stage to bring a break back in time for the pack to set up for the sprint. After about 110k at the front, I came into the last categorized climb at the back and didn’t have the power to make it over with the front group. By the top, I was with a group of about 20 and we rode in together 10 minutes or so behind the winner. (Theo got caught out in the crosswinds just before the finish and didn’t take part in the sprint.) The experience reminds me of looking at the results from races in past years and seeing guys who were ten, twenty, thirty minutes back; chances are, those guys are back there not because they’re in bad shape but because they did a lot of work at some point during the race and you never hear about them or read about them in any of the reports.

Stages two and three were tougher, with Category 1 climbs. I again tried to make the early break and on one occasion had to chase because no one from Cervelo made the group that was away. It was an epic chase. You’re pretty much riding flat-out to bring the break back — and for me, that effort came after I first tried to bridge across to the break solo. I was just happy I was able to take my turns at the front. At one point I couldn’t help going backwards, and I thought I was done, that I was going to let the team down. But I saw the row of black Cervelo jerseys at the front, and I found something extra from somewhere and I got back up there and into the rotation once more. It was especially challenging getting up there because of the crosswind and a strung-out field. I paid a heavy price to do it, and as soon as the road went up I went out the back for real. That’s when I looked down and realized we had only done about 50k of racing. There was 130k to go, and we hadn’t even his the real climbs yet. A lot of people ask what life as a pro is like. There you have at least one part of it.

For the last sprinter’s stage, which was also the last stage (5), we all had the feeling that if we could get Theo to the finish in good position, he would most likely win. We knew that Rabobank, who had a fast sprinter of their own in Graeme Brown), was going to make life hard on the climb in the hope of dropping Theo; but there was also 60k of racing after the climb, so we were confident we could bring the pack back together if needed. It turns out that we didn’t need to. Theo passed the climb in good shape. The stage was fast, too —in the first hour we did almost 50k, and the full 122 k was covered in 2:45. We kept Theo in the front at the end, and he delivered the goods on the final straight. He led out the sprint, when Graeme tried to come around, he kicked again and won comfortably. That’s another part of being a pro, and another part that not many people hear about or understand: Feeling great about helping your team win even when you weren’t the one who took the win yourself.

A few interesting observations:

* Spain has great hotels and food.

* The Internet at the hotels was slow because more than a hundred people would be surfing at the same time. Cyclists spend a lot of time on the Internet.

* Robbie Hunter, who won the first two stages and was leading the General Classification all of a sudden stopped in Stage 3 while in the yellow jersey. His his wife had just gone into labor, so he had better things to tend to than a bike jersey. That’s nice to see.

* A good masseur is a gift from God. Tex, one of our masseurs worked on this old body all week, and thanks to him I had no back pain and was well recovered each day.

* Lance Armstrong was there. Lance is Lance, impressive in person. How he handles all the attention he gets, and all the people trying to get him to take pictures etc., I don’t know. But he always did it with a smile. Usually he rides at the front (safest place to be), but on the last day he took some time to circulate through the pack and speak to a lot of riders. That was a nice thing to do, especially for the young guys who never raced with him.

* Dave Zabriskie is crazy (in a good way), and I cracked up a bunch of times with him. After Stage 1, I was trying to find the hotel and followed him — I mean, I figured he had to have a GPS. He noticed me, and said “Hey — you’re that old guy.”

* Having a camper at the race was nice, but I found myself really missing the bus. Then I realized what I was actually thinking. You get spoiled quickly.

* The support on this team is incredible. We had two mechanics, three soigneurs, a director, a doctor and a driver. In their hands, you are basically a three year old, since they do everything except pedal the bike for you.

* I’m not the oldest guy on the team. That prize belongs to Inigo Cuesta, who has been a pro for 17 years and is 41. Apparently we look similar, since I got called Inigo at this race a lot — usually when I was off the back. I hope I didn’t soil his reputation too much.

* I’m on my way home to see Tiiu and Liam for a few days before heading back for the the Volta a Cataluyna. I’m looking forward to the Gimbel’s Ride and maybe a Central Park race for fun — and to not having a radio screaming in my ear.

Doing My Bit

I just finished the Classica de Almeria, which was my second race of the year but my sixth day of racing. Stage races compound exhaustion pretty fast.Almeria was a bright spot, though, because our Dutch sprinter, Theo Bos, brought home our first team victory.

I hit it off with Theo at our first camp back in November. I have some orange in my blood, dating back to my junior days when I raced in Holland and was coached by the then Dutch national team coach Egon Van Kessell (who is now the Cervelo TestTeam women’s sports director), and lived with the Dutch masseur at the time, Harry Schokkenbroek. Theo and I decided a few weeks ago to go to Majorca together for some warm weather training, and I was able to witness his speed firsthand. His background is from the track, and he has incredible leg speed. You know when you’re sprinting against somebody, and no matter who it is there’s always that one moment when you think you might possibly be able to take the sprint? That never ever happened when I was sprinting with Theo.

When we would download our watts and looked at the power numbers, he was about 50 percent higher than me at the peak. Besides that, Majorca was great for me. We stayed at the Barcelo Pueblo Park Hotel in Playa de Palma, a hotel geared towards cyclists. I recommend it for anybody who wants to go somewhere for warm training. They have a bike room for storage, a full-service mechanic, a masseusse on staff, and the food is healthy and ideal for cyclists. The riding in the area has mountains and flats, and the coffee shops in Santa Eugenia round off the training experience. I’ll probably go back at some point this year. Maybe I’ll see you there.

At Almeria, I tried hard to get in the early break. I didn’t make the right group, but I was happy to be at the front mixing it up a little. The rhythm of pro races is still a little hard to explain to people. The pace was blistering until the break was established — then all of a sudden the peloton was happy with the mix of riders that got away, and collectively we turned off the gas and the race was ridiculously easy for the next two hours. Columbia had brought its sprinter, Mark Cavendish, here and Rabobank had sprinter Graeme Brown, so each team put a man on the front and controlled the race, monitoring the gap to the pack so it never got too big to erase near the end, or came back so close that riders in the peloton would start attacking to bridge up to it (and thus disrupting our controlled ride).

Cervelo took a spot in the peloton as the third team, and we rolled along comfortably. I was even brave enough to stop for two nature breaks without worrying about getting back to the pack. That’s a nice feeling, especially because this race was a little harder to come back to than most. There were only 110 riders. This meant that moving up and down the group was easy, but because the grupetto was so small (and the caravan equally reduced), if you came off the back things could get ugly quickly. Your opportunity to slip back in among other riders or vehicles was pretty slim, then you’d be faced with a long chase on your own.

Coming into the second KOM of the day, a 2-kilometer, Category 2 climb, Alejandro Valverde from Caisse d’ Epargne went ballistic, and all of a sudden we were in a stretched-out line. By the top, the pack had split into three or four groups, and I was in the last group. There were about 10 of us trying to catch a group of 40-60 that was about 20 seconds ahead. Theo was in that group. The team (especially the veteran Inigo Cuesta – 40 years old) worked hard and eventually brought him up to the front group, making his victory possible. I ended up minutes down. Not that it matters, but I was trying really hard. I wanted to do my bit for Theo. I just hope maybe I did so when we were training in Majorca.

Photos Courtesy of Raymond Kool

First Race Etoile de Besseges in the bag

I was so relaxed before the start of my first race as a pro for the Cervelo Test Team that I was actually worried that I wasn’t nervous enough. I wondered if I wasn’t taking my new career — and the whole upending of my life — serious enough. Lucky for me, once I got on the team bus to head to Etoile de Besseges, the five-day French stage race that more or less kicks off the European season, I got so jittery I couldn’t stop going to the bathroom and at one point thought I was going to throw up.

Things just have a way of working out.

Once the race started, though, all the jitters were quickly gone. In the first 10-kilometer loop, the racing was hectic and fast. One thing I noticed right away is that everybody rides really, really close together. In the United States, guys seem to give each other a lot of space, and you generally get the feeling that if you bump into somebody there’s going to be a crash. Over here, it’s all packed in tightly, and when you bump into somebody you just get a quick “Salut.”

Once we got out of the small lap that started the race, the pack got settled fairly quickly — especially once the break got away. I was actually at the front and saw the two guys rolling away, and thought, “There goes the break.” But my orders for the race were to lay low and not waste any energy. As a pro, you can’t really do what you want at a race. With the break established, the speed slowed so much that at times I thought I’d had faster days at the Gimbel’s Ride, a weekend training throwdown back home in New York City. But I also knew that, here, the pace could go ballistic at any point.

It did — when the pack started setting up for the sprint finish. At first, I tried to get up there to help the team a little bit, but in the last few kilometers I pulled off into the back to avoid any crashes. (One of my teammates, Daniel Lloyd, wasn’t as lucky and ended up crashing inside the K-to-go sign. Even though he head-butted a tree, he was able to finish the stage and keep doing the race.)

Stage 2 was a road race that finished with seven laps of a circuit, and I ended up finishing in the pack again — but it was a whole different experience. We averaged nearly 30 mph for the first hour, until the break got away and the race settled in. Stage 3 looked fairly flat in the race bible, but it was up and down for most of the day. The speed was high again from the beginning, so I was happy to pass the first KOM — King of the Mountain sign — in the first group. Then, after all that hard work and smart riding, I lost them on the descent.

The downhill wasn’t even technical, but going really fast into a righthand corner I touched my brakes, lost four bike lengths, then just couldn’t reconnect. Luckily, there were 30 riders behind me and once we all came together, the peloton regrouped about 20k later. Over here, even on the flats, if the speed is high when you go into a corner and you’re at the back, you have to do an all-out sprint just to stay on the wheel of the guy in front of you. I mean, all-out. It was from one of these that my legs gave in with 50k to go in stage three. I rolled in with a group of five riders, and we ended up losing about 15 minutes to the stage winner. It’s not as bad as it sounds: Once you’re off, the smart thing is not trying to catch a group or reduce the time gap by a lot, but to just finish inside the time limit (so you don’t get kicked out of the race) while using as little energy as possible.

The queen stage was Stage Four. It had two Category 1 climbs and a few uncategorized climbs that seemed harder than any of the Cat 2 ascents we had earlier in the week. I stayed near the front until the Cat 1, which came only 45k of racing into a 140k stage. I was feeling fairly comfortable until Pierrick Federigo (who rides for Bbox Bouygues Telecom) attacked. The field stretched out. I wasn’t the first to come off, but it felt just as lonely after all the team cars passed me and I was riding in no-man’s land. I caught up to the second peloton — the big group trailing the lead pack — near the top of the second Cat 1, and my reward was getting to roll in with a group that included 2006 Tour de France winner Oscar Pereiro.

The last stage again started with a climb, this time a Cat 3. I knew it was going to hurt. But I made it over that climb with the group, then the next one, and all the rest. I should have been more worn out, but I had more snap than the previous days. In the final seven laps of the closing circuit, the crazy speeds and singled-out lines didn’t bother me as much as before. So the last surprise of this first race was a good one: Sometimes if you hang in there, something happens to your legs and you feel better. This is a strange way to make a living.

Blog Entry I did for CycleOps

There are a lot of professional cyclists out there that nobody has ever heard of and I am no different. But I am probably one of the unlikeliest stories in the European peloton this year. The main reason is that I am just like you. Up until December 1^st I manned a desk like most of you and cycling was a passion (more like an obsession) but like most of you it had to be balanced with a career and family including kids. Many nights and especially in the winter I’d get home late at night and hit the trainer. Sound familiar?

Although I had raced when I was younger at the age of 21 in 1996 I decided to stop racing and concentrate instead on my studies. After graduating college I went into the cut-throat world of publishing in New York City and began to work up the corporate ladder. Because I worked in advertising a big part of my job was entertaining clients and there were many, many nights that ended in big dinners with lots and lots of wine (I’m not complaining here). After a few years of this and not doing much exercise I ended up ballooning up to 205 pounds (5’9”). Then one day I took a job at Bicycling Magazine as the Advertising Director and reconnected with the sport. At Bicycling we do a lot of business on the bike so after hearing “You know for a fat guy your not bad” a few too many times I decided to start riding again.

I was doing a Granfondo in Italy in May of 2006 when an important client of mine asked me if I had ever raced. I said yes but that was a long time ago and he suggested that I get back into the sport. You never quite loose it he said. That was the final push that I needed and I made a promise to myself that if I could ride 3-4 times per week for the rest of the year then in 2007 I’d get back into the sport. And so the adventure began.

In October of 2007 I visited Dr. Max Testa at TOSCH in Salt Lake City to do some testing so that I could start training seriously. The goal of the test was to set my baselines and sketch out a training program based on power. In that first test I had a body fat of over 20% and was technically considered obese. Although the Vo2Max wasn’t terrible the fact that I popped at 300 Watts wasn’t that great and I like to joke that I am the first athlete in the history of cycling to have a negative w/kg ratio. Max drew me up a training program designed with my schedule in mind mostly relying on a 1-1:30 hours of trainer time at night and sent me on my way.

Although people have often asked me if it was hard to get back into shape, the answer really is that if you have determination and are good at scheduling a little time to train that you can pretty much get back to at least 80% of your potential within a few months. Because I lived in New York City and the winters are hard I did most of my training on a trainer but what I found out was that with the trainer an hour or an hour and a half of structure can be like two to three on the road.

After about six weeks I went back and re-tested with Max and although I didn’t do a Vo2Max test I did do a lactate test and saw that I had improved about 20%. Most of that was due to the fact that I was training in the right power zones and with the training I was able to increase my ability to handle the power in those zones. By focusing on threshold work I raised my threshold and laid the groundwork for harder training in the Spring.

In my first season (2007)after starting to train I raced as an amateur in the US doing a few of the NRC races. During the 2008 and 2009 season I rode for the Bissell Pro Cycling Team while still working. The biggest difference between 2007 and 2008-2009 was that I was doing bigger and better races. My job didn’t change, in fact as many of you know by your own experiences it only got harder. I still had to balance family and kids so the training was pretty much the same. Mostly trainer at night in the winter and when the days got longer I was able to do longer hours. Some weeks were great and some weeks because of work and family responsibilities were almost nonexistent on the bike. The key is to just pick up from where you left off and keep moving forward and training from where you left off.

Now of course things are a little different. Cycling has become the job so I can train as much as I need to and after training it’s important to rest (that’s new for me) to recover for the next day. The improvements I’ve seen since I’ve starting training full time has been significant but not as significant as the improvement I saw when I first started training in those first six weeks of training with power. Thanks for reading this post and hope you come back to share in this adventure with me. I’ll be sharing some power files from training and racing so that you can compare them to your own training and racing files.