Five hours and four laps to go

North Bend, WA
Thursday, June 29, 2006

Yesterday was five hours easy. There was some sort of bad crash on the only road out of town, so I ended up doing all five of ‘em in town (they closed the road, so the only option out was the freeway). That was enjoyable; I’ve never rode that far/long in town before. Of course you can throw in some variations, but if you do the same loop every time you can actually calculate how many loops there are before you’re done. It turned out to only be four, but it was four laps I hadn’t planned on doing. Oh well, life wouldn’t be complete without doing five hours in North Bend. I brought five bottles, one for each hour, so that also helped with the repetitive nature of the ride. Each time I finished a bottle I knew I was that much closer to being done- I was tempted to knock ‘em all back at once.
Today’s just an hour easy, with a couple naps, if this weather continues I’ll have to make a rocking chair so I can sit on the porch like they do in the south (filthy, dirty). You know they actually have rocking chairs at the airport in Philadelphia!? Maybe that’s taking it a bit too far, but I guess they like there rocking chairs over there… I presume that I’d like ‘em too if you could linger only in the shade to keep from wilting in the sun and humidity.

Race, train and be merry

North Bend, WA
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Today I did 4 hours easy, I felt pretty good so I coupled it with a few sprints just to see how the legs reacted. They’re definitely still waking up from a week off, but I think they’ll come around when the real training kicks in. The weather was a bit better than yesterday, in the upper 70’s- like 78 or so. That’s pretty much perfect, perhaps posh to those from Colorado… By the way, one Will F. gave me a statistic that Washington has the worst air quality. Just for kicks, I decided to look it up and see… Washington has the second best, second only to Oregon… hmm; maybe he got it backwards or something…
I also got my preliminary race schedule for the rest of the year:

July
~5/10 USA U23 National Championships- NC, USA

August
8/7-8/12 Tour of Utah- UT, USA

8/20 Chateauroux Classic- FRA

8/22-8/25 Tour de Poitou Charentes- FRA

September
8/31-9/9 Tour de l’Avenir- FRA

9/20-9/24 U23 World Championships…?- AUS

Back on the bike

North Bend, WA
Monday, June 26, 2006

Today was the first day back on the bike after my little rest week. The weather’s finally come around here, so the ridings good. This is the part of the year when Washington’s weather really can’t be beat. Anyway, I enjoyed the resting; went on a few mountain bike rides (Devil's Gulch & Tiger Mountain) over the weekend, but other than that just sat around and took it easy. Hopefully, I’ve build up some immunity/resistance to the diseases that’ve been pestering me over the last couple months.
I ended up doing three hours today, it was blue skies and some 90 degrees- which I admit is not a usual temperature, I’d prefer 80. It was great to be back on the bike, I think I took the perfect amount of time off. Just long enough to get rested and ready to get back on.

Fixing sickness

North Bend, WA
Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The last two stages of Sud didn’t go well at all. I got some pretty bad diarrhea the night before the time trial and another sore throat. I felt absolutely horrible as I was warming up and it got progressively worse as the day continued. During the effort I didn’t feel so bad, but once I got done I started getting chills, then a fever- it all went downhill from there. Once we got to the hotel I went to bed and didn’t get up until the next day when it was deemed that I wouldn’t race the last stage. So basically everything about Sud sucked. The whole process of traveling back to the US after the race was pretty bad too. I was so weak from the diarrhea and being able to eat very little that I felt safest if I had a hand near the wall and took a step every thirty seconds… staying near a toilet at all times.
I’m back in the US now, looking back on how bad my second “go” in Europe was. I’m not sure I can say that I was actually well for a single race. It doesn’t make much since, I mean, my fitness is still really good, and perhaps getting better, yet I get sick like I was totally over trained. What to do? We’ve decided to take a week off and sit out Fitchburg. I’m not sure about it, but usually if I make the decision it’s wrong, so the director makes it instead… and it uhh, well, tends to be right. Strange how that works, must have something to do with experience eh? I can’t say that I’m not looking forward to some quality time at home and away from the bike. It’ll be the perfect break after such a stint in Europe. Home is always so much better after you’ve been in a place like Europe. There’s always this feeling that everything’s perfect, when you’re at home. It’s a great feeling. I think I did a better job of adjusting in Europe this time though, so any future trips should go off even better.
I did end up going to the doctor today to see what my ailments were from Sud. It turns out that the sore throat is now Strep Throat and the diarrhea is “traveler’s diarrhea.” The diarrhea is speculative because it was a bit of a toss-up between the travelers and something else that I can’t recall at the moment. The fix- 10 days antibiotics for the strep throat and 3 for the diarrhea. More good times.

Route du Sud

FRA- Route du Sud
Friday, June 16, 2006

As I had predicted I felt much better today. It was what they call a “flat, easy stage” today. I’ve learned that indeed there is no such thing as an easy stage. The flat ones are rolling with cross winds, a barrage of incessant attacks, and splits all smashed into 180 km. I never realized just how far 180 km is, I always figured it was somewhere in the range of the norm... but no, its 108 mi. California, Georgia and Taiwan had days in the range of ~250 km…. ~150 miles. You look at the profile, then you look to see when the feed zone comes, the first categorized climbs, the sprints and finally the finish. Of course after memorizing all these km markers you tend to overlook the distance. Sure 150 miles for one day is fine, but follow that up with a week of 110 mile races and you’re (at least I am) going to have trouble getting out of bed in the morning- consider that when you think about how nice it’d be to be a professional cyclist. Anyway, back to the race. I was in 6th or 7th position when we hit a long, crosswind section. Bouygues Telecom was at the front chasing something down. There were about 4 of them left up at the front, and they were absolutely drilling it, they had everyone in the gutter except a select few- four or so guys in front of me and then the rest of the bunch. Somehow I got put out in the wind. I’m still trying to figure out how it happened, but I went from sixth in the gutter to just left of the gutter as everyone went flying by on the right then on into the caravan, then right out the back of the caravan. This is just about the most screwed I’ve ever been. During my journey out the back of the caravan I picked up an Agritubel guy who would not work with me to get back on. I couldn’t figure it out. I pushed him, yelled at him, everything. He was absolutely concrete in his decision to sit behind me and do nothing as I flailed helplessly in the wind. Then I got a brilliant idea, if he’s not going to work with me then he’s gonna have to work by himself. I moved to the right and put his lame French arse in the gutter. Then he began to work a little, just enough for me to get a rest and drill it again. We caught ‘em as it started getting hilly (15 minutes of being dropped and we finally get back, I thought it was over for sure); I made sure to go straight to the front in case they went hard again so I wouldn’t get thrown again. But you never know, I may be the first ever to go from 6th to off the back in a cross wind. But I felt great today, so hopefully we do well tomorrow and the next day as the race goes deep into the French Pyrenees.
At the moment it rains outside, so tomorrow’s time trial (30 km total, 10 km rolling up, then 20 up to the top of some ridiculously long category 1 climb) could be a bit sketchy. I wonder if there are KOM points for the winner of the time trial?.. We’re 18 minutes out of GC, but only a few from KOM. We’ll see.

FRA- Route du Sud
Thursday, June 15, 2006

Wow the things you can do when you are absolutely fed up with “repeating circumstances.” I got a sore throat a couple days ago and got some medication for it. They’re special effervescent tablets that you mix with water and drink ONCE a day. They looked the same as the airborne tablets or whatever else that comes in the form of an effervescent tablet. When I first took ‘em they didn’t really do anything, so I figured that the riding is probably putting stress on the medication, and I actually need more to make it work. So I took 5 or so of ‘em. Of course in any kind of medication that actually has more than vitamin c in it, certain things happen when you “overdose.” In this case it caused serious indigestion. It was supposed to get rid of mucus or something that was causing the sore throat. So it must’ve had some sort of acid or something, it kind of charred the front of my tongue and the sides of my mouth. Anyway, whenever I tried to go hard it started bubbling up and all sorts of other strange problems began to hinder my performance. So that’s the gist of my issues at the moment. I missed the break- which got 15-20 minutes. So the race is over for us as far as GC goes. I think I’ll feel better tomorrow and the rest of the race. The guys are fast here, but they’re not too fast.

FRA- Route du Sud
Wednesday, June 14, 2006

We left at around 11:30 from Girona this morning with everything packed up. I don’t reckon we’ll be back for some time, at least not until after July. It’s okay though, the weather’s just about reached the boiling point over the last couple days, so coming back to Washington for a week’s gonna be… pleasant. In the mean time, I’ll endure the French weather for a bit. It’ll be interesting to see how this here race progresses. I think we’ll do really well. With a couple months of racing here (for me a few weeks) I presume that we’ve finally reached their level, so mixing it up shouldn’t be an issue. It’ll be nice to be defending instead of always “on the offensive with nothing to lose.” Anyway, at the moment all I can do is wait and be anxious…. as always.

Scam'n the snobs

I was on Yahoo! Finance- adding up my losses for the last like month, & there's this advertisement for a "handheld" wi-fi device. I can't help but look at it and think of the worthlessness of such a contraption. Will you actually buy this for $350? Why not just step up and buy a desktop computer, stash that in your back pack and set up shop outside the nearest coffee shop? Is it really necessary to check your e-mail every 10 minutes? I'm think'n that there's a remote possibility that that's not the case... Perhaps its the snob appeal of whipping out an expensive little contraption in front of the rest of the snobby Starbucks customers to read the Wallstreet Journal's online edition, instead of reading the paper version like the rest of the snobs. Maybe you can get a little speaker for it too that proclaims "I'm surfing the online edition of the Wallstreet Journal," so everyone knows- what's the point otherwise?"

The home stretch

Girona, ESP
Tuesday, June 13, 2006

We’re on the home stretch now. The culmination of this month of racing is coming up, and then we’re back to the US for a bit of racing there. All the races we’ve done so far have been steadily increasing our fitness so that we can lay it down this coming week at Route du Sud. It should be interesting, there are some good stages for everybody, but I think the key’ll be making the break on the first day, having a good time trial and attacking the leaders in the mountains. I think we’re all gonna be coming around pretty good for this last week so were all pretty excited to see what happens.
Aside from the racing though, Father’s Day is coming up… I was planning on getting some wine… but being the big wine drinker that I am, I’m not exactly sure what to get. We were racing in Bordeaux so I had the perfect opportunity, of which, of course, I managed to pass up. When the race promoters are literally throwing cartons at the staff it’s easy to forget about wine all together. And… when every time you come out into the open where the “wine groves” are grown during the race a, a persistent cross wind nearly throws you off your bike- you know there must be something wicked about the stuff. So I’ll probably end up buying Spanish wine, and looking around when we get to France to see what they’ve got there. I’ve noticed that wine here goes for half the price; I think wine consumption is something of a past time here in Europe- drives the price down.
In the mean time, we’re having a pre-departure barbecue up at Johnny’s out in Olot. I guess it’s a 50 k ride out, so we’ll ride out there to meet up and have a barbecue then ride in the camper on the way back. I guess Johnny’s got quite the set up out there. We’ll see.

More of the same

Girona, ESP
Monday, June 12, 2006

Today was pretty much the same drill as yesterday. I did another easy 3 hours and came home to sleep. We leave on Wednesday for Route du Sud. Interesting eh?

Spanish protocol

Girona, ESP
Sunday, June 11, 2006

I’m back in Girona, seems there’s a festival of sorts taking place here? Of course that’s just an assumption ‘cause traditionally Sundays are pretty dead. But today as I left for my ride around 2:30 the day was exceptionally lifeless. There was a banner hanging that said something in Spanish coming into town so I kinda figured that the day was indeed scheduled for even a later start than usual- perhaps around 11:00pm? Nonetheless, I’m not on there time zone anyway. I’ve been so messed up over the whole time thing in the last couple days that I’ve began to mold my own little world of time. You’ve got NW time, East Coast time, Siesta time, & then French time. Of course France and Spain are technically on the same time, but Spain has a different, uhhh… protocol… This brings up an important point though… time. Time’s the most important measure. What would you do without it, every single thing that we do revolves around a moment here and a moment there. How long does it take to drink that water, or how do you know when you’re hungry (perhaps the amount of time it takes for you to digest your food, or you’re nervous because something’s taking too long?), what could you’ve done during that minute you were doing the other thing. Do you rate what you do on the amount of time it takes you to do what you’ll be doing? In the end time is just time, perhaps the most important measure, but one of which you are free to spend as you please.
Today I spent my time sleeping until 11:00. I didn’t end up getting to bed last night until late, so I slept in Spanish style. Then I ate lunch for breakfast again and headed out for an easy 3 hour ride. I’ve got two days back in Girona until departing for Route de Sud (on the French side of the Pyrenees). After that it’s back home to the US for a week before Fitchburg.

Blundering fool

Llieda, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Saturday, June 10, 2006

Somehow I managed to totally screw up the last day- an easy 110 km race around Llieda. The whole race went fine until the last 5 km. Dan got in a good break early on; unfortunately, Dan and I’ve got something in common in that we take to crashing on a regular basis. He had to get stitches on his elbow though, so I’d say that his latest crash was a good degree and a half worse than, well, any of mine. Nonetheless a crash is a crash and they always suck. Anyway, his crash happened right before we got to the cat 3 so I was debating bridging up to his break, but of course I was thinking about what could happen way to much compared with what might happen. I hate myself. Then, back to my original banter, in the last 5 kilometers, it got windy, then echeloned and the field split right in front of me! Right in front of me! In the last 5 K’s! God I hate myself… The 30 or so guys in the front ended up getting some 45 seconds by the finish. You know that feeling where you want to ride down some 70 k/h descent and go right into & over the guard rail at the hair pin, then plunge some 300 meters to your fortunate death? That’s how I felt when I realized I was too far back and a gap was opening in the last 5 km of the last stage of a race! I feel like I work way too hard to have room for such stupid, pathetic, rookie mistakes! & Johnny even said to get to the front! It makes me want to beat a dog or something! What am I gonna do with myself? Route de Sud better go off without a hitch… or I will beat a dog… and a goat. I’m going to win one of these things, and soon!

Volta Cyclista a Llieda

Les, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Friday pre-race, June 09, 2006

Yesterday was a road race in the morning and a time trial in the afternoon. The road race came down to a 30 guy field sprint which we turned out not to be in contention for. One of these days we’ll figure it out. Then there was the time trial. Mike and Timmy did well, Mike I think got ~7th and Timmy 4th. It was an uphill time trial of 7.5 kilometers, and yet I did a poor time. One of these days I’ll have to figure out how to hack it, until then I’ll do well until the time trial. The fact of the matter is that I’ve done some really good up hill time trials and some really bad ones, so I’ve just got to figure out what the issue is. I’m pretty disappointed about that though.
Today the stage starts at 5 pm, so we have the whole day to recover before the race. We went out in the morning to spin around for an hour; we rode a bit of the beginning of the course. Since it starts out with a cat 1 climb we got to scout some of it. It doesn’t look to be too hard, but in the end only the pace will make it hard. Since the pace’ll be fast, I guarantee it’ll be hard. I’m not sure what the length of the race is, I know that it has a cat 1 followed immediately by a cat 3, then a little later a cat 2. Then it’s rolling flat out to the finish. I guess it’s a pretty open area so cross winds on the finale are sure to be a factor.

Vielha, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Wednesday, June 07, 2006

This was the hardest stage of the race so far. There were three category 1 climbs, one of which we rode the backside did a smaller one then came back over the front. It made for an interesting day. However, perhaps the most interesting event of the day was the two guys who went away all day and held a lead of 45 seconds on our little group of ~15. Compare that to the dude who got time cut for coming in an hour and ~37 minutes after us- quite a day for him eh? We ended up making it to the finish with 3 guys in the lead group. Somewhere along the way here we’re going to need to lay it down on the rest of these guys and open some gaps. Given the reasonable and theoretic outcomes available, 3rd is probably the best GC position that we can hope for.

Vielha, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The heat wasn’t so bad today. We started in the mountains and finished in ‘em, so we got some of the fresh mountain air. The stage today was pretty lame. I’m not sure what happened!? I guess at the base of the 20 km climb, some Tenkoff guy got away with a Soktec guy and they stayed away until the finish. The field had a couple attacks initially, but other than that it was a pretty easy ascent considering its length. I was expecting it to totally blow up, but the finishing group had 18 guys in it; four of those guys were ours. We finished a minute and 45 seconds off the two guys- which’s kinda crazy. I’ve no idea how they got that gap. There was a fairly lengthy descent from the top of the mountain and then it was over. We worked pretty hard on the way down to catch ‘em, but no beans. The guy who won today won yesterday… it’s that Russian kid who won some track race in the Olympics when he was 18. I guess he must be 21 or so now.

Tremp, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Monday PM, June 05, 2006

The race was swell… teringly hot! I’ve never done something like this, it was absolutely crazy! You take a drink of water & two minutes later your mouth’s dry again. I guess that’s do to the dry heat that’s hang’n out ‘round here… I can’t believe what 3 weeks of this must be like in the Tour of Spain… Johnny (the team Euro director) explained to me why everything starts so late in Spain, it’s because it’s always hot during the day so it forces everyone to stay in the abode until it starts to cool down: affectionately known as Siesta. If we’d started at 9:00 bad things would’ve happened, like cardiac arrest at 70 k/h after summiting some 3000 meter mountain. I felt good though, so we’ll see how the rest of the race turns out. There was one big climb today, but nothing yet apparently- so hold your bids, all bets are closed at the moment.
We’re in the mountains right now, so a bit outside of Llieda. The town is quite nice; I’d compare it to a big Levensworth (for you home-gamers), one that can support itself without tourism. There’s also very few trees here. I think more are on the way as we move deeper into the mountains though. This is the Spanish side of the Pyrenees; the other side’s the French Pyrenees (you may’ve guessed that if you’re a wily foe). This is a UCI 2.2, so not everyone’s pro. There’s some Russian team here that’s pretty strong, we’ll see how that works out.
The hotel here isn’t super deluxe like the last one, but it’s also a historic thing, so there must be some kind of a trade off there.

Llieda, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Monday AM, June 05, 2006

The accommodations in Llieda caught us all off guard. Contrary to the traditional French race hotels, the Spanish races seem to have decided that four stars is the way to go. Since I’ve really only scene what’s at the bottom, this is quite the pleasure. Of course, as is the case in all nice hotels, nothing is complementary… including the internet of which they have many options- just none that are free. I refuse to pay for internet, so I strolled outside and picked up the nearest free wireless signal. I guess they assume most of their customers aren’t too thrifty.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, things don’t happen so quick in Spain. Nothing really gets rolling until later on in the day. In the US, the race starts at 9:00 AM, in Spain the race starts at 4:00 PM. Dinner is at 9:00. So we took the bikes for a little 45 minute spin in the morning and checked out some of the local farm roads. Apparently Llieda is a fairly agricultural area. How this can be I know not, ‘cause the last time I checked, things don’t grow so well in the desert… Spain’s pretty big on irrigation though (there’s the ‘town canal’ in every town, including Girona), so I suppose that’ll provide a source of water for the soil. But the soil can’t be too rich with one inch of rainfall a year, or whatever they get- it’s not exactly Washington here…
This got me thinking though. You know how everyone’s worried about over population ‘n stuff? The countries that I’ve been to here are not having problems with over population. There are vast amounts of uninhabited land- it seems that there’s more here than in the US. Further, everything here is fresh, you know how much spoiled food they must throw out per day here? Imagine how much “land use” they could save by refrigerating? I think we have a long way to go before overpopulation sets in. By then we’ll have the Nanotube elevator to Mars anyway…

Llieda, ESP- Volta Cyclista a Llieda
Sunday, June 04, 2006

I woke up “early (7:00)” this morning in lieu of a 4 hour ride. It was good, no cars, relatively no people at first. I made a new discovery though; I’ve heard all about how Americans aren’t active enough etc, etc… Today was the first official indication of the truth of that- on my ride up and over Els Angels, I must’ve encountered several hundred cyclists just in the first 2 hours. The people come out in droves during the weekend; the phrase “weekend warrior” must’ve been coined in Europe. Perhaps they don’t get up early during the week to go to work, but it appears that they awake before dawn to go ride their bike on the weekend. And indeed, Sunday night is an experience of its own. In the US they’ve got rush hour during the week, in Europe they’ve got rush hour at 10:00 on Sunday night as everyone waits until the last minute to come home from the “holiday…”
But the ride was good, just to get the intensity and duration in before the race after getting that infection was pretty good. I feel like I’m a bit more open now and more ready to “address” the usual “go from the gun” Euro racing style.
As far as Llieda goes… Have you ever heard that Spain was a dust bowl? I think I heard Lance say that… And ever since I arrived in Girona I’ve been wondering what he was referring to, because Girona is quite green, despite being a poor source of water… Then comes Llieda, if I had to compare it to anything I’d compare it to San Diego, Palm Springs or Pheonix, all of which have no trees, no water (not counting the ocean) and plenty of dust/shrub covered mountains. This must’ve been what Lance was referring to… Llieda near the base of the Spanish Pyrenees. The Spanish Pyrenees are, thus far, quite pathetic compared to the French ones… I’m sure that’ll change somewhere along the way during this race, which is, by the way, going to be HOT.

Hang on, we're in for some chop

Girona, ESP
Saturday, June 03, 2006

The amoxicillin seems to have worked rather swiftly. I haven’t had the fever since yesterday and the sore throat dissipated this morning. So I went for three hours, I’ve gotta admit that that was pushing it with L’lieda starting Monday, but it’s all or nothing eh? Assuming that everything would go as expected and my recovery would be right in line with that, going out for three hours worked out perfectly. Fortunately, here you don’t have to worry about the weather not being absolutely perfect 100% of the time, because on any given day it is. The only factor that I’d prefer not to have is the frequent winds from the sea, they’re not harsh, but just enough to keep ‘em on your mind and wish they weren’t there.
Other than the ride and another brief trip to the store I haven’t been doing much except sleeping. I slept in until 11:00 this morning, ate breakfast for lunch and headed out for the ride. Came back, went to the grocery store (Caprabo is what it’s called, kind of like a Safeway but the size of a gas station) and took another nap. Then ate dinner and here I am. Listening to C895worldwide.com, a Seattle radio station (with no commercials) that’s also ‘listenable’ on the internet. It works well with my little set up here, quite unique really: HP Pavilion zv6000, w/ 2 GHz processor and 512 mgb of RAM. But the best part is the 15.4 inch wide screen and the Altec Lansing speakers. Ideal really. It’s funny ‘cause I get all this criticism for having a big computer with all the travel ‘n stuff, but I haven’t had any issues while I’m traveling… then when I’m at the ‘locale’ it’s rather superb. Especially the blue lights in place of the typical neon yellow of its rivals…

The infectious rest

Girona, ESP
Friday, June 02, 2006

I took another “off day” today; I like to call it aggravated rest though. After crashing in the Tour de Gironde, I went to the doctor to see if there was an infection, he thought that there might be and I should do a couple days of antibiotics just to be safe. I declined, saying that I crash every two weeks, and one crash isn’t going to be any different than the next. So yesterday after riding I got sick with a fever etc., and the doc says it’s from an infection. Now I’m doing 8 days of amoxicillin. Good move eh?