Waiting sucks

This bites. I feel like the last four days have been the greatest waste of my life. All I do is sit around in the hotel room waiting for dinner and watching the same 6 Discovery Channel reruns and wish that I was racing my bike. Every day I get to watch everyone roll out for the days` stage then roll back in four hours later all dirty and shattered and I just wish that I was out there racing too, even if the weather has been shit.

Today is the first day that the sun has been out and it is a perfect day for racing - 20 degrees and little wind. The stage is a 135km circuit race held in St.-Georges de Beauce. I went down to get a coffee and watched the pack go by twice but it was torturing me so now I`m back inside, pre-packing all my broken equipment so that I can get the hell out of here as early as possible tomorrow morning. At this point the best thing is for me to get home, get beck to my normal training cicuits and develop a plan that will see me in top form at Canadian Nationals on July 10 in Kamloops.

The upside of all this is that I have had time to do some planning for the remainder of my domestic season and to start some planning for my European season, which should begin in November after Canadian cyclocross Nationals. Things are looking good with the Stevens group, so my cyclocross campaign this year should be much improved over last with proper training and living arrangements, and proper race-day support.

Only six and a half hours to dinner.
GR

Post-crash update

Hey kids. Rough night for me last night. It`s hard to sleep when you can barely move. I seem to have sustained no major damage to any joints, bones or muscles, but using my head to come to a full stop has resulted in a very stiff back and neck as well as a thoroughly mangled helmet. I have no option other than to say that without a helmet on yesterday I would most likely be in a wheelchair by now. Given the lack of any sort of injury to the rest of my body, including a complete lack of bruising and bleeding, it isapparent that my head bore the complete impact of my crash. Scary. Both Dominique Perras (Kodak Gallery/Canadian National) and Eric Wohlberg (Symmetrics Cycling) who were right behind me at the time of my crash talked to me in the evening and said that they had never seen anything like it. I`m just glad I didn`t take them down with me.

As an athlete, the most painful part of competition is not the pain that one endures in a race - you`re prepared for that. It`s the agony of watching from the sidelines that is the worst. It is always so much worse when you are on a good day and have bad things happen to you. All I want to do is ride right now, and I almost could but for my back and neck. Hopefully I will undergo a speedy recovery and be back racing soon.

Yesterday was a very difficult day for most of the peloton, with many well-placed GC riders abandoning due to crashes, punctures or poor positioning. With the wind becoming so strong at the decisive moment in the race, it was impossible to rejoin any of the groups on the road if one were caught behind and with almost 100km remaining in the stage it was for certain that one would either be forced to climb into the team car or finish outside the time cut. The high winds also created some opportunities for riders to use their team cars as shelter. Unfortunately one of our own, Jiri Pospisil, was disqualified and fined for this practice, a verdict which we all feel to be too harsh given that I witnessed riders from other teams being blatantly paced in the caravan with no other fines or DSQ`s being admistered. Furthurmore, this penalty was handed down based on second-hand information supplied to the comissaires by a police sweep car. Our manager lodged a protest this morning but to no avail.

Maybe I`ll be back for Preston this Sunday!
Ciao,
GR

Beauce Finishes Early

For me, but not for everyone else. Rough day today. 2nd day of really crappy weather- cold and lots of rain. Yesterday`s stage 1 was a 160km trip through the pressure washer in which I struggled for the middle hundred kilometers and spent a lot of time in the deathline at the back of the group. But I started feeling good with about thirty kilometers to go and started riding more at the front. I finished very well with a ninth in the field sprint, but then I found out that there was a group of fourteen off the front for the last 60 kilometers, making me twenty fourth at the end of it all. All in all, not too bad, but I guess that move went off while I was at the back because I had no idea.

Okay, on to the bad news. Today was a 180km stage, temperatutes around 10 degrees, raining and windy with some climbing. A tougher stage than yesterday for sure. I decided to use the same wheels as the day before, a pair of deep section Mavic Cosmic Carbones, in spite of the climbing because of the many sections at high speed. Fair enough, a lot of other guys were riding them too. I was not feeling so good on the hills, but was never back in the caravan or on my own and was always able to come back no problem. I got into a good position for the second KOM climb, knowing that I would at least need to start at the front if I were to have a ny hope of going over the top in the group. Turns out I was staying near the front and riding well. Going over the top a group of about ten riders slipped away and I found myself to be much stronger than the other chasers so I jumped on it and got rolling to close the gap. I picked up Dominique Perras and a Symmetrics rider on the way and we were closing fast. So far so good. On to a very fast downhill and we are still closing, there is a strong crosswind picking up from the right of the road, no problem. Then, in the break ahead, I see Charles Dionne shoot off the left side of the road into the ditch and I`m thinking, OK this is a bad wind, so I move right and start to get ready but a have no chance as I get hit with a particularly stong gust that takes me from right to left and into the dith at around seventy kilometers per hour.

When it all becomes clear again I am on my back in a six foot deep ditch unable to mave and yelling as lound as I can. At this point I am most afraid of not being seen and left there. One of the Mavic motorcycles finds me, my team car comes along and I get inside after seeing my broken fork and broken front wheel.

The race doctor checked me out and everything is OK, just a lot of swelling on my face and a very stiff neck. I think that I landed really hard on my head, so I am lucky to not have any real problems right now. I am more disappointed than anything, because we were so close to that break and it ended up going all the way to the line and making big time on the shattered field behind. That`s racing.

That`ll be all from Tour de Beauce, see you in Ottawa soon.

GR

Tour de Beauce - Pre race check-in

Many exciting things have happened since last I brought you all up to date. I am now sitting in the race hotel in St Georges de Beauce the day before the first stage. I just got back from a training ride ith my German teammates, who I just met for the firsttime at breakfast today. Let me go back to the (sort of) beginning.

About two months ago I signed on with a new sports management company in Ottawa called the Revolution Council, the goal being to get me to Europe to do some real racing on the road. One step in that direction was to do the Tour de Beauce this season. Beauce is Canada`s premier stage race and typically attracts some very good teams from Canada, the US and some foreign teams as well. It turns out the a German-based professional team was coming over and needed a rider. This worked out well because they are primarily a cyclocross team and, as those of you who have read this blog before know, I spent some time racing `cross in Europe last winter, thereby making me a little more interesting to them. Negotiations were done and I signed a contract with Stevens Racing for the remainder of the 2005 season in Early June. Hopefully things go well here so that I can return to Europe at some point later this year for more racing.

Anyway, things seem to be good. My form is coming on again and I just won my first race for my new team on Saturday, a criterium stage in the Charlevoix stage race in Quebec. Hopefully my legs still feel good in five days!

I`ll let you know how things go this week.
GR