I pity da fool...

...that has to scrounge for bit torrents (or some shit like that) of the Spring Classics. I just come home from training, make a coffee, sit down on the couch, punch in 25 and I'm watching it all live. Damn, those ProTour guys are strong. Schleck is on fire right now, but no one is going to let him get an inch up the road after his win in Amstel Gold. Boogerd was strong today, maybe one of the strongest guys in the last 30km, but going up the road with Joaquin Rodriguez at 18km to go leaving strong T-Mobile & Quickstep teams plus a bunch of heavy hitters in the group was maybe not a great move.

No racing for me this weekend, but training has been going alright and the weather is markedly better this week. Finally. I actually saw some green in the woods the other day, which was nice. And now that the wind is dying down I can really start to get the bike rolling, and that feels good in the legs.

In other news, we got our new Pearl Izumi Octane shoes the other day. Silver carbon & Titanium sole plate; these things are hot. Stevens Racing and the Lamonta team are the only people with these shoes right now, so that's also pretty cool. Oh yeah, and Adidas are kicking in with some dope eyeware too. Now we're all little Kloden clones.

I missed the Ottawa Paris Roubaix today; fully bummed about that. It's one of my favourite races, even if it is only an Ottawa Posse thing. Props to Bob Woods for putting that on. Which reminds me I probably should have made arrangements to give the cobble stone trophy back before I came over here...so if anyone is looking for it it's on the shelf with the spare tubes at Cyclelogik.

GReain

Rest? What?

Big race yesterday, back to training today.

First, results from Duren: http://www.rsv-dueren.de/Rund%20um%20Dueren/R1.htm
No time gaps though. Regiostrom put the smack down, holy crap.

Today we had the pleasure of more wind and rain to accompany 150km of motorpacing and echelon work. At least it dried out a bit for the last half, but that's when the wind picked up too - try 20kph on the flats, small ring, big power. Two groups of four swapping between echelon work in front of the car and recovering behind; not an easy day on the bike, but not as hard as yesterday for sure. We all showed up at the meet point expecting 2-1/2 hrs, so I think I was running on two small bottles and one Enervit bar for 4-1/2. Cool.

Oh, and that's right, no rest day tomorrow. Or the day after. Or until sometime after the two races on the plan this weekend. Who knows?

GReain

1000 Deaths

Well, I hope everyone had fun riding around in circles at Mosport yesterday. I just got back from the pounding of a lifetime at Duren today. I will say this much first - we do not have wind in Canada. At least not in Ontario. And nor do we have hills, of which this circuit had two monsters. Nor do we have races anywhere close to as hard as this one was.

Woke up to driving rainand (guess what) more violent crosswinds. We rolled about 20km out of Duren, then did three circuits of what felt like an exceptionally tough round before piling headlong back down into town for a 5-lap criterium finish to make 160km. I don't want to give a total play-by-play, but there were basically four distinct sections of the circuit.

1) 80kph twisty descent, 180 degree turn at the bottom straight into a 1.5km climb topping out at 15-17%. Have to ride this in a 21 at the lowest, or you get dropped. Steep part of the climb ends, then slackens into some vicious crosswinds (still uphill though)

2) Rolly crosswind section, then the only flat section of the course, but it was 3/4 tailwind so deathline at 70kph (no shit). Actually saw a UCI motorcycle deck two bikes in front of me and I thought I was going to die.

3) Fast sweeping switchbacky downhill (no brakes, or again you get dropped), onto a one lane farm track (still downhill) and back out onto the main road to start climb number two. Leaving a one bike gap on the sketchy farm track to main road gutter transition spells almost instant death trying to get back on for the climb.

4) 3km climb, not uber-steep, but light headwinds make it tough. Coming out of the top of this one you're into some really massive crosswinds (worst on the circuit) and more rolly hills.

Repeat 3 times for fun.

The return leg to town was a little sketch, again at 70kph, sweeping through these little villages and everyone is getting all nervy for a sprint (even though we still have 5 finishing circuits to do and there are two groups away). More confusion on the finishing circuit today, but long story short I did a lot of work to keep things under control for Finn in the sprint and I think I ended up somewhere in the top 40 or so. That's a pretty killer result in this race. 200 starters, all pro, usually only a quarter of the guys even finish this race.

I lost count of how many times I had to chase across gaps and fight for position in the front echelon, but it was a lot. I did make the lead group for a little while on the first lap, but I was dangling and got popped on climb #2 where I hooked up with the chase group and we made the junction up top somewhere in the wind after a really tough chase. Ten guys got away on lap 2 and we never saw them again, then another 10 or so in a crosswind section at the start of the last lap. I didn't try to bridge in the wind because I was scared of hill #1 which was looming about a km up the road, so I rode the descent like a star and (unfortunately) almost hooked up with that group halfway up the other side before my legs shut down. Then it was peloton for me.

More info as it becomes available, but check cyclingnews.com for results over the next couple of days.

Oh yeah - 1000 deaths. I dunno how many times I thought I was totally done today, only to fight and come back, but it was the same story for everyone. Even British Champ Russell Downing looked like he was fighting for his life out there in our group...until he put in a killer attack on the finish circuits.

GReain

Big Hill, Big Gear

Was training on the hill from HEW Cyclassics the other day. I've already bored some people with this story, but I'll do it again. Normally training around Hamburg is pretty flat, but there is one hill in town that climbs up from the banks of the river Elbe and it is STEEP. It breaks down something like this - 300m @ 6%, 150m @ 10%, kicks to 18% for about 100m, then levels off at the top. AM- 3 times 53x23; PM- 4 times 53x23, 1 time 53x21. 170km. Then I was tired.

The criterium in Bielefeld last weekend was OK; big field at 199 starters. Had no problems staying in the front of the field, which was cool, and I did my work at the front for the team but I was not good enough to make the lead group of 16. Such is life. Maybe next time. The Dutch guys can corner, in case you haven't heard.

GReain

Spring in Hamburg

It has rained here every single day since 23 March. So that means that, since I got here from Majorca on 19 March, I've only managed to stay dry for 2 days of training. very nice.

Today was another exercise in stupidity as I was dressed for 12 degree dry weather, but the weather changed 50km from home to become icy rain mixed with hail, 4 degrees, and violently windy (headwind, naturally).

So as the more astute of you have by now realized, I did in fact race twice last weekend. Saturday was a relatively low-key affair (no Pro Contental or ProTour teams allowed), and yes, it did rain for the whole 120km. I spent the day cruising in the group under orders to be saved for the finale along with Sebastian. Unfortunately none of our guys got into the early break that ended up going to the end, and some confusion with the lap bell meant that I set Sebastian up with a perfect leadout to win the bunch for ninth to start the last lap. Oops. Not just us though, everyone thought that was it and after we came to a halt en masse we had to get going again for another 16km in the rain. Uphill start too. Bummer. Needless to say a lot of guys just turned around and hit the showers, which meant they were nice and cold by the time I got there. Oh yeah, and I ran out of rear brake with 50km to go and rode the front brake the rest of the way which was at complete zero when I finished. Scared.

Sunday was a little more high powered, with full teams from NotebooksBelliger.de, Heinz von Heiden and Milram TT3, plus one lonely looking Wiesenhof-Akud rider and three (only, long story) Stevens riders. The balance of the 100 man field was made up of really strong amateur teams. 160km, out-and-back, heavy duty crosswinds. The word from on high said to be well positioned in the first 10-20km, because a large group usually gets away then and goes the distance. OK, so I'm in super-good position for the first 10km, then I get stuck on the wrong side of the group as 40 guys charge up the other side of the road, make the corner and then the entire NotebooksBilliger squad goes to the front and splits the field in a crosswind. At like 50kph. So I chase really hard around all the dead bodies and get to within 15m, I can practically reach out and touch the last guy in the group, and then I blow sky high. I hook up with the chase group as they come blazing by and the next 10km are hell as I try to recover in a deathline at 45kph from my chase effort. We ride pretty hard for the next 60km or so but we get a split on the circuit in the turnaround town (which included two times up a 4km climb and twice up the cobbled main street) of 4 minutes to the leaders and then everyone pretty much sat up and we had a nice and social ride back to Berlin taking pulls in 2-man turns. Very gentlemanly. We eventually finished 15 minutes down or something, apparently the guys up front were killing each other all the way home. One of our guys didn't make it past the first 20 km, and the other guy got in the split but got spat out 10km later, so not a good day for us.

Did 500km in three days this past week, plus some intervals, and now I'm ready for our first criterium of the year in Brackwelde tomorrow. I am praying for a dry circuit because I really want to stay upright.

I lied earlier, we do have a UCI race on the calendar. Next Sunday is the Rund um Duren UCI 1.2, precursor to the 1.1 Rund um Koln (for which we do not have an invitation). Duren is reputedly very difficult, as the German Div2 and Div3 teams are usually all there, plus some good Belgian Div2's as well. Just look up the results from last year on cyclingnews.com and you'll see. Hilly too.

Later,
GReain