Vikings

Wednesday__Beitostølen – Beitostølen ; 160km
Oh my, did I get spanked today... I was looking forward to feeling good on the bike, and at least finding a group I could ride with if things got too hot at the front, but it was not to be. Very hilly today, and I was in trouble the first time the road tipped up. Basically spent the entire day patrolling the back of the group until the inevitable happened on the 35km uphill drag to the finish. After getting popped once and coming back through the cars, I got dropped for real with about 15km to go. Lots of crashes, and I felt quite happy at the end of the day when I got away without going down. The upside of getting thrashed for 7km on the way up is that you generally get a ripper descent down the other side, and the Norwegian roads did not disappoint with uncharacteristically butter-smooth pavement and sweeping turns all the way. Hoping for a better day tomorrow…

Thursday__Fagernes – Hønefoss ; 160km
Made it over the first KOM climb of the day in considerably better form than yesterday and managed to ride a little closer to the front when we hit the valley on the other side. Once again, crash avoidance mode was on high alert as guys were falling off their bikes in all sorts of unlikely scenarios. Sketch. Christian went on the attack at some point so I got to do a little bit of attack coverage duty on the front with PeterP, which was actually going pretty well for me. I was thinking at this point that I might be able to do something useful today, like preparing a sprint or getting in a late move or something but yet again my legs were to fail me. I got dropped on a steep little climb at 120km, chased back with a small group and then went straight back to the front to avoid a repeat performance. Then Unibet.com sent some guys to the front to try and bring back a small group that got away over the climb. I was really wishing for an 11t cog at this point, with speeds regularly topping 60kph, but then again I was pretty happy to be packing the 25 for some of the uphills. Hm. I was staying on point near the front, but I went backwards pretty fast on the next hill and got caught out with a 5m gap coming over the top. Rode pretty hard for a k or two to try and close it but n go, so I had to content myself with the grupetto for two days running.

Friday__Oslo – Ottawa ; 6000+ km
Stage 3 for me involved a mildly scary 80km car transfer to Oslo airport (thanks Jens), then airplanes from Oslo to Montreal and a bus to Ottawa. Thankfully everything was super-smooth and my bike even showed on time too – I was a little sceptical given my bags were checked through even though I was running on two separate tickets. Nice. The low stress makes a marathon travel day that much less taxing. I need all the relaxing I can get with Beauce and another 600km worth of car transfer coming in the next few days. When am I going to train??

Oh yeah, going to bed at 11.30 – still light out
Waking up at 4.30 going to the bathroom – still light out
I'm thinking it must have gotten dark out sometime there.

GReain

Norge

I don't know one single word of Norske. Nothing. So sudden was my departure that I did not have a chance to find a phrasebook or dictionary or anything, although maybe my chances of finding and English/Norske book in Hamburg might have been slim. Now I feel like a complete tool trying buy stuff at the grocery store, cause I can't even say please or thank you. Good thing all the locals speak super-good English and are ridiculously happy to use it. Like ecstatic.

So the overnight ferry from Kiel was the dope shit. Check it out - we drive an hour and a half from Hamburg, load onto this big-ass boat at 1.30pm (no problems with the bikes & racks, sweet), and then basically chill out, walk around, eat in reastaurants and generally take it easy until 9.30 the next day when we roll out in to the sunshine in Oslo. No stress. No airplane legs. No, we did not hit the on-board nightclub. Slept awesome too.

Norway is beautiful. Now that I am here, I don't want to go home after only two stages, I want to stay for the whole thing! And then maybe never go back. It's that nice. Bit of a rough place to be a cyclist though, the roads are all super-narrow and heavily travelled. It looks like there's only a couple of hundred kilometers of motorway in the whole country, so all the traffic still runs on the small roads. The problem being, of course, that the land just doesn't allow for building big straight roads. Really, really beautiful though.

Christian had this great idea that we should ride the last 50km or so to the hotel, and idea with which, at least in principle, I agree with. This did, however, result in the 5 of us standing around naked at the side of the road somewhere on the way from Oslo to Beitostølen. The fact that the old guy getting his mail across the street didn't even seem to care led me to make the only possible assumption under the circumstances - that this is a perfectly normal thing to do in Norway.

Oh yeah, and 40 of the last 50 km were uphill. The upside, or indeed, the downside (depending on how I'm feeling), is that these are the same 50km as the last 50km of tomorrow's stage. So now we've seen the stage end, but now we also know that it is HARD. Whee. That'll feel good after I complete my task for tomorrow (see below).

I never really know when Jens is joking. The task list for tomorrow: Benny - sprint ; Heule - prepare the spring for Benny ; Tim van Nuffle - "ride like Lucien" (van Impe, old school Belgian climber of Tour fame) ; Presslauer - "ride for Lucien" ; Greg - "since you're only here for two days, full gas both days". So does that mean that I go on the attack at km 1? The first 40 are all downhill, so...maybe after 40 minutes or so. Geez. Wireless internet at the hotel means I might be able to let you know how it works out.

I think it's only dark for like 3 hours here.

GReain

Just when I think I'm out...

...they pull me back in.

Al Pacino quotes aside, it looks like I'm prolonging my stay here for another 5 days for something called the Ringerike GP (UCI 2.5) in Norway. Never been to Norway before...

Got the call this afternoon after my first training ride since Ireland, feeling very nice and comfortable with the idea of climbing onto the plane Monday for the flight home. Instead I'll be climbing onto the ferry for a 20 hour cruise. Should be nice.

Seems that the team is dropping like flies and unless I start in Norway, we won't make the minimum number of riders and the whole team can't start. Not good. The plan is for me to do the first two stages (grupetto king styles) Wed & Thur then hit the airport Friday AM Oslo -> AMS -> YUL -> Ottawa; home in time for dinner.

I guess the upside is this postpones my appearance at the Tue and Thur Ottawa evening appointments for another 2 weeks - post Beauce. Enjoy!

www.rgp.no

GReain