Tour des Pays de Savoie 2.2

I left off my last post with my bid to be Antwerpen Prov. Champion and since then life has been non stop. It will take a couple instalments to get it all out. Less than a week after my race in Herselt I hopped on a flight to Switzerland  and from there we met up with our team vehicles and staff who drove us the remaining hour to our hotel in the midst of a beautiful, and nearly deserted, ski chalet town atop a mountain. I knew I was into it when I got a good look at all the profiles of the stages at our first team meeting. A minimum of 3 climbs on each of the 4 days average length of 7km, some getting up to 20km. My job from the start was to do all I could to help our team leader Louis Vervake in any way I could. Pretty much the same routine everyday. Wake up, pray to baby jesus that I don't die, get on my bike, suffer, hope I'm in the time cut, sleep. On day 1 I was active early but missed the small group that got away, thankfully Dimitri from our team made it. The first climb was a steep mother and the peleton shattered I was pretty far back at the top but made it into the second group on the road with my death wish/reckless abandon approach at descending.

Once in a group big enough, that wasn't going uphill, I was feeling strong and contributed to the chase back to the leaders. Soon enough however a pro team from the UK took over the chase and we were on our way back and I was just relaxed in the wheels. Then for the 100,000,000 (more realistically 7th) time this year I flatted in a race. I rode about 10 km on this flat thinking where is the next  group and the broom wagon? They caught me eventually and the broom wagon was gesturing for me to get in, I was like "no way, give me a wheel please sir!" (just I was way more nasty and cuss'd and in quebecois). Thankfully during this exchange an unmarked van pulled up and put a wheel in my bike, it was a parent of one of my teammates there to follow the race, I guess I do have some luck. I used my frustrated energy to catch the group that was about a minute ahead and I got to enjoy my first real groupetto experience. I already had a teammate there and not many others were giving much help. We rode up the 10km wall to the finish and we all made the time cut.

flat

The next day I was happy to make it over the first climb with relative ease. In the groupo compacto heading to the last climb my teammate Stef and I took our climbers to the front and led them out for the last few km's. I was totally cramped and even had to stop for a stretch but somehow managed to make the finish in time.

By day 3 I knew the drill and what to expect of myself. I relaxed and didn't put too much effort into getting into the break. After the 2nd climb though I was feeling so good I tried to roll away on the descent and it worked. 4 riders bridged up to me and then we dropped 2 of them on the next climb and the 3 of us rolled together and got pretty close to what we thought was the lead group but we didn't know was that the lead group had split long ago and we were actually catching up to the 2nd group on the road. After 50km like this the dream ended and the peleton caught us. I went back to domestique duties and did a little bit of bonked pacing to the finish as well as getting bottles from the cars of rival teams as our car was still up the road with Dimitri in the break away. Then with 10km before the final climb a spoke on my rear wheel fell out and it was rubbing the brakes really hard. The lotto car was still up the road and this 10 speed wheel I was forced to borrow was not co-operating with my 11speed bike. By the time I got back to the roaring pack our car was back and I changed wheels again. Chasing there and back, there and back, being in a break and doing domestique work all hit me hard and I am sure you know what comes next. I cracked. I cracked super hard on the 12km climb to the finish and even blacked out for a few seconds just after the line. You would think it was some summer students from St.John's ambulance who had come to France for how big of a deal they made it out to be but it was pretty obvious what the problem was. I just kept saying "I'm fine, I'm just not used to racing like this, I just need solid food". It's bike racing, people crack, especially after 7 hours in the saddle in the mountains stop trying to give me and IV bag and put a wet towel on my head. I slept well that night.

bee sting protocol at St.John's

The prospect of finishing the 4th and final day seemed a stretch too far. A hard steep climb right after the neutral zone then 30km of valley before 20km of climbing to the finish. At only 100km of racing the finishers time would be fast and my normal routine of finishing 20minutes back would not be within 25% and I would be OTL. For non-cyclists what that means is that in racing you have to complete the course within 25% of the winner's time or else you are eliminated.  Since we were looking at a 2.5 hour race more than half the peleton was due to be eliminated on the last climb, not making it over the first climb with the leaders would be a death sentence. I was already super fatigued from my efforts of day's before and dropped with many others the moment the road turned up. The majority of us got off in the feed zone but a lot of others held onto team cars and got towed at super high speeds on the flats to make it to the finish. 50 of 120 starters finished the 4 day race but the number would have been more like 40 if you cut out the cheaters. Proud I am not one of them.

King Louis

Louis ended up 4th overall as well as a 3rd and 4th placing's on stages. Only a year older than me he is one to look for in the mountainous WorldTour races in years to come. A gracious guy always quick to thank his team, I don't know if I've ever been so happy to serve someone in my cycling days.

I will write a post about the Canadian Championships in the coming days. I napped on my first day over, breaking the strict 9pm rule of Jet Lag and I have been messed up for a week!  Not fun, soo tired.  

Training Camps, Buying Stamps and Provincial Champs

Since my last post I took a week super easy, a weekend off racing, spent a week in the lower mountains of France, had a horrible race, spent a week in the Ardennes, had a good race, and had a frantic few days trying to organize myself for even more travel.

So I did an easy week mid-may. For the people reading who aren't racers that essentially means a week with... one sec let me check TrainingPeaks....a mere 5 rides totalling in 10:48:41 of training.

The week following my easy week I received an invite to go to the Vosges in France for a training camp with two more senior riders on the Lotto formation. I got the call Saturday, we left Monday, it was to cost us 60euro apiece for the apartment + food. Gas is free as long as we fill up in Belgium and don't drive too much outside the homeland coughcompanycarcough. I had a great time, despite being: deceived by the size of our apartment with some wide angle lens trickery (9m2 for 3 people), it rained 3/5 days, and the fact I lost my cool doode oakley glasses. The area was cool, we rode to Munster, where babies come from. There was a Storck nest on literally every house. The climbs were long and steep and it was nice to get away, from my getaway. We had couple hard days when weather allowed but it was a week full of steady rides checking out beautiful climbs.

I came home thinking I could do a good race. I try to pick the ones in Wallonie as it usually means hills, well I picked the wrong part of Wallonie on this occasion. I went hard from the gun working with my teammate Louis and we had a lot of guys on the rivet. Soon enough though I realized something was wrong with me as I couldn't get a lot of power out on the sharp efforts. I went from being a big player, to a surviver, and eventually to the laughing group. I felt horrible, I don't know if it was my pride or my legs but I needed to pull over and end it. I regret stopping now as it was only 30km to go but maybe my body was just telling me I need a more fluid transfer to this level of intensity. Check with the boss, make my rides for next week shorter and harder, and hopefully I can be back to my old ways next weekend at the local race in Herselt. I have convinced myself 2 weeks without intensity was the reason for my flub in Wallonie.      

I spent the week with my good buddy CX superstar Quinten Hermans. We rode all over Liege from our base above a bar in the centrum of the cute small town of Malmedy. Between rides we were sitting outside and babe watched while working on our complexion or checking out the local digs in the area. I sent an arm load of post cards to anyone who is important to me, check your mailbox and see if you made the cut! Just kidding but I did send 8 and I got grilled about my life by the older ladies at the post office as the line behind me swelled, I guess I am a real charmer even when I'm trying to escape. On the bike I felt really good, the watt-o-meter was telling me good things, and I was looking forward to my race Sunday.

Wait for it, this will come full circle, the thing about someone who has English as a second language is that no matter how good they seem there will always be things they fail to do perfectly. An example of this is I've heard a story about a guy who's english was so good you wouldn't know he was a Flemish speaker if he started with Engels. One time this guy was talking about working in his yard and that the tree's were really hard to get out the ground due to all the carrots... carrots? Well that's because carrots and roots are the same word in Flemish. On a lower level I find a lot of Belgians mix up tuesday with thursday and saturday with sunday. Well Friday I did 3 hours hard riding with more that 1:30 of intervals and when I came home to find that I was racing Saturday instead of Sunday due to some linguistic confusion. My expectations had dropped a little due to already feeling a little cracked. A bunch of people were coming to support me and it was the Provincial Championships so higher quality field and more eyes on me from the crowd. It was really nice though being so close to home. Act like it's a rest day from waking until 2pm, then kit up, ride 10km to the start, sit in the cafe and register, and enjoy some SPA. It was a scorcher, my first test since the recent flub, and I went in far from fresh. All things considered I decided to play it conservative. I covered some moves but I wasn't the aggressor I normally am.

Rustig ah

After a while and some hard riding 8 guys were up the road with my pal Stef who was guaranteed the Antwerp U23 jersey so I wanted it to stick. I got in a group of 3 with teammate Kennet and we got to within 20 seconds but no closer and soon the peleton went h.a.m and 30 guys came up to us. Kenneth waited a few laps and went with one other guy so to grab himself 2nd on the U23 podium. I covered moves and was feeling well within myself. I picked what I thought was the best wheel for the sprint, 2 wheel at the bottom of the short punch to the line behind a Diesel named Goolaerts. I managed to get a little boxed and had to freewheel when my teammate Dries and I got on the same space. Soon my window opened and I am confident I was fastest in the last 50m.... but that was only good enough to get me up to 6th in the group kick. I wouldn't of been going fastest in the last 50m if I had gone sooner and been less conservative but maybe I could of been top 3. 16th overall and 5th in the U23's. Wait an hour for the pay check (15euro) listening to classic kermis music before a nice spin home. I am happy with my ride as it was one of those races where I was more than capable but it only takes a few capable guys in a move for it to be gone for good. I just need to stay persistent and look for races (preferably) with some elevation change and I am sure I can pick up one of these things.                      

These last few days I met up with my old buddy Nat and went for a long easy ride. He was passing through in his ride around the world. http://chocolatefilledbananas.com. I have been frantically getting everything set up for my trip home when I leave next Monday morning, but this afternoon I fly to Switzerland for the Tour des Pays de Savoie in France. Massive TDF mountains on the Italian border. I am hoping to really get my climbing legs as if you gave our selection for the race a band name it would be "Prodigal Climber's 1 through 5 and the Fat Canadian". I will drive home through the night following the stage Sunday pack my Bike in the wee hours of Monday morning and then head to the AirPort at 6am.

A bad habit of mine, trying to see where I am going to finish in the last 5m. (on right of photo)

        

too much going on to specify it in a title of reasonable length without being way to broad

May 1 - 5th I was in Eastern Europe. First a plane to Krakow, then a drive through Slovakia to Czech Republic. I was so tired from my 4am wake up that the 300km drive that took 6 hours was hell. In all of the above countries you need to buy a transponder so they can track how much you drive so the federalies can take money from foreigners using the roads. I don't know who we bought ours from but on all occasions bartering was somehow effective. I can't picture any situation in Canada where you could attempt bartering with a Customs Officer. Anyways while bartering over the cost of our transponder (they averaged 50euro, 3 team vehicles and 3 countries... do the math!) in Slovakia a guy washed our window in about 4 seconds and laughed with us and kept saying JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAME HAHAHA when we spoke in Dutch (not me though). Then he sticks out his hand and says 10 euro. It's like c'mon dude your window cleaning skills aren't worth 1 euro a second. So again we bartered him down to 2 euro as he forced his way into the car. I was alright not liking this part of Europe, everything was run down and really depressing. We got to the hotel and a kid through dry mud  (I hope it was mud) out of his high rise at me. The hotel itself reminded me of the house in Fight Club. Anyways I didn't complain and just got down to racing. 

Stage 1 of Carpathia Couriers Paths was a 2km prologue around some little roads with a couple corners. Everyone had ITT bikes but we used our road bikes. Only a small disadvantage over such a short distance. I finished 60th 13 seconds behind the winner, but with over 150 starters it's not such a bad result. Stage one it rained super hard all day and the deciding factor was a 4km climb over 20%. After what seemed like hours climbing at 50rpm I went over the top in about 23 wheel. The lead group at the finish was 22. Upon cresting the top I was so cramped I could hardly pedal and let a small gap open as riders infront of me tried to sprint into the wet descent. I couldn't catch up but I soon found company in about 30 other riders. We rolled in 33 seconds and I was now around 30th in GC. Stage 2 saw us with 2 riders in the top 10 and we planned on leading them out to try and get bonus seconds at the finish. Belgian Champ Jorne Carolus who was in my group on Stage 1 crashed at the bottom of the first climb and never made it back, ending his tour. Fast forward a couple hours of boring up and down wet landscape and we have all 5 riders in the lead group of 60 going to finish. The three (myself included) non top 10 riders drove it super hard in the final km's and we had Jef and Tiesj (mr. phonetical says: TEE sh huh) sitting in 3rd and 4th wheel with 200m to go. Then, as luck would have it, the rider in 2nd wheel either had a death wish or dormant narcolepsy but he managed to hit the deck taking about 20 riders with him. Myself included but my injuries hardly crossed the booboo threshold. TJ however broke his wrist and Jef was more ripped than Arnold Schwarzneger was in the 80's and with a broken bike to boot. Thankfully we all have 2 race bikes and that wasn't a problem but we lost our best rider in TJ. Stage 3 was more relaxed (it rained again) and we were busy covering moves and licking our wounds and late in the race Jef was really good to get in an 8 man move. He didn't have the legs in the sprint and was 2nd on the stage. With time bonuses the rider who won got 10 seconds putting him in the leader's jerseyand Jef got 6 making him 2nd on GC, 4 seconds back. The last stage, Stage 4 if you've been keeping track was hard, we tried to get Jef some intermediate sprints and a good chance at the finish but despite all our work we couldn't compete with the two dutch teams that had combined against us. They managed to push Jef back into 4th overall and we thought back to what could have been had Jef just managed to win stage 3. Hindsight is 20/20, we did our best,  insert cliche here. 

We drove home over the course of 2 days and picked up some teammates in Frankfurt making for a crammed final 3 hours back to Herentals. I got home at 2am, slept, went for a coffee ride, packed my bags with my freshly washed clothes and headed back to Herentals. Time for some French racing! 

Only a mere 2 hours from the Lotto service course was our hotel. It was very nice and welcomed change after our trying accommodations in former Soviet Russia. Some of you may know that I have been gluten-free (pause for laughter) for the past 2 years, but, on that evening, in that small French town near the Belgian border, I hit a breaking point. Instead of explaining for the millionth time what Gluten is and all that non-sense I just picked up a roll and engulfed it into my digestive system. Engulfed was the wrong word to use their, I see that now. Anyways I have felt it in my belly since then and combined with my Hay Fever I wasn't feeling too hot but manageable. This time last year I got hit by Hay fever when I was in Germany and my riding abilities were crippled but this year I was prepared with nasal inhalers (checked by Lotto team doctor to make sure they are legal). I was rev'd up for stage 1 of the 2 day race. 160km with some cobbles and wind. I really wanted to see how France compared to Belgium. Early on I was suffering but in the lead group of >30 after 30km of cobbles and wind but then... I got a flat. I had to wait with my hand in the air for an eternity as the 100 riders behind me slowly trickled by until only the slowest of them passed me revealing the trapped line of team cars. I got a new wheel but the race director instructed me to not follow the cars back as potentially 100 riders could jump in and ride back to the front. This was a perfect example of the importance of neutral service. My day, and stage race, ended in that moment. I was a little bummed as day 2 was a ITT and I haven't raced my nice new ITT bike yet this year. I did have tonnes of fun following my teammate Dries though as we just blasted music and I lent out the window and screamed profanities at him and called him names to try and motivate him. Then Flashdance came on, it was magical. After Dries told me Flashdance was a boring song to do an ITT to. Disappointing.

  

WHAT A FEELING! 

Saturday was off as Sunday and Monday's races where not connected to the Thursday and Friday races. We rode with a few other teams to preview Sunday's circuit and I got to ask some burning questions. I polled a bunch of French riders about what they thought about the French vs. Belgian racing. Although I was OTL on Thursday I really did enjoy the racing and the level. It is the Highest level in France but it was only slightly higher than the kermis level in Belgium. This rider though told me that in France it is a bigger show, races have podiums and VIP's and all that stuff but he seemed to think Belgian racers are tougher, stronger and most importantly smarter. He claimed the reason for all three was that in Belgium you always end up doing some races with pros and you do races where you get blown out of the water. This teaches you a lot, and really toughens you up when you are riding in the heat of the race near the front and in the action. You can suffer harder in this situation because you have suffered this hard before just to make the time limit, now you are doing it to win. It also makes you smarter because you are better at conserving energy when you are really outclassed where in France it is either Amateur or Pro, there is no overlap. Maybe this guy didn't like France or something but his reasons seemed valid enough. I extremely enjoy the racing there so it's hard to say anything bad about it. He also told me his girlfriend did a semester of school in Canada and that she really loved Canada and wants to move there, I asked where in Canada, and he said "Manitoba"! His girlfriend must be crazy (JustKidding Manitoba). 

Sunday was a windy circuit race and I took the skills I have obtained from dutch cross winds and kept shelter in the long grass. I missed the initial split but jumped across with 6 others. When we got there 4 had escaped for good and I managed to sprint in for 19th place. I was a little boxed in during the sprint but content with my performance, in the first few laps I felt like complete trash. I don't know if it was the pollen or the gluten (it was definitely the gluten) but I went to the back of my group, blew chunks, and then started feeling better. 

After the race the fact that I had raced 8 of the last 14 days was really starting to hit me and I felt really pooped. So I wasn't feeling so confident with my low energy going in a crit the next day. I tried to compensate with a few coffee's but it didn't work. I was active but definitely not myself and I got dropped by 2 other riders who I had escaped with and they ended up being the winning move (along with 20 others they gradually bridged up). Of 5 starters 3 guys got blown up really early and only the 2 of us remaining couldn't do a lot. I followed everything I could to try and make it hard for the guys at the back but we never made it to the front. I sprinted in for 8th in my group of 40, which ain't half bad for a yokel like me.         

Back in Belgium relaxing, taking it easy. Just a couple races this weekend and then next week a real rest period before starting a build to aim for mid June. Sunday I am back to flat windy Holland to hold on for dear life and Monday is a criterium in the land of Perfume..... Cologne, Germany. I got some sweet new race wheels and I am planning a trip with my buddy Quinten to go to Malmedy, Wallonie in early June for a week to ride the hills, stay in a nice apartment above a bar and drive around in his Benz! Life is so hard haha!