Ten Votes in Favor of European Spring-
Mallorca. What better place to spend 10 days
getting over the most serious flu/mystery virus I’ve encountered than a
Spanish Island usually reserved for team training camps (what I’d
intended) on beautiful, sun drenched roads and trails. Sitting around shivering, sweating
and coughing is much better in a pleasant setting… Fortunately, Rosara’s Kiwi
acquaintance, Craig, had a small plane to give a tour of the island that
was impossible for me by bike.
And the hospital staff was pleasant.
Weather. I’ve always been pretty lucky with
springtime in Northern Europe, racing the Houffalize, Belgium World Cup in
exclusively dusty conditions throughout my career. Not this year. With Katie, Rosara and I all
recovering from super-virus, the single digit temps weren’t ideal, but
prompted expulsive coughing, which was constructive… I raced like I felt, a small child
with a cold. 130th,
a lap down. What are you
gonna do? Watch Julien
Absalon take a dominant win from the sidelines and wonder how you ever
sort of kept up with that guy…
Hardening
Up. After Houffalize the
Non-Europeans on the team retired to our team manager, Leo’s place on the
northern Dutch/German border for a workweek. I was starting to feel normal again and super keen to
get back to training/ playing catch-up. Fortunately, the weather was continuing to, well,
exist. Cold wind and rain in
the flat lands is a tough transition from Mallorca, but being able to ride
made it seem strangely pleasant.
I’ll have to remember this hardening up for the next time utopic
bike riding seems difficult…
Shakedown. How’s this for strange times- Two
normal-looking people pull up to a German Autobahn rest stop for
fuel. Transaction complete,
they begin to depart, at which time the Polezi flag them down. Informed that they’ve been
selected for a random check, passports are handed over. Intentions become immediately
clear with “May we look through your belongings?” and “Did you smoke any weed while you
were in Holland?” Ultimately,
they interrogated us, searched our stuff, demanded to know if vitamins
were disguised drugs and forced me to take a urine test for drugs in the
bathroom. Whoa, Dutch plates
really get the treatment in Germany.
Good thing I passed…
The
Alps. Nothing makes you
appreciate returning to an idyllic mountain setting more than a few days
spent in the flatlands. We
raced in Haiming, Austria after the Great Grey North and it felt so good
to be in the hills. The
solidly awesome course in a beautiful forest made the continually
cold/wet/snowy weather unnoticeable to this kid. I rode slightly better, 12th in the softest
HC-class field race in Europe all year. Fabian and Emil went 1-2. Dang, fellas.
The sun shone on Monday morning, enabling a tidbit of local beta to
produce one of the best loops I’ve ever ridden. Seriously.
Team
Training Camp. Excited about
the prospect of getting a leg up on the competition at a new World Cup
venue, the Rabo squad spent a few days in La Bresse, France checking out
the freshly constructed course and dialing it in with the help of skills
coach (and former DH honch) Oscar Saiz. We had some little chalets up on the mountainside in
which a bunch of good meals were cooked with the help of Michiel,
snowflakes fell and sun shone.
Some pretty radically good riding elsewhere in that corner of
Alsace as well… I’m glad Remy
Absalon puts on an Enduro race there in addition to doing a bang-up job on
the World Cup XC track.
Bundesliga. I’ve never raced a German National
Series event. Strange that
I’d missed that in the last decade.
What better one to sample than the biggest, Heubach. We knew we were there when the
BLASTING AC/DC was interrupted with a synth voice-over announcing “BIKE
THE ROCK!!!” which is what we were about to do, evidently. Up and down the rock a bunch of
times, actually. A nearly
World Cup level field took frothingly to the 10min up/3min down course
while I tried to continue getting in shape. Improving for sure, but still not ready for 70min of
climbing and 20min of reward, yet…
18th.
Fabian almost won before German Champ and fellow Cape Epic dropout
Milatz Moritz punched his ticket.
Lots of people were real fired up to watch the race and drink
beer. Lucky folks.
Driving. There’s something about driving
around Europe that I sincerely love.
Being in an area of such condensed beauty and infrastructure means
you can always find something to look at or comment on. In the last couple weeks we’ve
driven from Holland to Austria, then just across the border to France,
back into Germany, and a pit stop in Switzerland on the way back to
France, the Alps this time.
Along the way delicious, fast, nutritious meals were eaten at rest
stop Marche restaurants, people drove fast and courteously, and the GPS
didn’t send us wrong, even though we don’t have a friggin’ map to confirm
it’s blind directing…
Friends
of Friends. I like
people. Meeting them, finding
out what they do and about their neighborhood. Just this week we’ve had a buddy of the Northwest Shred
Posse, Rob Hamilton-Smith, turn us on to an amazing train-assisted ride
along the shores of Lake Geneva, then introduce us to the guy, Sam Morris of http://www.bikevillage.co.uk/biking.htm to ride with and get beta from in the Beaufortain who subsequently
set us up with Anna from Massage Me, who did just that in the little
village of Nancriox while I gazed at a massive avalanche crown line on a
3200m peak. And shoot, I
haven’t even met Ash Smith of Trans Provence yet, but he’s already gotten
us set up with a place in Bourg St. Maurice in addition to providing what
I assume will be the best bike racing week of my life with his event this
fall…
Trains take you here!
Weekends
off. There haven’t been many,
but they sure are nice, in addition to being productive. This one in Bourg St. Maurice is
exceedingly so. The progress that can me made in place of racing is always
impressive, and rejuvenating.
I’m pretty sure this final block of prep for World Cup rounds 3 and
4 (my last chance to ride like I know I can and make the Olympic Team) is
going to set up a solid finish to this long, rollercoaster of a trip. 8 weeks of 10 down, time to get
stuff done and then go home!
