Thank you, Ladies!

Last weekend was the first hot race of the season and I guess the team went through at least 1 million (or more) bottles during the road race at Pace Bend. Given the chaotic conditions in the feed zone, you might wonder we managed to get all those bottles on board during the race: Thanks to our phenomenal feed zone crew, of cause.

As every single one of them can tell you, it is not an easy thing to feed a team during a race. For one, there is the battle for position in the feed zone; then you need to find your riders and make sure, none of the competition grabs a bottle. In between laps, you need to find and collect the tossed bottles, refill them and, of cause, wrangle your way back to a good spot to do it all over again the next lap.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped out this weekend. We couldn’t do it without you and I hope, you guys and girls had a little bit of a fun at the race anyhow.

The Sun is HOT!

One little piece of advice here: even if it is still cold outside (and might not even be that sunny at times): PUT ON SUNSCREEN. I was sitting on my trainer outside on the deck yesterday and, the weather being finally nice, was only wearing a sleeveless jersey and shorts. I was only doing some intervals for two hours and it was earlier in the day, too, but guess what: it was enough to earn me a slight sun burn on the shoulders… So, I guess winter is finally on the retreat, even if the temperatures aren’t that high yet. But the sun sure is strong already.

Heads up, Corey!

I just found this clip on the net and it is hilarious. I dedicate this one to Corey, who is probably in quite some pain right now (except if he is still on painkillers). For those of you who haven’t heard yet: we had way too many crashes yesterday in Pace Bend, the worst of which happened right on the straight towards the finish line. Corey and Leo got tangled up in it, with Leo “only” loosing some skin, but Corey went down hard. The crash destroyed his bike, helmet and, unfortunately, his collarbone too.

So here’s the video.

Something to Smile About

The weather is bad, it is freezing cold outside (compared to Phoenix) and, surprise surprise, I’m still a bit sick... so here’s a little something to lift the spirits. Watch and enjoy!

Getting Better

I seem to be getting over my cold! This morning I was feeling way better than the last couple of days so I hope to be back to normal tomorrow. Hopefully the rest of the team is also getting better and we will be ready to rock this weekend at Pace Bend.

VoS Results

Valley of the Sun results are posted at:
http://www.wmrc.org/vos/

To Phoenix and Back

What a week! I guess I spend more time in the van than anywhere else this past week. It wasn’t too bad though, as it turned out to be one of those classic road trips. The destination was Phoenix, Arizona, for the Valley of the Sun Stage Race. So we spent Tuesday and Wednesday on the road, which turned out to be rather fun. As everyone who has ever driven through Texas towards El Paso knows, there are some quite long stretches of road where there is neither cell phone nor radio reception (and for whatever reason we didn’t bring any CDs) so Mike took over as entertainer and helped pass the time (his singing talents are quite remarkable!).

Anyways, we finally made it to Phoenix. All of us were looking forward to some nice desert climate, i.e. clear blue skies and sun… Yeah right, sun! Temperatures in the 50ies and rain for the TT on Friday… GREAT! TT didn’t go too well for me, I thought I was going pretty well until the guy that had started one minute behind me came flying past on the way back in… I ended up 30^th, some 3 minutes down. There went my ambitions for GC… I was somewhat disappointed, as I had expected more but that’s the way it goes. Corey was still struggling with a cold and his TT went even worse. With no more GC goals we decided to focus on the individual stages. That worked out a little better: on Saturday both Corey and me came in the top 10 and on Sunday I managed a 8^th place in the Crit; overall, this bumped me up to 17^th. So I guess the weekend went ok after all.

Today I’m back in Dallas and, unfortunately, got a little head cold. Corey did a great job racing in AZ while sick but I’m afraid he passed it on to the rest of the team so most of us were sniffling and coughing during the drive back to Dallas. I’m feeling a bit better though and hopefully will be back to normal tomorrow or the day after. In any case, I hope that we all are over our “team sickness” by this weekend and we all are on top of our game this coming weekend for Pace Bend. We should have a rather strong team down there and hopefully a shot at winning.

Until then, I hope the weather holds (no rain, please) and I my cold might just miraculously disappear over nigh. We’ll see if that’ll work…

Feels like Christmas!

Just a quick update from training camp here in Dallas: we got here yesterday and got most of our stuff and bike. Everyone was very excited to get on the new equipment and later today we will get a chance to try it all out on our first training ride with the team. But first we need to get the bikes fitted and some lunch; weather is fine too, a bit windy but not too cold. It should be fun to get out and ride with the whole team and get to know the others better.

Dallas

Finally training camp is here! I’ll be flying out tomorrow to Dallas to meet up with the rest of the team for out first get together of the season. I’m really looking forward to that, to meeting the other team members and getting onto the new bikes. It’s going to be a blast.