I realize that the World Championships TTT was the better
part of a week ago, but cut me some slack! I think I broke the blogging world
record by posting 24 times in as many days. 15,000 words while racing a Grand
Tour.
Speaking of, I’ve got some final thoughts about the Vuelta,
now that I’ve had some time to digest it. First, I still can barely grasp the
significance of what I/we accomplished. My longest bike race ever was 10 days
and it was far from the level of the Vuelta, and it destroyed me (with the aid
of a nasty South-American bacteria, to be fair). My longest WorldTour race was
8 days. So it was a reasonable expectation that I would be able to contribute
for the first half of the Vuelta before shifting into survival mode. I and my
coaches anticipated finishing the Vuelta with the ability to do nothing more
than curl up in bed until the end-of-season team meeting, which is why I’m only
a reserve rider for most of the post-Vuelta races.
But that’s not what happened. Thanks to a lot of hard work
on my part and the careful training/racing schedule planned out by my coaches
and trainers, my legs did much more than survive their first GT, and I’m
pleased as punch about it. We fought as a team for every chance we had and came
out with a staggering 4 stage wins, very nearly getting 3 more. I have to say
that the last 200m of stage 4 was my happiest moment on a bike ever. There are
only a few times in my life I’ve had the thought “we’re going to win this bike
race, ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it,” and that was one of them.
There’s also something that those outside of bike racing
usually don’t consider, and that’s all the extra bike riding we do. What, isn’t
a GT enough? 10km of neutral before every road stage adds up! Plus all the
riding to/from sign in, and the ride to the bus after the finish. The race was
officially 3232km(1995mi), but over 23 days I accumulated 3677km(2270mi). I
covered that distance in 103 hours, 10 hours more than my GC time.
Like I said, we thought I’d be dead after the Vuelta, so I was
only a reserve rider for Worlds TTT. But then John had to be hospitalized for
an infection and I got the callup. Every TTT I do just makes me love the event
that much more. I’m a perfectionist, and the TTT is an event in which
perfection pays huge dividends. I also find it to be the most
exciting/terrifying event because of the skill required. We were rolling at
60kph for the first 15 minutes of the race. We’re going crazy fast, nowhere
near the brakes, and each of us only able to see the wheel in front of us. To
recover at all at those speeds, you have to fully commit to the wheel and trust
that the guy 5 bikes ahead of you will pick a good line and that the director
in your ear will warn you of dangers with enough time to do something about it.
The TTT is also one of the most painful events. Unlike a
long TT, where you can just dial up the pain to a sustainable level and hold it
there, the TTT is an hour-long over/under interval. In the first 15 minutes, on
the flat ground, I was doing nearly 550W on the front for close to 30 seconds
(I kept forgetting to look at the timer when I started my pulls and went too
long). Then I swung off, soft-pedaled for 5 seconds, then sprinted to get back
on. Then I had 2 minutes at 300W before I had to do it again. And that was the
easy part of the course. Then we reached the hills.
I was really in the hurt locker for 10 minutes before the
top of the climb, but I was pleased to have made it into the final 4. Our
efforts were rewarded with the top-10 placing that we were seeking. We’re
constantly getting better, which bodes well for the future!
The TTT was my first race with Marcel—I hadn’t even seen him
since the first week of January—so it was nice to get to know each other. I still haven’t done a race with Tom Veelers
or Bert de Becker (although I got to know Tom well at camp). That’s how big the
team is, there are guys that I haven’t seen all year!
I still have at least one race remaining, so there’s still
some training to be done to maintain my form. I mentally can’t do intervals
anymore, and even just telling myself that I’m going training cracks me a bit.
So yesterday I covered up the power and went for a bike ride. When I’m supposed
to go hard, I’ll just chase some Strava KOMs.
Want to know what a GT does to your legs? I can’t go easy
anymore! It’s either 150 or 300W all day, I can’t find the in-between. 300W is
just cruising speed now, nearly nose-breathing. Also, 21 days of WorldTour
racing is a lot of speedwork, and now 90rpm feels like grinding.
So, I’ve got at least one race remaining—Milan-Torino, plus
I’m reserve for a few others. I’m hoping to get bumped up, though. I’ve got
good legs at the end of the season for the first time ever, and want to use
them. Also, I’m not going home until after the team meeting in October, and
racing makes time go by much faster!
I said in an interview earlier this year that, as riders,
our job is to race our bikes and leave the team management to those in the
office. We can’t be stressing about sponsorship issues if we hope to perform
well, and our team office rewarded that trust by securing a new major sponsor,
Alpecin, for the coming years. Sponsorship stability is such a big deal in this
sport! I also love that the sponsor of the team with the rider most synonymous with
fantastic hair (and Marcel, too) is a shampoo company.
