Bizarre Day

I had the most bizarre day. I've been on a terrible sIeep schedule
since I've gotten here, so last night I couldn't keep myself from
falling asleep at 8pm, too early apparently because I woke up at 12:30
am wide awake. I did some intervals between laying in bed for 45 min,
getting on the computer for a while, back and forth until it was
nearly 4am and I still wasn't asleep. Ecstatic that my honey had just
gotten online on the other side of the world so I'd have someone to
talk, all of a sudden I couldn't see parts of the computer screen. My
vision was blotchy, could this really be a migraine coming on?? I
hadn't had one of those since like 8th grade and had never intended on
getting one again. I excused myself and managed to fall asleep before
much of the pain set in. Unfortunately it was waiting for me in the
morning.

I rolled out of bed at 7am, head pounding, stomach nauseous, and
experiencing a super-sensitive sense of smell. Good morning,
migraine. I force breakfast down, hobbled back to my hotel room and
could do nothing but lay down. Today's time trial was more of an
exhibition event with good prize money and had no effect on the
overall standings for the stage race, that starts tomorrow. The only
thing that kept me from going upstairs to ask director Mike Carter if
I could skip the race was the fact that I seriously doubted my ability
to make it to his room without puking somewhere along the way. The
motion of the elevator probably would have been bad enough to do it
but coupled with that sweaty/musty fish smell, I didn't think I stood
a chance. Finally I mustered the strength to stand up and as I was
walking to leave our room, I didn't even make it to the door. I
detoured left into the bathroom and immediately started puking my guts
out. I mean everything came out. First the french toast and then the
raisin bran (tho I had not eaten them in that order, I figure the
french toast was lighter than the dense, chewed up bran which must
have settled at the bottom of my stomach... science!).

Ty heard it all and was thoroughly grossed out but my tum tum felt
better right away and I couldn't have been happier. I can race with
just a headache! Luckily it lessened some as I got closer to my start
time and the 2 shots of espresso and a donut from the Dunkin Donuts we
had discovered in town did wonders for me (even tho maybe most
cyclists wouldn't approve of me eating it just an hour and a half
before my start). That's one thing I forgot to include in my previous
post, NO COFFEE! We can't even get black tea at our meals so every
morning I'm a mess until I get to Dunkin Donuts.

Next gross part, sorry I gotta include this cause its so nasty: I had
my first experience with a public Chinese bathroom today before the
start. Yes, I had to poo otherwise I woulda just found a bush to pee
on. I disregarded the homeless man living in the bathroom closet and
ventured into a stall. Their public commodes are kinda like normal
toilet bowls but they're built in to the ground so you don't actually
sit on anything... you do the "third world squat" hovering just above
the whole. The aim was a little tricky for me at first as I've never
had to poo from the air onto a target. Here's the gross part: no
toilet paper. It's not just that they were out, I guess the people
that use these bathrooms just don't wipe. Or maybe they all know to
bring something disposable to wipe with. Either way, luckily I still
had my wallet in my jersey pocket and this had me searching
frantically through it for all the receipts I could find. The one
that worked the best was a bank deposit receipt cause it was on
courser paper than the normal slippery restaurant receipts. Yep,
pretty gross.

So I do the TT, whatever, I didn't puke, I felt ok, my head still hurt
a little, and think I may have even done an ok time. There's no
doping control today so I head back to the hotel by bike to get
showered and go to lunch. It's not until after lunch that the rest of
my teammates who had later start times informed me on all that
happened while I was gone. Apparently I managed to get 2nd place in
the TT by a mere 1 second! The funny, tho slightly embarrassing part
is that since all us riders were already gone by the time they
announced results, director Carter had to throw on a jersey, get up
there on the podium for me even attend a little press conference (as
brief as he made it) pretending to be me.

I really didn't expect such a result after the morning I'd had, but
I'll take it. Makes me look forward to what we can do in the next two
weeks.

First Impressions

After nearly 24 hrs of total travel time from hotel to hotel, I’m in
Xi’an, China for the first two stages of the Tour of China (we move on
to other cities for the following stages). This may have no real
organization but I’ve never been to anywhere in Asia so here are some
random observations I’ve gathered from my first couple days here:

Everyone I’ve come in contact with is EXTREMELY helpful, or at least
intends to be. The race organization has dozens of Chinese in their
late teens/early twenties working for them to help deal with all the
foreign teams. All the helpers speak English, and thank God they do
because not many other people do. As soon as we exited baggage claim
at the airport, Ty and I were met by a small group of giggling young
women waving “Tour of China” signs. Another young gentleman with them
showed us to a bus right away and had us to the hotel in no time
(actually I have no idea how long the bus ride took because I passed
out immediately and didn’t wake once). In addition, each team has an
assigned translator to tag along to races/other events (basically
whenever we leave the hotel). Our translator was sooo pumped to meet
us and to show us around the fancy hotel upon our arrival, and I
sincerely felt bad that I couldn’t share in her excitement… all I
could think was “Look lady, I’ve seen a hotel before, I’m effing
tired, gimme dat room key so I can go to sleep.” Nice lady tho, she
meant well.

The food. It’s Chinese, but it ain’t no Peking Restaurant on the
Athens East Side, that’s for sure. I’ve had a hard time eating any of
the meat dishes since I’ve been here. I showed up all open minded and
the first couple meals loaded my plate with a little of everything
from the buffet. After the second day I realized that no matter how
many times I tried it, most meat makes me nauseous. I’ve found that
nearly every dish has one of two characteristics that makes it
unappealing (or maybe both when the chefs get creative, yeck): either
it’s seafood and tastes strongly so, or its meat that seems to have
been prepared in a blender so that bone shards outnumber the amount of
edible meat in any given bite. My usual meal consists of white rice,
steamed veges, and hopefully one meat dish I can identify as edible
(it’s hit or miss with those). A couple times they’ve graced the
buffet with a Western item or two such as mashed potatoes or french
fries, but somehow they manage to taste slightly like fish as well.

In addition to tasting like fish, almost everything smells fishy and
my stomach no likey. Our hallway, musty fish. Chinese BO, sweaty
fish. The elevators, sweaty AND musty fish from the people that ride
in them. Some areas outside, dirty fish. Seriously, somehow stank
fish is the default smell here when anything is going to smell bad.
It makes me slightly nauseous just walking out into the hallway and
down the elevator to make the trip down to the restaurant every meal.
I keep checking myself and I’m afraid I’m starting to smell like it
too, possibly from the food we’re eating? Oh yeah, mix cig smoke in
there with stank fish. That’s the smell that’s everywhere.

Traffic is scary. I’ve seen 2 traffic accidents in the last 3 days
and I am outside a very limited amount each day. I’m sure there are
some traffic laws but as far as I can tell, WHO CARES!? It’s like one
huge game of chicken out there. Traffic lights are followed by about
50% or the drivers, the other half get to a red light, wait til the
edge of the intersection to slam on the breaks if they must but then
continue to creep on out no matter how many cars are coming the other
way. A lot of swerving and honking goes on, but eventually they just
get so in the way that a crossing car finally lets them through.
Though there are 6 lanes on a lot of these roads so sometimes cars get
stuck in the middle of the intersection and are forced to wait for it
to “clear” before they can proceed. Tonight as we were driven to the
team presentation we didn’t stop at a single red light and cut off a
cop from a few lanes over to swerve into a bike lane when traffic got
too bad. That brings up riding outside… There are huge bike lanes
(maybe too big because they are able to fit cars and busses as well)
divided from the road by a median. Sounds safe but with all the cars,
busses, mopeds, and rickshaws darting in and out of the lane, you
gotta cover your brakes with a hairpin trigger finger.

That’s all for now, I should probably stop complaining.

To China!

Flight to China this morning to start racing the Tour of China on Sept 9-21. I think it's like an 11hr flight to Shanghai, then another hour or two flight o Xi'an where we'll be for the first few days. I'm gettin ready for a loooong day of traveling. Hopefully they have free video games on the screen in the back of the headrests.

Cracked

I hated bikes yesterday. Actually I hated everything and anything.

Yesterday was the one-day Giro della Romagna and god I was tired. I knew I was gonna struggle from the start so I put everything I had into covering breaks, and it turned out to be a really aggressive day. We did over 50km in the first hour, with constant attacks going and coming back the whole time. Finally a big move went and it looked like everyone was satisfied. The bunch paused for a min to pee and as I got back moving after the brief break I noticed a rather loud creaking coming from the headset somewhere. Looking down, I spotted a huge crack that had formed in the stem right where it bolts onto the steerer tube. Not safe. I rode up to the car and showed Antonio, our mechanic, and he set me up with a bike change right away. Unfortunately some team in the group wasn't comfortable with the break and started chasing again, so it took Antonio leaning out the car with his hand on my back pushing me along at 50mph. I was just about drooling by the time I caught back on and no more than 15 min later all but 2 from the break were caught and the attacking commenced again. I dragged myself back up to the front to do my job. I thought there's no way I'm going to make it over the climbs today anyway so I might as well do as much as I can now. Needless to say, I was cooked when we reached the climbs 110km in. I made it over the first two smaller ones but pulled the plug as soon as we hit the slopes of the third and longest one. I gave Ty a sweet sling up into the group as my parachute opened.

Still 60km to go and I was in a group of 8 off the back with a couple more climbs to go. I grabbed three bottles from the car as they tried to speed by me. Those next two hours grew more and more miserable. We crawled along tediously slow. Even with 3 bottles I ran out of water. I ran out of food. On every little hill I seriously doubted my ability to make it over. My back was trashed from the first two hours of constant accelerations. Every part of my body was shot, it all hurt. And by the end my taint was bleeding from the different seat and position on that spare bike. Seriously, I have scabs down there today... I was torn up.

After 5hr 21min, I arrived at the bus (35min down on the winner). There was no food other than soda. We showered and got straight in the car to go to the airport hotel (3.5 hrs away) where we are now. We finally did stop at an AutoGrill when we were nearly here but I was far too cracked already. That meal barely put a dent in my hunger and I was mad at the world (obviously for no reason, but I was so hungry and tired that it didn't care about being rational).

I've raced around 550miles in the last 5 days. I'm better now. My outlook on life isn't nearly as dismal today as it was yesterday.

Da bus

Our bus makes travel so much more bearable. No more cramped, sweaty car rides with. A 3hr transfer in the bus is just like hanging out in a hotel room which we do all day everyday anyway, other than the fact that there's no wifi. There's drinks and food, plenty of room to lay down, stand up, walk around, or stretch. There's also a back section that's not in any of these photos with more long benches like this. Seriously, we have lots of room.

Here's Ty demonstrating standard bus ride form. And yes, that's a TV at the front of the bus (top of the pic) with satellite reception. Got to watch the Vuelta a couple days on our way back from races.

Caffe maker on board!! Thank god. When you don't feel like warming up before a 200km stage eeeven tho you're expected to go full gas from the gun to cover moves, espresso is the next best thing.

Good size fridge stocked with water and soda. This is the first place I head right after the races to take a couple Sprites to the dome!

This bathroom really sucks. I guess maybe it's better than no bathroom at all but its seriously too small. When I sit down to poo the door almost hits my knees, and it's even harder to pee. I think the ceiling was made to fit someone about 5'6" max because when I go in there to pee I find myself having to bend my knees, tilt my head sideways and back a little and thrust my hips forward all in an effort to get my wiener over the toilet bowl so I don't dribble on the floor. It's like I'm doing the limbo and after a few days of racing, achieving that position sets my quads on fire!

The one thing I don't have pictures of is the shower on board. Actually there's two showers, which is so convenient because all 6 or 7 of us can be done with a race and showered within 15 min. There's a little bit of a height issue there too, but not as bad as the bathroom. I only have to duck my head about an inch or two in the shower.

Look Rachel it's yooouuuuuu

Here's the one I miss the most. It's the only picture I have of Rachel on my camera. I think this face is "Uuuugh I can't believe how many f*#cking dishes I just cleaned"

Last stage but not done yet...

So as far as me actually being able to contribute to the team, today was by far my best race. We set out with the same basic strategy as usual, and the stage was almost identical to yesterday's: flat until a 6.5km climb that summits about 20km from the finish. The difference was that I actually followed orders exactly as they were laid out.

That espresso I had on the bus must have done its job because from the gun I got to the front and started following moves. Along with my other teammates, except Bazzana, no group got away unmarked and eventually Lazlo dragged a break clear. This may not sound like much but it's such a huge contrast to the other stages that it makes me feel good. Previous days I've struggled for the first 20km to find my way to the front only to see the day's break already riding off into the distance.

We didn't stop there. After a very brief lull in pace to let the break's gap swell, we got together and basically rode as a unit near the front all the way until the bottom of the climb. Yesterday the run in to the climb had me absolutely pinned before the road even started to turn up, but today was different. All of us were at the front, surrounding Baz, swapping turns in the wind right next to all the "good" teams to ensure that we went into the base of the climb top 10 with him as fresh as possible. We were all a bit fried and fell of the pace shortly thereafter, but he got over the top with the leaders and we had done our job and it felt good. Yeah I would have rather finished in the lead group and been there to help him at the finish but at least I had done something. Today I was no longer pack-fill.

Bazzana ended up with a less than ideal result in the end, but we raced like we were supposed to and did all we could.

Tomorrow (yes, another race already) we race the one-day Giro della Romagna. It's 200km and tackles some decent climbs about 2/3 of the way through. Gonna be a tough one considering that probably half the guys didn't just finish this stage race and will have fresh legs. Yuck.

photozzzzzzz

And I swear I will take some pictures of inside the team bus tomorrow. If I remember...

Questions from my fan base..

So each day my inbox gets FLOODED with hundreds of questions from my massive fan base, so I thought I'd force myself out of my Entourage-watching stupor and take a few minutes to answer some of them. And by fan base I mean my dad.

The routine of a normal race day: At dinner the night before the race, we are each given a daily schedule for the following day that is a print out with the following fields filled in with times at which each is to take place or whatever other info: wake-up, breakfast (time and either team or individual), bags out, depart for race, transfer by (bike or car), team meeting, race start, start location, race distance, est race finish, finish location, transfer to hotel by, hotel name, hotel location, dinner (time and either team or individual), other notes. This simple piece of photocopied paper puts everyone on the same page and keeps the staff from having to repeat the answers to the same questions all night.

Race strategy: Our strategy for the day is laid out by our director, Massimo Podenzana in the team meeting. Usually this happens the morning of the race as soon as we get on sight and before anyone leaves the RV. Podenzana speaks very little English and I speak even less Italian, so a couple times throughout each meeting he pauses to let teammate Alessandro Bazzana translate for the 3 of us that still think Italian sounds like enthusiastic Spanish (besides Ty Magner, the third is Aussie Ben King). For every race we've done so far we have essentially the same plan: "Everyone except (so-and-so) cover the early breaks if there are more than 3 guys in it." Who "so-and-so" is depends on the course and who's riding well. That person is sort of saved for the finish and doesn't have to expend the energy of covering the often fruitless attacks at the beginning of the race.

In Carnago, the one day race we did, that guy was Jure Kocjan. He was 4th there last year and he sprint real nice. He ended up 6th this time.

On stage one here in Settimana Lombarda we had no real go-to guy for the finish because the finish was at the top of a 12km climb, so the jist of what Podenzana said was "don't miss the early break." Here, big boy Lazlo Bodrogi took care of that (just as he had at Carnago). They got caught right before the last climb and Bazzana ended up 26th. He's reeeally skinny.

Stage two was really flat so sprinter Andrea Grendene was designated leader. I guess the legs weren't there so Bazzana went for it and got 9th. Yes, our best climber has also fared the best in every sprint.... whadda ya gonna do. Ty managed a 22nd on the day, so that was cool to see him work his way up there.

Stage three, today, was relatively flat until a 6km climb that summited 15 or 20km from the finish. I think naturally Bazzana was the guy to work for here. About 50 or 60 guys made it over that last climb in the lead and he pulled off an 8th place finish.

Ugh, enough for now. Gotta get up early, and an episode of Bones is calling my name before I go to sleep (just realized that moments ago I watched the latest episode of Entourage so now I have seen every episode in existence). Stay tuned for more! Maybe I'll actually tell how the races are going for me personally in the next entry!! How exciting!!!