The first race of the 2012 season is finally here, the Tour Down Under. Team Garmin-Barracuda’s always smiling Chiro Matt Rabin sent us this preview of what has happened so far, what’s to come, as well as what his role will be this first week.
Birthday boy Andreas Klier and Heinrich Haussler show off their new threads
The new cycling season is on the doorstep. We are here in Adelaide the Tour Down Under which begins later today with a criterium through town. While this has no effect on the General Classification outcome of the race, it’s the first opportunity for the teams to race together against each other and test lead-out trains at a WorldTour standard.
Our riders arrived in Adelaide a week ago or so and have bad a steady block of good training since then.
This is the first opportunity I’ve had to get my hands on our riders since we gathered for our training camp in Boulder in November. Each season see’s some riders come, and some go, so the November training camp is always the first real opportunity to meet the new riders, get their histories from an injury perspective and start to optimise their function biomechanically.
Typically as a chiro this involves a lot of hands on stuff, while giving riders pointers and direction on things to work on over the winter if it’s necessary. My view is that it doesn’t take a long time necessarily to see change when you are on the right track but finding that track for the individual is the key to getting the most improvement.
I saw on a poster out here, “Don’t dream of winning, train for it”. This made me think of exercises our riders do before they go out to train. On dropping into their rooms you will often see them going through a warm up routine involving core stability, coordination work, and dynamic stretches.
In other sports such as football or rugby these warm-ups are obvious as they’re typically done on the pitch in full view of the crowd, here they are done in hotel room floors with the beds pushed back! I guess this is just one of the small things that being a Professional is all about.
Also, the general consensus amongst those of us that have been with the team a few years is that this is one of the best looking kits we’ve had, and the boys are keen to show it off.
So with our team here in Australia kicking-off the new season in a modest but sunny 25 degrees, with its great blend of youth and experience, a dapper new kit, everyone being acclimatized and with jet-lag gone here’s to starting as we mean to go on, and wishing the boys all the best for this afternoon.
