Today was odd. So much of it was right. I was having fun this morning and found myself off the front for no reason other than I was having fun getting mixed up in the action with Maggy and Danny. It was all happening on its own. I didn’t need to try very hard.

Before I knew it, I was in a race winning break, and I rapidly switched into race winning mode. I started to get ultra switched-on and even a little short-tempered, a sure sign I’m in the zone.

It was hard.
I was feeling totally in control, but it was hard. I averaged 154 heart rate for 5 hrs. I have a max of 190 when fresh. So I was hurting myself, and yet I never doubted myself. I decided to win the sprint. So all I had to do was not hesitate a second when the other four started attacking me in the final. Because that was what they had to do. They all knew I would beat them in a sprint, so that would be their tactic.

I did this until my chain broke. I was so raging and so focused that all the energy I had for winning the race was taken out on my bike. I’m not that person, I don’t see red. But I think it’s quite funny I did that. I’ve yet to see the footage…

Anyway, probably the nicest thing is seeing how affected by it Whitey is. He’s never affected. Makes me remember how much he cares. The same goes for the whole team here. They’ve been lovely.

I love Grand Tours. I’ve got 15 more stages to rectify today. Brilliant.

Somebody has lied to me. This race is madness! Not the chilled out pasta party I was told it was.
The day we are having today is unbelievable. It has been chaos! They had to delay the start because we got caught up in mad Sicilian traffic. Then my wheels were not right, so I changed […]

My English teacher forbade us from using the word ‘nice.’ He said it was a poor adjective. But tonight everything is nice.
We as a team have worked incredibly hard to achieve what we did today, and what’s important to me is that we had fun doing it, fun chasing excellence. For me, this […]

It’s been almost a month since I last wrote anything down. The main reason I haven’t written is because I was sick and feeling sorry for myself, which is not conducive to a public domain diary in my opinion.
The time passes by so incredibly quickly. I was discussing last night how the Tour […]

Milano-San Remo, this was the race that woke me up to the fact there was more to bike racing than the Tour de France. Living in Hong Kong and not having any family who were into cycling meant that I learnt about the sport through magazines and books and old tapes of races. Milan-San Remo […]

Surviving & Leaving Paris-Nice
March 16, 2008:
Paris-Nice has proven to be the polar opposite to our Tour of California experiences. We have been cursed with bad weather and countless crashes, and some of us have been hit with differing degrees of sickness. It’s quite amazing how quickly fortunes change in sport.
We had Tyler on his […]

Getting to know the ‘géant de Provence’
March 8, 2008:
We’ve all made it to Paris-Nice healthy, fit and ready to race. Nigh a miracle considering the time of year and the rough weather and illness that was going around California. Not to mention the usual shenanigans between ASO and UCI. I don’t even see there […]

Racing to the Sun
March 1, 2008:
I’ve once again chosen a random place to write stuff down. I’m now sitting on the Catalunya Express on my way to Barcelona for a bit of quality time with my girlfriend Nicole. I’ve been fairly Slipstream orientated for months now, so getting out of Girona for a night seemed […]