It’s raining outside. We were supposed to set off at nine this morning in order to beat the rain. But unfortunately it has beaten us.

We’re currently in La Molina, a little ski resort in the Pyrénées about 120 km from Girona. We rode up here on Saturday after spending a couple of days at home. Before that we had been in St. Moritz where we had travelled to directly after the Giro. When I say we, I mean the hardcore four: Christian, Dan, Ryder and myself. This has been part of JV’s grand plan for us since the beginning of the year. Complete the Giro, aka ‘Hardest Race In The World,’ and spend as much time between the Giro and Tour at altitude.

Phase one of this was St.Moritz. Willy our chef works in a restaurant on the slopes up there during the winter and so is well connected. He had a lovely hotel opened a few days early for us on the top of a mountain. So along with our better halves we passed ten days of post Giro recuperation. It was wonderful. The weather wasn’t exactly on our side, but we weren’t doing that much so it wasn’t a big deal. It’s an odd place St.Moritz. Certainly beautiful, but definitely bizarre. You’ve gotta love the fact it was the birth place of the “Skeleton,” a 60 second head-first plunge down an ice slide on a sledge. Dress code: tweed jacket, plus fours. Created by the British obviously…

So now we’re in La Molina. Currently the Three Musketeers (above) and Dr. Lim are in our apartment discussing the merits of the US Track Team’s selection process. A strange and somewhat random event that has taken place these last two days in LA. The original reason for this gathering together was to decide our plan for the day as it’s still raining outside. As we’re on the top of a mountain and we’re planning on dropping down and riding back up four times, we could do with slightly better weather. We have accepted a rain delay and are going to leave at 2 pm, unless it’s still raining. Then we’re calling a rest day and replacing tomorrow’s rest day with today’s training. That decision is a few hours away though. Now Christian is telling stories of the Vandedrome in Chicago…

So yeah, this is Team Slipstream hard at work in the mountains. Much sitting around so luckily we get along well. We’ve been living in each others pockets now since the first week of May. Mission Tour de France is in full flight…

Now that I’m back in the spirit of writing, I will keep everybody a little more updated as to what we’re up to. Sorry for the absence. Now that the mental and physical damage from the Giro is repaired, I will be more communicative.

Our Sicilian adventure seems but a distant and insignificant memory now. Maybe I’ll write more about it on our rest day. But for the moment, I think I should tackle the broken chain debacle.
So to stage five.
The night before Magnus and I had been joking to everybody that we were going to attack the […]

I’m 31 and been a pro since I was 19. In those years I’ve done a few Tours of France and Spain, but I’ve never managed to make it to the Giro d’Italia, and funnily enough I’d never really considered it. So when Jonathan struck up a relationship with Big Kahuna Giro boss Angelo […]

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 […]

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 […]