Be either really excited or completely confused, faithful readers, because this is one of those once annual iamtedking race reports.

Easter Sunday 2012 marked my second Paris-Roubaix. The first time around one year prior I was coming back from a mind-bending few weeks of knee tendonitis. Steeped in heavy frustration, Roubaix was my fifth race in 2011 after a month off the bike followed by a few weeks of very easy spinning. Take it from me that there’s nothing quite like jumping into the biggest Classics of the year, where everyone around you is chomping at the bit like a pack of two-hundred rabid wolves, and you’re the sheepish rookie popping up in the middle, unbeknownst just how gnarly these races are. Ready… aaaaand go!

So fast forward to yesterday – every chocolatier’s favorite spring holiday – and I’m in an entire different league. The fitness is there, the focus is there, and my hands are getting that calloused, “Belgian chap” from riding three weeks of cobbles. That said, I’m still hesitant to call my spring campaign experienced having now completed just one full spring of northern cobbled Classics, but the learning curve is steep, and slowly but surely it’s coming.

Also worth noting, we don’t do what many other teams do: recon. We don’t stay the weeks between races and scope the courses. We don’t blast through pave to test different tire pressures, which lines to try, where to tape your fingers to prevent the blisters. It’s six in one and a half-dozen in the other, because while half the peloton is stuck in the same dank hotel in overcast Belgium, I’m home reaping sun and glassy smooth pavement while at home in Tuscany. But remember that aforementioned learned curve? Turns out you gotta study in order to ace the test. Sooo maybe it’s more like eight in one and half-dozen in the other.

First section of pave? Flat tire. Crud. We’re now 100km and a hair over two hours into Paris-Roubaix. Heads up fellas, the boys are now coming out to play. Riding cobbles with a front flat is a similar sensation to hydroplaning your car over those WAKE UP rumble-strips on the side of a highway. With your eyes closed. While getting punched in the junk.

Anyway, fresh new wheel installed, I speedily jumped back in the caravan around car number 25 out of 25 and proceeded the slow and steady chase. While catching up to the peloton is obviously a priority, blowing my wad sits low on my to-do list at this point in the day. 160km to go, which of course is a proper race unto itself, my stunning experienced showed in this slow and steady return to the pack of wolves.

Zoom zoom zoom, I make my welcome return to the peloton complete with fanfare, cars celebrating by bottoming out aggressively, and having ingested ample dust kicked up from the cars to kill a lesser man. Around this time, one of the most memorable and horrific anecdotes of the race occurred. Out of the corner of my eye on a cobbled descent (yeaaup, there’s ample up and down in P-Rx), I caught sight of a rider hit a bump awkwardly, have his rear wheel pop up as he slowly rotated forward while his front wheel still rotated normally along the pavement – his bike is just at a 45 degree angle with rear wheel half-way to vertical. Maybe two seconds after lift off and with very few options left, he hit the eject button causing him to Superman off his bike from a full six feet in the air… at 40kph… onto cobbles. That’ll scare you straight: Focus Ted, focus, focus, focus, dammit!

More crashes ensued. Heck, this is Paris-Roubaix after all. Wind, gutters, cobbles, flats, mechanicals, and at this point we’re no longer 195 dudes who started back in Compiegne, we’re maybe 80 guys chugging along in the front group. Remember when I talked about recon? Meticulously learning the ins and outs of the race? Something to the effect of, “When you enter the town of So-and-So, you will go through one roundabout and then about 250 meters later you will see two white houses with brown trim on the right. Be absolutely sure to be in the top twenty spots in the peloton there or your Arenberg will be hell.”…? Yeah, it’s around this point that those lessons turn out to be crucial.

As a related aside, this reminds me of something our very seasoned Italian bus driver said to me when he picked me up at the airport for Paris-Roubaix less than 48 hours before the start of the race. To win in the north, you must live in the north. Sage words Luigino. You all can all stew on that for a while.

Anyway, when you’ve never even heard of the town of So-and-So, let alone know that there’s a roundabout, least of all have any idea where these white houses with brown trim are, you’re at the mercy of whoever is driving the peloton at this ferocious pace. Politely asking for them to slow down a touch so that you can prepare yourself for Arenberg just doesn’t work. ‘scuse me fellas, but I’ve never actually ridden Arenberg before. Never even seen it either, in fact.  Mind if we stop at this bar ahead, I’ll pay for a round of coffee, and then slowly group ride it all together?

Apparently they didn’t hear me.

So zooming through So-and-So, zipping through the roundabout, I was soon presented with a dilemma: go left and crash, go right and crash, or proceed straight and do not crash but stop entirely. To the delight of both my skin and bones, but to the chagrin of my speed and momentum I opted for straight. Thankfully a mighty sprint caught me back up to the peloton just as I caught sight of a whole bunch of trees, an enormous throng of people, and a banner that read, “Sector 16 – Arenberg”. Cripes, if only I’d known.

The anxiety is palpable as we hit Arenberg forest. It’s what I call the square peg, round hole syndrome. Even with what’s left of the decimated peloton, everyone wants to be at the front of the race. Simple physics on small, French farm roads prevent this from being a possibility. But darn it, you may as well try.

My aforementioned stop-start at this very inopportune time resulted in a crazy first ever trip through Arenberg. The crowds are deafening, the pace is maddening, and the cobbles are about fifty times more absurd than you could ever imagine. In retrospect, the word that strikes me as most fitting is unnatural. These roads are made for four wheel drive farming equipment – not for bicycles. Again, square peg, round hole.

Exiting Arenberg, the racers riding in ones and twos around me naturally melded together to form a groupetto. Still amid a caravan of cars and with the peloton still in sight, we optimistically chased. And chased. And chased. And twenty kilometers later, with now only a helicopter hovering in the distance and dust swirling somewhere up the road to show where the peloton was consistently riding away from us, we settled into the silent rhythm of a groupetto just riding to the finish. Our jobs complete at this point of the day. Protect a rider, offer assistance with mechanicals, maybe have ridden and been shelled from the breakaway. From here, just finishing the race and a shower is our day’s main goal.

The remaining pave sections ticked down into the single digits. The crowds still cheered with (nearly) the enthusiasm as the lead group. Bells ringing, shouts and whistling with the vigor of… err of proper, well-lubricated European cycling fans.

Then among one of the few pave sections left to pass, a cobble deflated both my tire and me. Psssshhhhht. I rode the rim for a while as I waved goodbye to my groupetto. Hoping a support car or team vehicle would come along and offer their services, it was not to be. A few kilometers later and still no support in sight, the only car that came along was a family of three generations of Belgian fans who were here for the race. Fine tuning the radio to catch news of their native hero Boonen riding to victory, grandpop, father, and son meticulously studied maps and GPS to get us precisely to the velodrome. Warmed up by a thermos of coffee brewed that morning but still piping hot, they were just the friends I needed to sooth the soul. And give me a lift home.

Paris-Roubaix. Simply awesome. Enough said.

This tech-savvy day in age, that’s the ambiguous and frequent expression when more than one person is on a wireless network. Turns out that 97.3% of cyclists have no idea what that means on a technological level. Superficially though, it turns out to be quite true – when you take a team of six riders at a South American race hotel with already poor internet, and then supplement the hotel’s capacity with another dozen cycling teams, plus cycling press, and their corresponding need for internet, the result is flickering hopes and shimmering seconds of working wifi followed by mind-numbingly futile hours of hitting Connect. Again and again and again all for not. That goes to explain why I became internet-quiet as soon as the race started.

Now that I’m back in the arctic tundra that is Europe, let’s quickly rehash some things and then move on to the present. Aaaand GO!

The team presentation for the Tour of San Luis was the most entertaining such event we’ve ever experienced. You see, a typical presentation in Europe lasts 30 seconds in the time leading up to a race, right on stage where we sign-on; line up as a team, shoulder to shoulder, they announce your name, you wave, smile (or frown and look badass) at the camera, step off, done. Meanwhile in America, it’s generally the night before a race in a ballroom with the race/town/state/city’s VIPs wearing their Sunday finest.

Definitely a different scene here: in stifling heat in the center of main street in downtown San Luis, we arrived at the tender hour of 8pm where it was still light out, and proceeded to wait protected by metal barricades from the ebullient and growing crowd.

Team after team are being called while we wait. We learn later that each team is standing under deafening speakers and in front of a roaring crowd, so we’re actually winning this situation since we can sit in relative quiet peace. After a good long while, we’re called up, and in this photo are waiting behind an enormous TV monitor:

And to the booming delight of the crowd, dodging a canon shooting glittery paper, a smoke and light show, cheerleaders, we walked on stage. Smile, wave, move right… and join the other 150 cyclists standing on another stage.

The point being, these San Luis’ians know how to have a good time. The entire town, and I do mean the entire town, came out to this rock star team presentation. It set the tone for what was going to be a unique week of bike racing.

And since I don’t write race reports more than once ever seven years, let’s say simply the following, in no particular order:

-We interrupted the Saxo-QuickStep show by taking an impressive victory with Elia Viviani. Yup, I called it that morning.
-The weather all week leading to the race and the entire race itself was roughly 38-45 degrees Celsius (100-113F). Except the first day which featured hail, sleet, wind, and three turn over the course of 170km. That day was bitter in every sense of the word.
-The TT featured a variety of set-ups. I had a skinsuit and shoe covers, which shaved 0.8 seconds off my time. I’d guess 1/2 the field had TT bikes. I just used it as a sweet fitness test and sat at a million watts for a bit shy of a half-hour.

-Courtesy: Bettini Photo

-And you can see the entire race on yonder Strava website. (Hark friends! Use the code tedking2012 and knock $10 your annual paid membership. And as always, you can still use the basic account for free.)

And then it was time to make a sufficiently long trip to Europe. I started to take photos of all the modes of transportation I used to get from our hotel in San Luis, Argentina to my apartment in Lucca, Italy but after the first three successful photos, I found myself sprinting between terminals and airports and vehicles so it became impractical to snap a photo in lieu of missing my connection. So for a quick summary: San Luis hotel, 20 minute bus to San Luis airport, 3 hour delay, 1 hour flight to Buenos Aires, 3 hours checking in/security/passport control, 13 hour flight to Rome, 2.33 minutes in Italian security and passport control,… ooooh, mind you it’s now day two of my travel which means it’s my birthday, everyone’s favorite day January 31. So with 32,000 of my best friends in the Rome airport, I bought a celebratory glass of Brunello and a mixed app’ plate. T’was excellent and since I like to photograph food, it looked like this.

And for the record, that short red cylinder on the left is beef tartar and the one on the right that looks like a red, disembodied finger is a stuffed red pepper.

Continuing on, I passed through Roman customs in a matter of seconds – opposed to America’s 2-3 hour wait to protect our borders – and then took another hour long flight to Lucca where I had our friendly soigneur Michelli pick me up and drive me the half hour to Lucca. I noticed upon landing that the ground was damp and the arrival staff was wearing lots of clothing. Clearly this was a far cry from the stifling heat of Argentina. Moreover, on the drive to Lucca it started misting, then sleeting, then a full fledged blizzard. (Sigh.)

With internet coverage deader than a doornail in hotel-Argentina, I didn’t know what sort of weather to which I’d be arriving on The Continent. Wet precipitation isn’t fun, cold isn’t so bad, but the combination is heinous. As Michelli said as he graciously chauffeured me from the airport, “Merry Christmas! Welcome to white Italy.” How thoughtful.

The biggest shock to the system hasn’t been the culture shock nor time zone shock. It’s the 47 degrees Celsius at the start of day seven San Luis (116F) as compared to -1C here (30F)

BrrrrRRRrrrRRrrrrr

Thankfully I’m here to help out those of you trying to stay warm this winter and have created this gem. (Yes, sold out, but check back in daily as inventory is about to be back up to stock.)

An Italian winter wonderland, complete with blanketed vineyards, craggy snowed-in mountain roads, and all of town/school/banks shut down.

And if you’re still after more Argentinian stories, give this a minute of your time. Time to bundle up and go for a bike ride.

If you’re curious what Liquigas-Cannondale has in store for the weeks ahead, give this a quick read Team Liquigas Cannondale

Coppi e Bartali was a mixed bag. The TTT was a particular lowlight when we went from a very Ricky Bobby’esque “if you ain’t first, you’re last” best time to worst time with a team crash just 1km from the finish. With much skin from five of our collectives butts (not mine, thanks for asking) missing, that sucked.

But on a lighter note, the knee was up to the task including yesterday’s pancake flat and righteously fast 195km stage, which was then trumped in the effort department by today’s mere 155km stage. In true Italian fashion the race bible’s elevation profile came nowhere near to telling the true story. Here’s a telling anecdote: we had a relatively lengthy 11km climb averaging 6%, bottom to top. But what’s at the top? A sprint line. No, not a king of the mountain line, but a SPRINT. I love Italy and it’s infinite confusion. Italy makes me happy. Another testament to yesterday’s being tough were the eighteen dudes over the time limit. Or the half dozen others who didn’t finish. Ouch.

Anyway nearly 3,000m of climbing and nearly an average wattage 100w more than yesterday zapped through a lot of kilojoules. Like 4,200 of ‘em.

But enough numbers yackidy yack; I’m headed home, will water the tomatoes, have a tasty dinner with some friends, unpack, repack, sleep, ride, and go to Belgium… all in the next 20 hours.

(Meanwhile I’m updating this post about 17 hours after initially writing it; I’m therefore t-minus 3 hours until airborne. I’ve dined with Tejay, watered the tomatoes – and caffeinated them since it’s been recommended that I fertilize them with coffee grounds – just went on THIS ride…

…and now need to continue packing. GO!)

Yeaa bikes.

A friend just asked if I’m getting sick of the bubbly with all of Peter Sagan’s recent bounty of wins. I assume it was a tongue in cheek question, but the answer is no, as you could probably guess, since winning is awesome and so is celebratory race winning refreshments in the form of Proseco.

Here’s an artful shot of Peter about to pop the top on last night’s bottle. Art because of the low angulation and the champ’er glasses in the foreground. Yup, art.

In other news, I am finding my nose in the wind more this week than perhaps, oooh let’s say my entire stay at any previous team(s). Chopping off at the front of the peloton, controlling the pace of the race is actually rather therapeutic. More importantly, with the leader’s jersey within the team, it’s an honor and privilege to take the reigns at the front. It’s ready, set, go then put out a lot of watts for a long time and then time flies by and boom you’re done! Sure, there’s lots more to it than that, but since this is another phone scribed blog entry, I hope this description will quench your early season yearning for behind the scenes racing.

Speaking of behind the scenes, our first hotel was downright palatial by European standards. Plus the TV was not one of those goofy toaster sized boxes the are a dime-a-dozen. Or maybe a buck for a dozen. Anyway, more than just the TV, we also had some pretty swank cable setup so in mid-February I watched Superbowl highlights for the first time. Well done NFL Network coming to Europe!

This cryptic shot is actually me giving the camera a thumbs up. In my excitement of watching the game, I didn’t actually get much fist in the frame to accentuate the thumb.

And with that said, my thumbs and legs are tired so I’ll switch off the blogging and switch on the getting on the table for a massage. G’night moon.

Yesterday’s stage 2 of Volta Algarve sinuously wound up over hill and dale in southern Portugal. “Hill and dale” is something of an understatement because it felt much more like mountains than hills, and who the heck knows what a “dale” is? (I’m sure some of you do; I don’t.) Vertically, we covered just shy of 3,500m… or more precisely, “that’s a friggin’ lot.”

I thought we had 4 or 5km of neutral to start the stage so that I would have reset the computer immediately at the drop of the green flag. That would eliminate some of the trivial buzzing around the bus, sign-in, and exchanging soggy salutations with some of my colleagues before the start. But upon rolling out of the parking lot I soon noticed we were pushing 50+kph. “This is not neutral pace, guys” crossed my mind, intermingled with some other more colorful language.

Aaaanyway, that’s a long winded way of saying the distance and time are within about 3-4km and 5-10minutes of being race accurate. In any event my very awesome CycleOps Joule cycling computer conveniently summarizes the following:
Time – 6:11:12
KM – 214.67
KJ – 5736
Ave watts – 257
Temp – 9c
Norm power – 332 (that’s like racing a 6 hour crit)
Vert. meters gained – 3498

I finished front group which was satisfying after such a slog fest. But immediately after crossing the finish line, my only thoughts were of a warm shower, hot tea, and perhaps a nap.

That’s about as close to a race report you’ll get from THIS guy, so embrace it.

PEACE.

Oh how convenient! We’re just now pulling into stage 3 pre-race parking. Sun’s out with gray clouds in the distance. Come on sun! I’m rooting for you!

The proceeding was typed entirely by thumbs on my Blackberry. Word.

Alex Trebec: Correct!

Greetings readers! Today’s blog-entry is a two part masterpiece. The first is a race report, which is something I typically do not write, while the second is a QUIZ! There’s no grading on the second part, but perhaps there is a fun prize for the winner. Put on your party hats and let’s go!

I dislike the verb “to blog,” I don’t enjoy saying, “I am blogging,” and find “to blog-entry” to be grammatically incorrect, yet the closest meaning to what I’m trying to say. So trust me that the following does in fact make sense:

I typically do not enjoy blog-entrying in the form of a race report, but doing races like those of the Ardennes week is classified as worthy by me. Here’s my brief race report.

But first allow me to backtrack; I was originally sent on a road trip April 12 – Easter Sunday. I was scheduled for two one-day races, Ronde van Drenthe in Holland and GP Scheldeprijs in Belgium, then return to home-base on April 15th. Two and a half weeks later I find myself on the same road trip, having taken part in five races, and today I’ll begin the six-day Tour of Romandie in Switzerland. Good thing I packed excessively on my original three-day road trip, eh?

Even though in eight days time we had just three races, the Ardennes week feels like a stage race. It was a whirlwind week with three monumental classics back to back to back – Amstel, Fleche, Liege. The whole week was a learning experience since it was the first time participating in each these for yours truly. The Mur de Huy and la Redoute, for example, are some crazy love child of awesomeness and insanity. I finished the first two races, but somewhat hesitantly pulled the plug before the finish of at Liege. I was covering the early moves in Liege – which took nearly two full hours of incessant attacks to establish(!) – so I burned a lot of matches in those 100km. Then by the time 200km ticked by, I was in an isolated group not contesting the finish. Plus with Romandie beginning not even two days later, I found the motivation to slog through out the final 60km tough to summon. Conserving my energy, I finished my classics campaign in the second feedzone of Liege.

Consider yourself learned.

Part deux: Super fun QUIZ time!

I Googled myself the other day, because like all cyclists I’m vain, and just like people in general I’m curious to know what the world thinks about me. I found a Flemmish cycling forum speaking about the Cervelo TestTeam and then a particular blurb about yours truly. Google-Translator did the dirty work for me and I discovered that the Flemmish people have noticed that I like to blog-entry about food. Food is yummy and an integral part of my life, so while this certainly isn’t newsworthy to me, I thought I would go through my entire library of photos (because using iPhoto is fun on a Mac) and create an album dedicated to all the pictures I have taken of food, beverage, or other comestibles. The QUIZ will determine just how loyal my loyal readers are. Whoever can identify the most pictures will win a very awesome, rare, and spectacular prize which is yet to be announced. Ready… set… go…

1.

2.

3. 

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Hints:

Five pictures are celebrations in some form or another (birthdays, holidays, etc.)

Four are somehow cycling related (taken during camps, races, etc.)

My roommate Rich and I woke up at 5am to eat an early breakfast for the 112 miles scheduled for the morning. I flung open the shades and…

Are you serious?! As a life long New Englander, I just figure that everything south of about Pennsylvania is hot this time of year. Apparently that’s a farce. We knew that with NBC televising their first race in a decade, it would take much more than a simple blizzard to cancel the race. We arrived at the start an hour before it was set to go off. Upon arriving, we were told that the NBC helocopters weren’t yet in the air, so the race would be delayed. Oh yeah, that’s really wise. Even if the helocopters were in the air, there is no visibility anyway! Smart. Ultimately, the race did get underway 90 minutes after it was originally scheduled to.

The race was a doozy. Everyone and their mom thought it would be smart to be in the breakaway – maybe it would be warmer up there, or perhaps safer. There were so many attacks, that none actually ever succeeded to get more than about 30 seconds. Alas, as one would expect, the real race started 70 miles later when we hit the Richmond finishing circuits. The weather at this point has cleared up quite a bit, although it’s still frigid with temps in the 40s. The circuits were very cool, very difficult, and very laden with crappy roads. Flat tires were the name of the game, with Scott, Ben, and I (x2) suffering flats. Emile, Garrett, and Scott were our only finishers after the 112 miles of racing, so big props to them.

Garrett and I then packed up the Vibe to head to Lookout Mountain, GA while Omer, Ben-O, and Rich packed up the van and trailer for their drive to Sheedy’s house. We were literally seconds away from getting in the car to drive, when Rich noted that the Vibe had a rear flat tire. The Richmond roads strike again!

We then unpacked the Vibe, Rich took the donut tire out of the Vibe, and proceded to chase it around the parking lot.

So how many Priority Health riders does it take to change a flat?It takes 4 riders and 1 mechanic. The 4 riders mostly just stand around and make editorial comments while the mechanic makes the change. Actually, truth be told all 5 of us couldn’t get the wheel off the car; I had to call our friends at Triple-A for a wheel change. He wailed on the wheel for a while with his enormous rubber mallet before the rusty corrosiveness gave way and the wheel was removed.

Being Easter Sunday, not a single car-fix-it-joint was open. Alas, with our Triple-A man’s recommendation of not exceeding 50mph nor going more than 100 miles at a time, Garrett and I hit the road. Bear in mine, at this point we have over 600 miles of driving to complete in the next 9 hours. Do the math friends, at 50mph that would be 12 hours of driving. Thankfully, our $8 spare tire worked great and we made it to Tab and Mary Margaret’s house in Lookout Mountain, GA… with speeds exceeding 50mph. We have arguably the best view of Chattanooga, TN, amazing roads, great training partners (Eddy Hilger, our teammate from last year who lives 2 miles away), and perfect hospitality. I must say, waking up to the sweet smells of freshly brewed coffee and baked good – banana bread (twice) and amazingly delicious pear muffins – is pretty awesome.

So a belated Happy Easter everyone.