Armstrongs Back

Like the guy loathe the guy...Lance Armstrong is back and its good for cycling. I was sceptical when he announced his comeback that it would fizzle out like many other great athletes before him. The way he preformed at the Tour Down Under was a sign that he isn't that far away from being in race winning form again. It would have been easy for him to cruise around in the bunch for a week using it as a training camp with a focus on keeping the sponsors/charities happy off the bike.

Every time the race got hard though he was always at the front of the race driving it which was pretty impressive to see. I don't know how that will translate to winning grand tours again but his power numbers are right up there apparently. I do think he will turn heads again at the Tour of California in Feb and then I'll be interested to see how he goes in the Giro.

Either way...its good for cycling. There were almost 800,000 people watching the TDU, double last year. We also got 30mins of highlights each night with the last stage live, the only other race we get live coverage for is the tour.

A quick bit of history about the Tour down Under. Adelaide used to have a round of the formula 1 which the last to Melbourne 12 years ago. They held a poll to see what the people wanted it replaces with and they voted for a cycling tour, which was pretty cool and its grown into a pretty cool event to have all the Pro Tour riders down this way....us kiwis should think of something cool to get them down here like some 1 day races or nice training camps down south...just a thought

So with Tour of Wellington starting today, it was a very quiet Wednesday morning ride....no smack talk, no hating....just silence. It gave me plenty of time to ponder why I wasn't at the Tour of Wellington, so here are my top 10 reasons for not going to well

10. Most days are raced above 30degrees
9. No convoy to utilise when trying to survive on climbs
7. Stupid long steep climbs done at way too high a pace
6. For a 5 day tour there are only 2 stages over 110km
5. technical crits, Mastertnon isn't that bad but the final crit is nuts
4. Have i mentioned the climbing yet
3. Having an 60minutes bus ride over the Rimutaka's...twice!
2. I have done 2 tours of Wellington and only raced in wellington for 3 stages

and the number one reason why I am not racing the tour of wellington

Lasts years stage to admirals hill has left me scarred. 187km in 35degree heat finishing up a 6km climb after the race got blown to bits inside an hour and spending the next god knows how many hours grovelling over climb after climb. Then breaking my forks when the bike fell off the roof on the way home. Then getting back to the motel and finding the guys the ripped the race to bits in the first hour had all climbed off in the second feed. and then....hopefully you feel the pain now as well, its taken me almost a year to write that.

Cracking on the bunchie

It seems like every time I do the Mechanics Bay bunchie these days I end up cracking on half a dozen people and wind my self up into a state of Hate. Yesterday there were 2 guys who's interpretation of cycling attire included sleeveless shirts...they must have been triathletes, but even still. That wasn't their only sin for the day, one of them processed to ride half way down Ti Rakau Dr 3 abreast just so he could catch up with a mate. Then the other one decides that while he was on the front to just roll through a red light at a busy intersection.

Then there were 2 guys in the bunch who had headphones in both ears all day, its a muppet of a thing to do on a bunchie let alone a training ride lonewolf. For one of their efforts, he almost got cleaned up by a truck cause he couldn't hear it.

I think there needs to be a name and shame policy going round where people call out those that put all of our riding safety at risk just because they can't engage their brains when the wake up in the morning...sleeveless tops might not be a safety issue but the other 2 items are.

The last thing I want is to be cleaned up out riding somewhere because a driver has been pissed off by someone else's stupidity.

anyway, thats my rant for the day....its usually a good sign when the Hate is building up as it often means there is some serious training going on

training camp summary

somehow my recent blog post got eaten so here's how my little camp ended up...

The intention was to ride 10 days straight but a mixture of work and fatigue meant I rode 8 out of 10 days for 1140kms averaging 142kms a day when i got out. There were also 5 torture loops chucked in there because I ran out of imagination and figured no ones probably been that silly to do that before. I was going to do dubs on the last Saturday and hit 250km for the day but really couldn't be bothered and common sense says we don't race that far.

a few stats...
KM's.......1140
Km's spent riding with others.....8kms
Morning rides......0
Coffee Stops......0
Police Chases......1
stops at Dairy's for coke and lollies to ensure I make it home.....1, okay maybe 3
abuse by homeless guys....twice, same dude but different days

So has it put me in some sort of shape for the season, time will tell but I was at least pleased with the motivation to get out there and ride. Because it was all done lone wolf there was plenty of time to asses goals and just think up random stuff.....some of which I'll share late. There will different be a story on the police chase and homeless guy but that's it for now.

torture loop number 1

Day 2 of the training camp meant that it was time to pick up the distances so it was off to the torture loop to get some good endurance riding in. Rightly or wrongly I left the house at 2.30pm which usually seems to be the hottest part of the day. All was going well til I got a call from home saying I needed to be home by 8pm so I could have dinner before catching a movie. I got the call in Kumeu which is about half way around the circuit and after a bit of mental arithmetic I figured I was going to be pushing shit uphill to get home in time.

I could either take the soft option and ride home straight up the highway to the bike path and be home by 6.30 or ride fast along along the remainder of the circuit....anyway long story short and got home and 7.50 and was a mess, I went pretty deep.

the movie was Yes Man and was well worth it if your looking for something to see these holidays (perhaps if this job doesn't work out I could be a film reviewer!)

KM's today 150km
KM so far 260km

1 down 9 to go

The day stayed mint and headed out the door for 4 hours of cruising, headed out through Ranui to Taupaki then up to Bethels via the quarry climb up to scenic drive then home. I was planing on chucking a few extra climbs in but thought better of it as it was pretty warm and the 2 bottles of water were starting to run dry.

nothing very eventful happened really as all the cars still seem to be on holiday which is a nice change from what we are used to.

KM's to day 110km
KM's so far 110km

Training Camp

After many hour relaxing in the sun this last week, I thought why not go euro and do a January training camp....It seems like a good idea. The fact that some of our biggest races of the year are in Jan shouldn't stop things...so here goes.

Duration: 10 days
Place: Mainly the waitaks
Purpose: Get some condition

Its probably going to be a very lonely training camp as it will just be me hitting the roads lonewolf as everyone else seems to be away racing, which is what I probably should be doing hey ho!

So I am out the door shortly for a loosener to get the pins used to riding again after taking the last week off.