This race was kickass!

Rolling, steep terrain.
Rain the day before
Sunny the day of
Some hard, packed gravel/dirt
Some boggish, sloggish, muckish, “OH MY GOD, IT’s MUD, AND GUYS FREAKING OUT”
Motorcycles stopped in their tracks
Motorcycles toppled over
Motorcycles hitting cyclists
Cyclists hitting motorcycles (Amost me, as I had one foot out, unable to steer through thick mud, slammed the rear brake, flung sideways, and missed the moto by litterally a pedal.)

So, if anyone checked, I didn’t finish Eroica. Sh*t happens and that’s the way it is. At this point i’ve averaged 285 watts for almost 3 hours. Feeling pretty good, and Lampre hasn’t hit the gas yet, they were just riding tempo to keep the break within reach. For each dirt section I would move up, and lead in to with the big whigs. For this particular section I had been near the back checking on Maggy, and chatting with some other fellas. I noticed that my front end getting soft, and knew I had a flat. I also knew that this was a very bad place to get a flat. Our team car had gone to the break, so I will have use neutral. I’m also on one of the dirt sections that’s longer, and beginning to have some steep, medium length rollers. The road is only so wide, about wide enough to fit a car. There is space on either side to squeeze by, but it’s very soft mud or loose gravel, and we all know what that is like at high speeds.

Well, Maggy gives me his front wheel. He’s playing it safe today anyways, and can wait for neutral. I change the wheel as fast as possible, but am already in the cars. I begin chasing, but the cars are going much slower than the riders, and then you have the elastic effect, which means the cars speed up when they have a moment to do so, catching back up to the field quickly. This is really bad for a rider in the cars because you can’t get any draft. I’m holding the field at 25 seconds, and I can see them ahead of me. I’m taking risks, and dodging crashes here and there using my Jedi skills, but to no avail. Going through the feed, I grabbed my feed bag anticipating that I could use the miles to prep for the longer races to come. Quickly after, I realized that I was still 80km from the finish, and we were leaving directly after the race to drive to the airport, so I had to abandon.

Something has changed in the Euro field, In a good way. I think riders are beginning to realize that our team is actually a team, and that we are all “okay” enough to be up there, because they don’t yell and give me crap like it used to be if I or any other Slipstream rider got up in front and possibly in the way. Between me, O’grady, Cancellara, Bettini, Balan and a few others we would start the lead it almost 5 km out, and hit the dirt in the same positions. Safe, riding tempo, see where were going etc. In the past, I would have been throwing elbows, going through the various languages I’ve tried picking up to say “F U”.

Anywho, back to Girona.