Mike Friedman

Paris Roubaix Recap

// April 14th, 2008 // Sup

First off, Martijn Maaskant is a badass for finishing 4th at his first ever Paris Roubaix. He’s certainly the next big thing.

The day started off like any other race, except that I was more nervous than usual. 1, it’s Paris Roubaix, the high point of the season for me. 2, I and two other boys (Will and CJ) were supposed to try for the early move. If we can get in the early break, and get up the road then we’re out of trouble for positioning purposes, and quite possibly in a better tactical position to help our “Ace Cards” Maggy, and Martijn when the split from the field happens to catch the break.

In the first hour and a half we covered nearly 90 km. The average speed for the first hour was 51.7 kph and the avg power on the PowerTap was pushing 390 watts pedaling power. That is a super high avg. for a race in a tailwind, on flat to semi-rolling road while attemping to get in the early move. Tells ya just how fast and hard it was going, or how big of a unit I am .

Coming into the first cobbled section it was stressed during the team meeting that we needed to be at the front with Maggy. Depending on weather conditions, it was either going to be sopping wet, dry, or a mix. Nonetheless we put three guys on the front with Maggy behind us. Interestingly, the group didn’t haul ass into the first section. The riders on the front were going slow and wide. In other words, Tyler, CJ, and myself who were on the front, weren’t doing a leadout, we were actually shoulder to shoulder with the other teams that were present, going about 30 kph, and using the whole road. We didn’t want anybody from the back passing, and causing mayhem. About 1km from the section it let loose and some of us got swarmed but not before Tyler and Maggy hit the section first. Basically in the top ten for the first 5 sections it was Slipstream providing for a pretty insane feeling.

Unfortunately for me, after the second section, I went to move up the left, and had to dive right at the last moment before a right hand turn and yes, that’s right, took myself out. I slammed the right side of my body into the ground, and smashed my head against the pavement while my brake hood went straight into my eye/nose, and immediately started to gush blood. Some police officer grabbed my bike and started walking down the road with it, I caught up went to grab it and he held on like he was trying keep it. I think with all the adrenalin rushing, he was surprised how hard I hanked back when I realized he wasn’t going to let go. He was a big fellow, and I pulled him off his feet.

Anyways, I had to start chasing. I was pretty screwed, because each section now for the next few comes every few kilometers apart. The group flogs through the section, gets to the smooth pavement, breaths, and then rushes again to the next section. Being last on the cobbles is bad. There are guys coming off the back, guys crashing, bottles all over the road, spectators trying to grab them, motos, photographers, basically it’s mayhem. After each section I kept having to chase the main group, and strung out off the back of the main bunch because of the accordian affect of guys at the back being slower than the group of front. After this, I still had to dig to move back up, and you can only do this a handful of time before it takes it toll on an already stressed system.

I got back to the main group just before the section leading to the Arenberg forest, hit a massive hole which took me into the mud, and out the back again! That punched the ticket, and I was on my own until another group came up from behind. We rode together to the second feed and that was the day.

I will be back in force next year…