Training with the Pros, it sounds like fun but it can’t be. Pros are genetic freaks; they put more kilometers on their bikes than any of us civilians do on our cars each year, they ride around whole countries at an average speed greater than 40km/hour and they can dish out such Rule V style day-after-day-after-day. We all dream about it but we don’t have it.
In an earlier life I came close to landing my dream job in Monaco with the IAEA. Serious people counseled me not to take the job, they said it was a bad career move. How could I explain to them I didn’t give a shiet if it was a bad career move, the chance to live, and more importantly to be a cyclist near San Remo and La Madone was all I cared about? Yet I knew if I even saw Tom Boonen or one of the many Aussies who call Monaco their home out on a training ride, I would only be seeing their lycra-clad asses disappearing up the road. Could I at least catch up to Stuart O’Grady to chat him up for a minute before my inability to talk and breathe would force me to lie and say I was turning right HERE? Maybe I could drink beers with the Aussies, I could keep that professional pace, actually no, I would get dropped there too.
Oh that job fell through and my dreams of commuting into work on Merlin on the Cote d’Azure disappeared like those watery mirages on a hot highway, but I digress. I have some good and funny direct video evidence why training with the Pros would be a cruel lesson in our mortal failings. One such Pro is Ted King, an American racer living the dream; he is based in Lucca, riding for Liquigas, riding in support of Ivan Basso and Peter Sagan. He is tough, he has finished every Giro d’Italia he has started. He broke his collarbone this summer racing in Philadelphia when his front wheel dropped into an inexcusably lame drain grate (thank you very much, oh third-world infrastructure that defines the USA).
To bring his training back up to speed he did the 200 on 100 with fellow Pro Tim Johnson and amateur racer Ryan Kelly. The 200 on 100 means 200 miles on Route 100, riding North to South from the top to the bottom of the state of Vermont, the Green Mountain State. Unless you are Marcus, 333 km seems like an impossibly long ride to do at once, I would be in broom wagon long before the end of such madness.
And by madness I refer to the 338 km at 34.1 km/hr average speed with 3,197 meters of climbing thrown in for good measure.
Video credit to Chandler Delinks
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@Dr C
Very chipper, just trying to catch up with things after a week out of the office. It was half term last week so spent the week going to the cinema, cooking with the kids, down at the BMX track. Had a great time but it piles up while you're away.
Had an awesomely hellish time on Saturday.
@Dr C
Nah, I want the the cadence thingy as much as anything else and I don't want to carry an extra heart rate monitor around so it's the full monty for me. Mostly, I'll use it in review mode, I'm not sure that I ever want to know that I've still got 75 hilly miles to go when my legs are telling me that it's time to get off the bike and eat pie!
@Dr C
They have a bit of icing on them, but otherwise they're pretty plain but very tasty!
@wiscot
all sounds a bit too Scottish for my liking - I think I need something with a shiny tinfoil wrapper
@Dr C
I'm an OCD fiddler too. I was close to where I needed to be - the end adjustments were slight side angle and position of cleats, seat up and forward about 1 cm, stem extended 1 cm, bar and hoods positioned for new stem and setup. Things I have done in the past but having it all done together and with precision made a huge difference for me.
Vaguely related to pros... in general I have respect for them even if I'm not so keen on their 'persona' (yes Robbie McEwen I'm looking at you) but I am rapidly developing an intense dislike for Andre Greipel.
When he was with HTC it was all moan, moan, moan about how he should have been the team's top sprinter. Yeah right, Andre, what's the score now 20-1 in Cav's favour ?
Now with Omega-Pharma Lotto he's saying he would have won so much more if Gilbert hadn't been with the team.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/greipel-believes-he-could-have-won-more-without-gilbert
The only flaw in that argument is that Gilbert would still have won, whether Greipel was on his team or not.
Maybe Herr Greipel, the various DSs of the teams you ride for don't think you're good enough to be the single basket who carries all their eggs.
Maybe they know something that is shared by everyone in cycling except you. You're good, but you're not that good.
We should run a competition to see what next year's excuse will be. I'm guessing that now the rest of the team won't be good enough.
Is Greipel the German word for Moaning C*nt ?
Some thoughts from Ted King re: the 200 on 100. http://bicycling.com/blogs/kingme/2011/10/31/the-epic-defined/. Interesting perspective from a pro.
@brian
From his blog.
"Also, this ride made me truly consider a term that lately is tossed around the cycling world"”pro and amateur"”too often and too easily. Four hours on a bike peppered with a hint of turbulent weather over a hefty climb or two, and suddenly riders are said to have achieved something epic. After doing the Two-Hundred, I know that to be truly called an epic, a ride requires something legendary, something you'll remember not just the next month but the next decade. It demands intangibles and elements you don't see on a weather map. It demands everything."
@Blah
Catching up after a weekend away (my goodness my guiness you miss things quickly round here) but the show was on De Planckaerts. Never saw it, but not sure it was about cycling. Might have just been about their crazy Belgian farm.
Kellogg's Elevenses, the ride fuel of champions
Mug of coffee optional