Here is a quick recap of the past couple of days of my life.  The final stage of Poland was spent riding the front of the peloton in hopes of setting up a field sprint for Andre.  Through the mountains, blowing winds, constant attacks and wet conditions, we managed to bring the race together in the closing kilometers and Andre did what he does best and won the sprint.  It was a hard fought victory and a tough way to end a weeklong stage race.

A short night of sleep followed and I was soon in the Krakow airport before 5:30AM heading back to Spain.  Two flights and a long taxi ride later I was finally home in Girona just in time for a great lunch on the patio with Courtney.   We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up at one of the many sidewalk cafes in town.  A solid night’s sleep in my own bed and the new day brought even more adventure.

An easy spin, to loosen up my sore and tired legs, around town with my agent, Andrew, and then back home to try to enjoy each passing moment with Courtney as I was heading back to the Barcelona airport that afternoon.  This time, the plane is bound for Lyon, France as the five-stage Tour l’Ain begins tomorrow with a 3-kilometer prologue.  As you can see, the life of a professional cyclist can be hectic at times.  You just have to roll with it and take each moment as it comes.

The Tour of Poland has treated us well so far this week.  Dry conditions and some exciting finishes have made for an enjoyable week.  HTC-Columbia already has one win in the bag, but we are still looking to add to that tally as well as have a rider or two in a good spot on the general classification.  Even though a few of the stages have been raced at a snails pace at times, we have been faced with plenty of challenges and each day has been increasingly harder.

Each day we have finished on a very technical and quite dangerous circuit.  The roads alone are hard enough to navigate.  Potholes are so sporadic that you have to remain 100% focused at all times.  And even when the roads are smooth they ride as if you were surfing the asphalt.  The Polish seem to be missing an important link in their road construction equipment, the steamroller!

On the finishing laps, railways, cobbles and off-camber turns are added into the mix.  These conditions open the door for anyone with nothing to lose to take the win.  I am sure it is exciting to watch on the television, but at times I could think of better places to be!

Today and tomorrow will see the overall race sorted out.  Plenty of hills are still ahead of us and the racing is just getting faster.  It is pretty obvious that many of the riders here put in some serious time on their bikes this summer.  I am feeling good heading into the final stages, just need some luck and to deal with a great deal of suffering and a good result will be waiting for me on the weekend.

The Tour of Poland is now underway as we head out for the 2^nd, and longest, stage of the race today.  I am packing up as we are leaving our massive hotel-built from some Polish black money, no doubt-that is far removed from even the remotest village.  I am not sure what would bring customers to this resort, or if they have ever, until today, filled the thousand rooms it probably contains.

Warsaw, and the surrounding landscape are dead flat, but after we finish today we will be in the foothills of some surprisingly big mountains that border Slovakia and the Czech Republic.   It will take us some 250-kilometers to get down there on some boring roads, but the sun in shining and there will be plenty of fans waiting for us on the finish circuits.

Yesterday was a nice opening stage.  Not too much stress and a good way to ease into the race.  HTC-Columbia took control of the race from the beginning while every other team had some sort of excuse for not helping us.  Seemed like every other sprinter in the race had some kind of issue and was on a bad day.  Yet, when the finish came, lo and behold, everyone miraculously overcame their illnesses and was mixing it up in the sprint.  A massive crash soon followed as we raced between narrow barriers at full-speed.  Fortunately, I escaped unscathed and will be one of the lucky ones to start today with all of my skin.

It was at this point last year that I began gathering content for my website during the Tour of Poland.  I guess it is only fitting that I get back to writing, after a very long hiatus, and breath some life back in to my website during this year’s edition of Tour of Poland.

The month of July has been a busy one for me.  Even though I was not taking part in the Tour de France, instead just racing one week in Austria, I was still covering the Tour stages each day for Versus.  A lot of work went into predicting how each stage would unfold, but through the research I learned a great deal about the sport, its riders and the different regions of France.  All in all, it was a great experience and I enjoyed a new challenge in my life.

Work wise, the past few weeks have seen some of the better training rides of my year.  Even though I already have over sixty days of racing in my legs, I have felt fresh on the bike and able to do a larger than normal workload.  This all bodes well for my upcoming block of races.

The next three weeks will be a little like a grand tour for me.  After the Tour of Poland I will have two days of rest and then jump right back into racing at the mountainous Tour l’Ain.  Then after the five-day race in the Alps it is on to Italy for some hilly one-day races before I return home for the Canadian Pro Tour races and US Pro.  I know it seems like a lot, but at this point in the year it is so much more enjoyable to race than to train at home by yourself.  And I would like to see some good things from me at Worlds and Lombardia this year, so keeping the fitness up is very important.

Off the bike, Courtney and I have been enjoying all that Catalunya has to offer.  Last weekend it was an over night trip down to Barcelona to take in the sites and have one amazing meal after another.  That trip was followed by a few nights at a farm in the foothills of the Pyrenees.  We had a great stay on the farm, even though Courtney was bedridden with a sickness I have never even seen.  But we still enjoyed the silence of the mountains as well as dining on food that was grown or raised outside our door.

The riding from the farm was some of the best imaginable.  In every direction are mountains that rise up to almost 3,000 meters with roads going up to 2,000 meters (6,600 feet).  I passed more hikers and bikers than I did cars.  And there is just something special about never quite knowing what was around the next bend.  With the good days of training behind me now, I am hoping to have a solid showing in the coming weeks.

Continuing the strand of beautiful weather, except for the one horrible day, we woke up to a different season on Sunday. The skies were clear and the are was fresh, fall had began here in the south of Poland. With a late afternoon start I had all morning to enjoy it. We had a very rough two hour transfer to the start. The roads are probably the worst I have ever seen, yet there are zero potholes. They just seem to patch everything and now none of the roads flow smoothly. It is not the ideal way to arrive to the start line, on the verge of some serious car sickness, but you learn to deal with it.

The last stage absolutely flew by. A big group of GC threats got up the road so there was never any down time in the bunch and before I knew it we were in Krakow city limits and on the finishing circuit. The team rode very well, maybe the best we have all week, and Andre Greipel repaid us with our 3rd stage win. We were a little slow to get started early in the week, but in the end we came out with three stage wins and a podium in the overall!

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The “queen” stage of the Tour of Poland was a little bit hard to say the least. Had the roads been paved in the past fifty years it might have been a little better, but as it was it was like doing LBL on cobbles.  The race book was also a little off saying that we would have 1,140 meters of total climbing today. It turned out to be over 3,000!  The climbs were not so steep though. Always around 4-5%. So the final selection of twenty guys was made by sprinting, big chain ring of course, up one of the final climbs.

I had asked Edvald earlier in the day how he was feeling and he said “not so good, there is pain in my legs….”  Well, he went on to easily win the stage. That’s the last time I will ask how he’s feeling! With the time bonus earned at the finish he is now in 3rd and only 11 seconds down on GC.  The stage is set for a good showdown on the final day.  There are plenty of bonus sprints out on course and also more at the finish so he still has a good chance to win the overall. All we have to do is keep a break from going up the road and stealing away those seconds. Easier said than done, but that’s the goal for the final stage.  All we can do is try to make it happen.

This area in the south of Poland is very beautiful. High mountains all around us and many nice villages in the valleys.  Fall has certainly began in this part of the world. Cool temperatures and fresh air, my favorite time of year.  Looking out the window this Saturday morning all you can see are families hiking up into the hills. Would be a very nice way to spend the day for sure.
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I wish I could give you a full recap of the stage today, but I really couldn’t see what was going on. It was raining so hard that it was nearly impossible to see the wheel in front of me!  We finally got a taste of the Polish rain that I have heard so much about.

The best thing about today was the stage was almost 100 kilometers shorter than the past three days so it flew by.  The race was much more active and a lot harder than any other day so far.  The hills today were steep, but very short and the stage was suited more for a one day classics rider. The outcome would echo that same thing with Allessandro Ballan winning the stage.

My day was not so great. I might be still paying for the efforts earlier in the week. Afterall, it is fairly difficult to recover when riding 250 kilometer days.  The weather may have played a part in that as well, as I felt as if I was riding in a river upstream all day.  I will spend the rest of the night picking gravel out of my eyes and hope for a better day tomorrow.
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It may have taken us a while to get going this week, but we finally made up for our below average performance. Edvald’s final lead out was so fast that André Greipel was happy just to hold his wheel and give the team a 1-2 on the stage.  An awesome result considering the number of sprinters here.

It was another super long day that saw us pedaling for six hours and 250 kilometers.  Three riders dicided to try to defy the odds and went up the road with 220 kilometers still to cover.  The bunch easily managed the gap with many teams willing to work with us. A different rider has won each stage so far, so the dream is still alive for everyone here.  We closed out the race with more dangerous circuits and too many guys riding as if they have nothing to lose. Days like these are when I am very thankful I am not a sprinter.

Tomorrow will be a shock to everyone’s body as we will take on the mountains of Poland. It is still anyone’s race at this point, so I expect some very hard racing.

Another long 230 kilometers on the schedule for today.  We could see a repeat of the past two days as well. It’s flat again, so a field sprint should decide the finish. We are, however, going to change our tactics a bit. The past two days we have done most of the work and the two teams that have won so far have not done any work.  So we are going to play the waiting game a bit and sit back and watch the other teams and let them do some chasing.  It should be interesting as every team here seems to always look to us to do everything. With that confusion, it could open the door for a break to succeed and stay away until the finish.

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Today we will cover 220 kilometers of polish countryside. There is a light drizzle outside at the moment so the morale is not as high as it could be.  I woke up with a little soreness in the legs, but that’s to be expected with the time I spent on the front yesterday and the fact that its my first race in six weeks.  My roomate for the week, Michael Albasini, and I made the mistake of leaving our window open last night to let in some fresh air. We woke up to hundreds if not thousands of these mosquitoe like bugs in our room. I am not sure how I could have slept through the night with these things all over the room.  Ignorance is bliss, eh?  

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