Life has been great here in Girona.  Sunny skies and a quite, tourist-free, town have made the time here very enjoyable.  Courtney arrived this past weekend, and we have had a lot of fun getting to know each other again after our very busy month apart.  We have both quickly adopted our favorite lifestyle, that of the Spanish.  I spend each morning out on the bike.  Usually meeting Michael Barry at the local bar/restaurant here, Boira, then after a quick and extremely tasty zumo de naranja (orange juice) it’s off into the hills.  Each training session has gone better than the last, so I am very happy and confident about where I am beginning the season!

Once my day’s work is complete I spend the afternoon with Courtney.  We have a nice lunch, and then I usually take a small siesta while she knocks out some more of her work and after that we go for a stroll around town to gather food to cook for the night.  Does life get any better than that?

We have a lot to look forward to in the near future.  My first race, Challenge Mallorca, is just around the corner.  I am eager to get to the start line and get some good racing in my legs.  I’ll only be doing the final three stages of the five-day race.  There is no need for me to be parading around the flat streets of Palma for the first two days! The final, very mountainous, three stages are much more suited to my style.  I have never raced in Mallorca before, but with many training camps there in the past I will have a good feel for the roads.  This race should provide the perfect start to the season.  Before all of that fun begins, Courtney and I will probably sneak down to Barcelona for the day.  It is so close and easy to reach by train, so we really are making sure we take advantage of that while we can.

Roberto Bettini from the other side of the lens.

HTC-Columbia’s training camp on the island of Mallorca has been flying by.  Once again, we are slammed with meetings and appointments filling every moment we are not on our bikes.  Even in the middle of the night I am waking up thinking I am late for the ride or some meeting!  To my surprise, the weather has been great so far.  All of Europe is buried under snow, yet the temperatures are mild and the sun is usually out here in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Training has been going along quite nicely as well.  Long hours on the road bike are broken up with a few intervals up short mountains or some high-speed work on the flats.  We also had our first “race effort” yesterday with a team time trial of fifteen kilometers.  We were split into two groups of eight, with the finish time taken on the seventh rider, so we had to stick together.  We raced down the coast road here, in very windy conditions, with only two minutes separating the first group from my group.  Soon after the start my group began catching guys that were being dropped from the group ahead.  They had obviously started off too hard and were paying for their effort now, and that only motivated us more.  We ended up winning by a good margin, and the first group only finished with four, not even close to enough riders to stop the clock.

I always wonder why we race so hard in these training camps, but in the end it is pretty fun to be out there going 60kph on the time trial bikes.  It is a feeling we have all missed over the past few months.  Later in the week we will take the race from the flats of the coast to the mountains inland for an uphill race.  Until then, the long days will continue.  Five to six hours on the bike each day, followed with more meetings.  I am happy the days are going by so fast as I can’t wait to get to Girona, Spain, and meet up with my wife, Courtney.

Well, my winter break here in Greenville has come to an end.  I’ve spent the past couple of days figuring out how to pack up my whole life into one suitcase.  I’ll spend the next six-months or so over in Europe, my longest block yet, and I’ll have to be prepared for everything.  Training camp in Mallorca, Spain, is my first stop.  Two weeks of hard training, on and off the bike, and hopefully a little better weather will help me get ready for the racing season.  Then, it’s time to get settled in Girona, my home for the year.

I am looking forward to getting the year going and figuring out where my fitness is in the first few races.  I feel the winter has treated me well, but it’s hard to say when you’re not racing and don’t have anything to compare with.  I am also really excited to get back to life in Girona.  The life and culture there is about as good as it can get.  Morning coffees overlooking the river at our place, and an evening glass of wine in one of the town squares with Courtney are some of the best parts of life.  It will also be nice to escape the bitter cold that has settled in Greenville, and have some fresh roads to train on.

I can’t think of any other race throughout the year that could motivate me so much so late in the season other than the Giro di Lombardia.  Last year I had the best result of my short career at this race and I was hoping to go even better than that in this edition.  I was better prepared both mentally and physically and was more confident than ever before.  The day just didn’t go that well.  I felt good, I just lacked that extra gear and was unable to follow the accelerations.  I have noticed that I have been lacking that extra something since Ireland really.  Maybe it just comes with the long season of racing I have done.

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If I accomplished anything during the race today it was that I came to the realization that I want to live in the Piemonte region at some point during my life.  From the start to the finish we were surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery that you could possibly ask for. 

The days prior to the race Thomas Lovkvist and I rode on quiet one lane roads and up and over countless hills, some gradual and some way over 20% grades!  We past vineyard after vineyard and village after village and hardly ever came across any traffic, something that I thought would never be possible in northern Italy.  I am not sure if it is the food, wine, culture, sights or scenery, but I am always excited to be in Italy and to race through one of my favorite regions, Piemonte, was even more special.

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The GP Beghelli is the final race in a series of the same name.  Starting with Coppi Bartali in the spring, a few one day races in the late summer and finishing with the Giro dell’ Emilia and GP Beghelli this weekend.  We actually started at the Beghelli factory today just outside of Bologna.  From what I could piece together they make security systems.  Regardless, they are obviously big fans of the cycling world so I support whatever they are making.

The race started in the loading zone area of the factory, yet just ten feet across the other side of the road were rows and rows of grapevines.  I always find it surprising in Europe to see how they somehow blend industrial areas with farmland, using every piece of land to its fullest.

As with every other Italian race I have done, once the flag dropped for the race to begin the attacks started left to right and we constantly hovered in the 50-60kph range.  Today was a little strange in that we never really came out of that range.  A small group did mange to get away, but we kept them on a short leash and that made the race quite difficult in the end.

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We woke up today with some threatening clouds, and that seemed to lower the morale within the team. After all, who really wants to be racing in the rain at this point in the year? I even have my doubts that it would be possible to make it up the San Luca in the rain. We struggle as it is in the dry, throwing our bikes side to side, trying to squeez every once of power we have into the bike. If you take away some traction with the wet roads then we would have some problems.

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I never really seem to sleep well the night before a trip. Thoughts in my head keep me busy all hours of the night, especially when I am going somewhere for a long time.  There is a long process of not only making sure I packed everything, but also shutting down the apartment for the winter, and making sure ill have a few essentials(water to drink) when I return.

The alarm sounded way to quick this morning and the race was on to make it out of Spain and to Bologna, Italy from my last block of racing this year.  Being Friday morning didn’t seem to help things move quickly either. We all but came to a stand still as soon as we reached Barcelona. Bumper to bumper traffic turned the usual one hour drive into close to two hours and gave me little hope of making my flight. The only hope I was holding onto was that the Spanish would once again live up to their lifestyle and be at least fifteen minutes late for everything.  Fortunately for me, they did and my tickets were printed the second they closed the flight. Doesn’t get any closer than that.

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There are only a few races each year that carry the same vibe and excitement as the World Championships.  The only other ones that can maybe rival it are the spring classics and the Tour de France.  The media attention, the crowds and the history make it a very special race, and representing your country is always pretty cool.  Even if I am surrounded by riders I have raced against all year, for this one day we come together for a common goal, to do the best we can for the US.

Our team plan was pretty simple, just watch after Tom Danielson, and hope he is good towards the end.  The course was about as close as you can get to racing over big alpine passes, yet never doing a climb over two kilometers, sounds strange but it is true.  We were either going up or down, and there was always a constant pressure on the pedals.  The Italians and the Spanish, being the favorites for the win, did most of the work throughout the day, with the Australians biding their time to perfection, and placing Cadel in the winning move.  There is not much more you can say about the race tactically.  We traveled around the 13K circuit a total of 19 times, with a total of 4600 meters of climbing, and by the end I was shocked at how fast seven hours went.  With the laps so short and technical you had to always be focused so the time just flew by.  The race was also very steady and the distance basically wore everyone down.  All it took was a little nudge and the race blew apart.

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The weekend brought some all out racing for us here in Missouri. With the TT behind us, everyone had nothing to lose and everything to gain. No one was content to give Garmin an easy ride either, and I felt for them suffering on the front as I have been in that position many times.

The attacks were relentless, and the tactics were questionable at times. Garmin was not happy to let anything go too far, so breaks never really got more than a minutes advantage. So we raced and raced some more. On Saturday we averaged 48kph for the stage and in Sunday’s circuit race, with many turns and hills, we still averaged 43kph at the end of the day.

With our overall hopes dashed after the TT some of our focus moved towards the upcoming World Championships. The Michaels and I added on 50 kilometers after the stage Saturday to cover a distance close to the Worlds.  Even though we are racing hard here everyday, the stages are only 180 kilometers, so its important to do some longer rides as the Worlds is around 265 kilometers. At the World Championships we will have not even started racing at the 180 kilometer mark!

Now we must say fairwell to a few of our teammates as there is a big change over in our team for next year and we will for sure miss all of them. We have raced so well as a team over the last two years that it will be very strange to be racing against each other next year.