Road Culture

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"... Today is not about fighting pain, or conquering it, rather it is about accepting it and, for those who wish to win, embracing it ..."

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Check out CyclingTips's author page.

Check out CyclingTips's author page.

" I suffered in fifth position on Gesink's wheel. Then Levi said, "go, Ben." Way above my limit, brain oxygen-deprived, my vision narrowed. I emptied myself pulling back the attack in three minutes. The world spun, as I regained my breath and settled into a comfortable pace, leaving Rovny and Deignan to fend for Levi. "

I always demand a lot of myself and I’m sure I expect more out of myself during this Vuelta than my team does. While the main goal is the same as when I started, to help our team leaders and make it to the finish line in Madrid, I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to try to do something special one of these days.

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" ... I always find solace in telling myself that I will only feel better as the stage goes on. Luckily, today I was telling myself the truth ... "

"Terrified, I arrived with my training partner Andy Guptill two weeks early to acclimate and preview stages. “You’re a different rider than you were two years ago,” my coach said."

"I don’t know how I will react to three weeks of racing, it is unknown and that is exactly what it is so exciting about it."

Since I was out of GC after yesterday's adventure into mid-stage bike repair, I took the opportunity to shoot some video footage of the race in action while we were on the pass. You will have to excuse a few mis-spoken words

Today was the third stage of the Breck Epic, and it was Epic.

Today was the second stage of the Breck Epic stage race. It was about 40 miles long and included a giant section of the Colorado Trail, which is for mountain bikers what a four-scoop chocolate ice cream Sunday is to my daughter.

I was invited to former President George W. Bush's inaugural Warrior 100K Mountain Bike Ride, called the W100K, in April, along with 14 servicemen and women who were injured or lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So....I got a call from my fella, Tom, on Friday while I was driving to a race in Snowmass, Colorado.

I first met Jeremy Powers in 2008, when he was living in a huge barn-looking house in Hadley, Massachusetts, with a wide assortment of cyclocross racers, amateur teammates of mine, and their significant others.

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I write from Salt Lake City, Utah, a place I once tried to forget.

Editor's Note: Phil Gaimon, 25, is a Velo magazine columnist and third-year pro racer for Kenda-5 Hr Energy Presented by Gear Grinder. He has an English degree from the University of Florida, and owns online stores at podiumcycling.com and sharethedamnroad.com.

Instead of a traditional rider diary, this month Team RadioShack's Ben King is sharing his race report from the Tour of Austria, which wrapped up Sunday.

"Christian Vande Velde came in and said to me, 'You can bet that worse things will happen during your career, but you have to let this go. If you don’t, I promise you more bad things will happen, it will eat you up inside.' ”

I’d say the main difference between Quebec and France is that when you’re driving along the Riviera, you don’t have to watch out for moose. That said, I didn’t get to see any moose this week. I was pretty sure I saw a bear win stage 6, but it turned out to be Svein Tuft.

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Cycling doesn’t need to become an extreme sport to be intriguing, exciting and dramatic enough to captivate a television audience. A few simple changes could make them even more intriguing while minimizing the risk to the riders’ health and, indeed, their lives.

Singletrack.com's resident racer Judy Freeman says that what you commit to will make you dig deep to get it.

The latest diary by Colby Pearce. Pearce discusses what he thinks is the origin of optimal performance and what is the best balance for a rider.

The latest diary by RadioShack's Ben King, the 2010 U.S. pro road race champion. King's teammate, Matthew Busche, won the 2011 title on Monday.

What does two-time Olympian Wells think of the London venue?

Random memories…

I felt like a rock star racing in the USA’s most prestigious race in the stars and stripes for the winning team.

Kenda-5 Hour Energy's Phil Gaimon knew he was in for a long day when the rumors began circulating: Portions of stage one would be neutralized, it would be shortened to a prologue, or he'd have to do the full race, and the lead moto would be replaced with a snowplow.

For Lennard Zinn - who might be 'too tall to race' - bad rules, excessive taxes and a silly sticker mean the UCI is out of control.

" Remember watching news stories of Katrina victims, staying on rows of air mattresses and cots in big, open rooms? That’s us right now: disaster relief housing. It’s no Katrina, but nine dudes in one room does qualify as a disaster."

What you tell yourself can make or break a race: Choose wisely, Grasshopper

"I am more in love with the sport than ever, and yet I still watch a pack of cyclists negotiating traffic or click-clacking through a coffee shop in their cleats, and I cringe. We are truly our own worst enemies ... "

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"For each of us an hourglass upends at the finish line beginning a new countdown. It’s already late in the afternoon. As the sand drains, we race to recover for the next stage. "

Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry. Last week during the behind-the-scenes moments of the Redlands Bicycle Classic, my teammates did a good job of helping me with my core training through laughter.

VeloNews' newest online rider diarist is domestic pro Phil Gaimon of Kenda-Geargrinder. Gaimon already is well known to readers of VeloNews magazine as the author of one of our most popular (and funniest) features: Ask a Pro.

"Twice, I took more than a month off from ALL forms of training during the season. Each time, I struggled to remain positive when my first rides back had a heartrate ceiling of 130 bpm and power that never got above 120 watts. "

"As a team we ended it in second place overall by one second. Who knew second place would be such a hard pill to swallow?"

"I am surrounded by both the very best in the sport and the up and coming “next bests.” Being somewhere in between, I am in a place where I can continue to learn, while I’m also able to share what I have learned. And, I will always be ready to do either."

Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski: Post-Pan-American MTB championship report

Team Singletrack.com/Justin's Nut Butter Thomas Dooley & Mike Hogan are sending Cape Epic updates as time and energy permits.

How does it feel to suffer the Cape Epic? Let Team Jamis' Jason Sager count the ways.

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"After a hard turn on the front Nibali drifted back and took a slow calculated look at me as if to say, “is something the matter?” Yes! This is the sixth day over 100 miles, and you’re killing me!"

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The results of the weekend speak for themselves: three stage wins, 1-2-3 GC and the points jersey. What I most happy about is that three different riders won a stage. We rode like a TEAM, all for one and one for all.

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A few years from now, the team bus will be old news, and I’ll be calling shots in races. For now, allow me to share the new, the exciting, the hard, and behind the scene curiosities of this sport’s top level.

We can chose to take the Eeyore approach and dwell on the negative, or we can roll with the punches, remember why we fell in love with this game and enjoy the beauty of our sport with the knowledge that things are changing and good things are on the horizon.

There is a notable difference between amateur racing and the professional ranks, not just in the race style but also in the riders themselves. There are some riders in the peloton who seem to command respect, the ones who make their hardest efforts appear effortless, never showing the strain that their bodies are surely going through.

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This fall, my neighbor Don Powell and I sat down over a beer, and decided to start a team focused on mentoring young riders and helping them develop into better cyclists and people.

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Wahoooga .... Wahoooga ... Anyone that owns an iPhone knows this noise. That terribly annoying alarm is how I started what could have been a normal Thursday. It wasn't though.

How to get to far-flung races? Judy Freeman's been there done that

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Check out CyclingTips's author page.

The Team Sky veteran reports from training camp

The first of a new regular column on VeloNews.com, written by Omer Kem, the new head director of the Bissell Pro Cycling team.

First rider diary from Garmin-Cervelo pro Andrew Talansky

Our resident pro Judy Freeeman says a special coffee and 2010 had a certain symmetry for her.

Ted reports in from his team's winter camp in Sardinia

Singletrack.com's Judy Freeman catches up with a familiar voice in U.S. cycling — Dave Towle

Christmas is forbidden until Thanksgiving in the Jones household. But the Jingle Cross weekend warmed his heart.

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