Road Culture

Well, I am back home from Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun. I can’t believe that it has already been a week since we raced. Most of you have seen the results and it was an exciting start to the season for our team. We had first and second overall, and won every stage. I lost third on GC at the finish of the criterium. We had made Genevieve Jeanson work hard and she rode great. It was impressive and she moved into third overall. As I mentioned in my first journal, I had hoped that the training in Phoenix would help me on the Acacia Park group rides. It was a joke, but every joke has some

I’m back from camp and I have never been so happy to be home. Camp number three is in the bag. It was a long one and to make matters worse we rode the trainers inside for the last three days. You might well ask why on earth we would ride trainers in “sunny Tuscany.” Well, it wasn’t for our fitness or for our health and certainly not for our sanity. I’ll get back to that. We had a great start to the camp with the boys returning from the Tour of Med’ high on another win. We had a Champaign toast with the whole team and watched a few clips of the other half of our team putting it "into the

So we awoke this morning to the sound of rain again. Today (Saturday) was the 57-mile road race, held – not without some irony – in the desert of Casa Grande. The team was psyched and ready to start the day. We started with the normal team meeting where director Andrezj asked us all “so what are you going to do today team?” To which Brooke quickly replied “whatever we feel like, gosh.” I don’t think she got enough sleep last night. We decided that rain or shine we were going to race hard. Lesson Number 1 from the Rex Kwan Do School of fighting. We wanted to win and maintain our

I can’t believe the first race of the year is already here. I guess that there have been a couple of smaller races in California and Arizona, but for those of us from states where there is winter, this is a complete shock to the system. It’s still snowing in Colorado Springs! I was just out shoveling my driveway a couple days ago. The T-Mobile Professional Cycling Team is kicking off its season at the Valley of the Sun stage race in Phoenix, Arizona. This race has a great reputation for tough early season racing in the warm sunshine. I always look forward to any early season racing in

The World According to Wells……Some of you may be familiar with my stories from my columns in the VeloNews magazine. These online journal entries will follow the same pattern trying to give you a racer’s perspective on the mountain bike and cyclo-cross circuit through out the year. As you may or may not know, the mountain bike season officially kicks off the first weekend of March with the Texas NORBA National. Since I do a full domestic schedule of cyclo-cross through the fall and winter that leaves only a few months to recover from a season of traveling the world and gear up for the next

Still no phone at our house in good old Girona. I think that sums up a modern-day house. Okay, maybe you have high-speed cable and then a cell phone; that is more than intelligent. But here in Spain you can't have one without the other. So I'm sitting here choking down second-hand smoke. Tyler used to always comment on how he would "smoke a pack of cigarettes" while he checked his e-mail. Being from Chicago I thought he was being a bit extreme, until I found myself in the same situation. I feel like I have to throw my clothes in the incinerator after going down there. Okay,

Well, training camp part deux is officially over. It was a good experience, all in all. Got the miles in, plus intensity, and we were treated to some great Italian food. The quality of food in Italy is second to none, and we had plenty of it. In fact, Dave Z was feeling quite nervous since the hotel cafe asked for his room number every morning. He was envisioning a Starbucks-size bill for 100 cappuccinos when he checked out. I do love Italy for the food and the culture, and I kind of laugh at their driving – until I'm on my bike. Then I realize why people get hit by cars every day. The

Happy New Year, everybody! It's 2005, training camp is less than two weeks away, the ProTour is going to make its debut and I get to speak English with my teammates again. Last year at this time I was studying my Spanish as much as possible while fretting about being at the dinner table and understanding nothing. I'll be riding for CSC this year, where we all speak English at some level. It makes life much easier on me, and the fact that the native English speakers only take up one-sixth of the team is downright strange, if not a dream. I'm very excited about sitting at the dinner table or

Merry Christmas everyone. It’s that time of year when a guy can look back on the past season, take a short break and then start thinking about the next year. Last year was an amazing time for me, highlighted by that win at Paris-Roubaix and the birth of our second daughter, Zoe. Zoe was born on September 24, just before I came to Las Vegas this year – my first trip to the U.S. We also have three-year-old Alynor, so this is a big Christmas for us. We’ll be hanging out at home here in Wales for the holiday, although we did just get back from a visit with my parents and my sister in

“That’ll work,” I told Keith Novello about an hour before the start of the elite men’s race at the U.S. Cyclo-cross National Championships this past weekend in Portland, Oregon. I was referring to his $7000 Moots Psychlo-X cyclo-cross bike, which I had just taken for a 45-second spin. He asked whether the seat height needed adjusting, and I said, “Nah, it’ll do,” drawing a chuckle from him in response. “Now I have to ride fast,” I said. Keith replied, “Don’t worry, man, it’s all gravy after this morning.”

The World Championships is usually my final race of each season, but in Verona last weekend, I pinned my numbers and lined up on the start line for the final race of my career. To be a part of the World Championships in Verona was very special for me, as the cycling fans in the heart of Europe, and especially in the North of Italy are passionate. The road racecourse, which winded through the streets of the city of Love, was spectacular. It passed through the center of the city, by the arena, close to the house of Juliette, where she was courted by Romeo, and winded up the Torrecelli

Apparently we Americans have a rhotic “r.” No, not an E-rotic “r,” a rhotic “r,” meaning we have a hard pronunciation of the letter “r.” British and other English dialects do not have this cat-like growl. Maybe we are more animalistic in this linguistic isolation. I would say we are more barbaric. Barrrrbarick. I’ll tell you one thing, I feel barbaric scrapping for a piece of bread in this biketalk fixed-gear haven. Portland is the only place where fashion is determined by retro bike hats and messenger gear, a quasi-ethereal ideal world for us vane legged fanatics. In a way the bicycle

Bardolino is the host town of the time trials this week.It is situated on Lake Garda and loaded with good cafes and gelato shops. After being a part of the Olympic Games in August, the World Championships seem relatively small, but the relaxed ambiance is enjoyable. Team USA is staying on a hillside above Lake Garda. Fall has arrived here, the leaves are already beginning to change colors and the air is crisp and cool. I am four days away from the finish of the season and thoughts of hikes in the woods, mountain bike rides and lazy mornings with the New York Times are dancing in my head.

Racing again after the rest day is always a bit of a shock to the system. After a day without hard efforts in the legs, the body shuts down, therefore when the first attacks go the following day it feels quite painful. The other things that make these stages hard is that everybody is fresh, or fresher, and is eager to attack and race. We were faced with a fairly flat stage towards Careres, yesterday, the day after our rest day. As Petacchi went home on the weekend, and Zabel lost most of his teammates early in the Vuelta, there were no teams willing to control the race for a field sprint

The race is now into the mountains and things are beginning to really shake up in the overall classification. The race is moving along nicely for us as Floyd is in gold and Triki is in the top 10. After their incredible rides in the TT they have managed to maintain their positions at the top of the classification for the last week. It has been an awesome ride for the team so far – we have won a stage and carried the leader’s jersey since the start in Leon. In the time trial it was expected that Victor, Floyd and Dave would ride well but it was a real surprise when Vic finished a close

We have started the Vuelta on the right foot with a nice stage win in the team time trial. The TTT is one of my favorite events as it takes a complete team effort; and, the feeling when everything is running smoothly is incredible. During the effort the whole team is completely focused- it feels as if we are riding in a tunnel with nothing but the open road in front of us with the voice of Johan encouraging us over the radio, the noise of the disc wheels, the sound of the wind and our breath blocking out all other noises and distractions. In the last two years we have lost the Vuelta

We are now in the hotel in Léon sitting and waiting for the Vuelta España to begin on Saturday. We arrived in Leon last night, as we had to be at the hotel three days prior to the start for the medical testing-which is essentially a blood test. This year the Vuelta starts out with several flat to rolling stages as we race across the middle of Spain towards the Mediterranean and the coastal town of Valencia. Valencia will host the first of three individual time trials, one being up to the peak of Sierra Nevada, the other being the final stage in Madrid. Today we rode our time trial bikes

GIRONA SPAIN It was a little bit sad to see them extinguishing the flame in the Olympic Stadium in Athens last night. My wife and I watched the closing ceremonies on television from Spain. It seemed like weeks since we had been in Athens. I have always been a fan of the Olympic Games, ever since I was a kid. It’s a little like watching the Tour de France in the summer time, I guess. You get into a routine of checking in every day and get sort of addicted to the drama of it all. I have always found myself watching the sports that seem to take a four-year hiatus from being covered, like

Hamburg is probably the easiest of the World Cups...but it is not easy. The race draws massive crowds and is always a welcome home race for Jan and the Telekom team after the Tour. The race starts out with a large flat loop and then several smaller loops with some tight turns and a steep climb. It is not the difficulty of the climb that splits the race up, but the fight for position going into the climb and the tight corners after the climb. As the World Cup script pretty much dictates, the race started off quick, a break got away, the peloton settled down and cruised along, and then

Before coming to Germany, I had a month-long break from racing. I took one week completely off the bike and then started to ramp up my training. I packed in some heavy mileage weeks, riding mostly with Michael each day. Riding with Michael pushes me into fitness, as he rides quite a bit faster than I generally do on my own. We would go out the door together each day, although often when we hit a major climb, or he needed to do some intensity, he would speed off ahead and I would keep going at my pace. It is neat to be able to share so much time together on the bike. Cycling has allowed us

Back in 1995, my parents owned a dog named Bosun. They bred him with a female named Baby. Tugboat was the pick of their litter. I chose him because he was the most animated of all the puppies. Quite often, Baby's owner would find Tugboat out of the puppy kennel and perched on its roof. He was an entertainer, even at a few weeks old. When Tugs was born back in Massachusetts, I was living in Colorado. When he was old enough to be separated from Baby and his eight siblings, he spent a brief hiatus at my parents' home in Marblehead. A couple weeks later he was loaded onto a plane, all by

June has been a little hectic. We started out the month in the Alps previewing the Tour de France climbs. Our training camp finished just in time for the challenging one day Classique des Alps race, which I decided to sit out, since I had done so much riding in the days proceeding. But it was a successful race for our team, with four Phonak guys in the top 10. My teammate Oscar Pereiro won, which was a big victory for the entire organization. So we headed to the Dauphine Libere on a high note, which started a day later. My personal goal was to try and test myself as well as some new

The Olympic trials this past weekend in Redlands, California, offered two automatic Olympic team nominations to the winner of the road race and the time trial. Having raced for 16 years, I have competed in a few Olympic trials. In past years, I felt a lot of pressure while trying to make the team; this year, as the first American in the UCI international points standings, I was fortunate enough to be automatically qualified before the trials began. This is not to say I was completely pressure-free, however. My T-Mobile team wanted all three slots on the women’s road squad, which meant we had

The last week I have been racing in the Volta Catalunya, a six-day race that starts on the Costa Brava, climbs through the Pyrénées and finishes back along the coast in downtown Barcelona. For me, and several of the other North Americans in the peloton, it is a race that is close to home, as several of us live in the Catalan town of Girona. This year, Martin Perdiguero dominated the first half of the week’s racing. He won stage 2’s uphill sprint finish, went on to take the mountaintop finish in Andorra with an explosive acceleration in the last meters, and then won the next day’s mountain

The Wachovia Classic in Philadelphia, now in its 20th year, has become a regular summertime event. Like the T-Mobile Grand Prix in San Francisco, it is one of the most prestigious one-day races in America and hosts some of the best racers in the world. What makes it most special for the racers is the fans. Hundreds of thousands of fans line the course, cheering and partying. There are a couple of grandiose block parties on the Manayunk Wall and at the start/finish line. The energy is incredible – it pushes us up the hill. The women’s race had its biggest field ever, with 190 starters,

Each season I look forward to going back to Philadelphia for the Wachovia races. I like the city, the races are the best in North America, and the crowds are incredible. This year the trip to Philly was my first to America since the start of the year. I have been watching the results in America from overseas but have yet to race against all the new stars of the U.S. peloton. Lining up for the start in Lancaster was a bit strange as there were all sorts of new jerseys and new faces on the line. The race in Philly almost always unfolds in the same manner. A breakaway, sometimes quite a large

The Tour of Montréal is a three-day, four-stage race. It starts out with a 3km prologue in Lachine, the hometown of Geneviève Jeanson, the Machine from Lachine. We jet out and around a tiny peninsula on bike paths, making a few sharp turns along the wa, and winner and losers are separated by fractions of a second. This course is quick and suits a rider who corners well. Tina Mayolo-Pic, one of the best criterium sprinters in America, took top honors. She blazed the course and finished a half second ahead of me. A few hours later, we headed to Little Italy, where we had an evening criterium.

The highlight of the American racing calendar is the Wachovia week in Philadelphia. It is a week of racing that draws the most interest from spectators and media and is also the week of racing that hosts the strongest pelotons to race on North American soil. Of the three races Lancaster is perhaps the hardest course with its undulating and sinuous course. The peloton is full of motivated racers and the attacks are usually incessant for the entire 145 km event. Often times rain storms or thundershowers grease up the streets and add extra difficulty to the already technical course. This

Last night, I returned to North America for the first time since mid-February. Today the Montréal World Cup was my first race on the continent this season. This race is the premier women’s race in North America, and it is perhaps the only race that fields a quality international women’s peloton. A cool Canadian breeze greeted us at the start, but the fans kept us warm. Geneviéve Jeanson and Lyne Bessette are household names in Canada now, and they bring many admirers to this race each year, as Mont Royale is always lined with people. Geneviéve’s name has been in the headlines of the

A ghostly antiquity shatters the air between houses, hotels and dim, squatting light poles. The vintage town of Torrington swallows another day and crests into the shady mass of energy that is the night. Short dark streets end abruptly at churches and arcades. The school of Saint Francis is holding an amateur boxing match tonight. As on most first nights of a stage race, I need a period of adjustment. Our room is three floors up from Main Street in the Village Peddler, a rickety old hotel rasping through its wind swept windows: old cloth, old mattresses, basements filled with empty

I was pleasantly surprised today. For a day in the mountains, it was actually a pretty mellow day. The first 70, 80 kilometers of the stage today were almost downhill – a fast false flat, really – and the speed was very high. There were a number of attacks, but no one really got anything going. At one point today, there was a pretty bad crash. We didn’t really see who went down, but it slowed things down for a bit as teams were trying to make an assessment of who went down and what was going on. By the time we reached the one big climb, though, the speed had picked up and then the climbers

I am going to try to make it to Milan. After talking with the team and knowing the importance of this race to us and to our sponsors, I am going to do my best to make it through the mountains these next few days and ride to Milan. Pulling out would not be too good for the team, so I need to do my best… I just need to save my legs as much as possible. That last stage into Milan is very important to the team and, at the same time, making it to Philadelphia for the USPRO is very important to me, so I need to balance that. As part of the discussion that we had on the subject this morning, I did

Well, enough is enough. I finally decided to call it a day and I’m going back home tomorrow. I started this morning, even though I was feeling worse than I was yesterday. After about 50 kilometers, I realized that there was no getting past this chest cold and I decided to ride to the feedzone and pull out then. It’s been more difficult mentally than physically in some ways. I really don’t like racing when I can’t put 100 percent into it. It’s just not my style. I sure didn’t like just trying to hang on and barely making it to the finish line. The last couple of days, I’ve come to the

I have always liked Tour de L’Aude as it takes place in some beautiful countryside in the south of France. The race takes place mostly in the foothills of the Pyrenees. There are many small roads that run through the centers of ancient quaint towns or through vineyards or farmland. It is one of my favorite spots to ride a bike. The traffic is minimal, the people friendly, and the climate agreeable. I left Girona for the Tour without much idea of how my fitness would be. I had trained with Michael and his teammates and was feeling healthy, but I hadn’t raced since the classics in Belgium.

One of those days. It seems like every time there is a straightaway like today, it doesn’t seem to work out. It was long stage today, but maybe a touch too easy for my liking. Being totally flat, we were pretty much guaranteed that Fassa Bortolo was going to be in control at the front. I would sometimes prefer it if there were a few hills to break things up. But we started the day well. Everyone on the team was motivated and I felt good. I have good legs right now and the team has confidence in my ability as a sprinter. We took something of an all-or-nothing gamble today when the whole

It was a good sprint. For the last few days I’ve been really frustrated by not being able to get into position to do my own sprint. Today, it was different. The team really rallied out there to get me up to the right spot going into the last few hundred meters and they did a great job. Our main focus was to stay together today, so that we could set up for the sprint as a team and we did it. And for a while there, we had good little train going toward the finish. We were lacking a little power toward the end, maybe, and we allowed Fassa Bortolo to take over the front of the peloton again,

Well, I made it another day. I’m still not feeling so great when it comes to my respiratory system. My legs feel fine, but sometimes, it’s like a car when it red-lines. I’m afraid the engine just cuts out at a certain point. I have good legs, but once I start pushing it hard, the lungs just can’t support the leg work that I am doing and I feel like I am going to blow. I did what I could for Angelo today. I sat back behind him a couple of spots and then as we were coming in toward the finish, I waited to see what I could do to move him up, maybe take him on my wheel and launch an attack. I

Seventh. Not too bad, not too bad at all. Even so, I may be close to the point of heading home. I’m still feeling pretty rough today. I had a pretty good ride, but I sure didn’t feel good. I had an early start, so I was pretty lucky with the weather this time out. It started raining towards the end, so some of the big GC boys had to do the whole thing in the rain and I had relatively dry roads the whole time. Then again, I had more wind than they did, so maybe it all comes out even. The course itself was bloody hard. The first 18 or 19 kilometers were all uphill, and a pretty hard uphill

After Wednesday’s time trial, I found itself in the leader’s jersey in the Tour de L’Aude, with my teammates Kimberly Bruckner and Kristin Armstrong in second and fourth overall, just a few seconds behind. For T-Mobile it was a great place to be, as it gave us many options tactically. Defending the jersey is a challenge that requires a lot of work, and for us, it has been a bigger challenge than normal because we are down to five riders here. Fortunately, our team has been extremely motivated and is getting stronger each day. On Thursday, we did a circuit race. We let a breakaway full of

Man, do I feel like crap today. I started the day out feeling like I was coming down with something. I've had a sore throat for a few days and now it's beginning to take a toll. Despite the easy terrain, I made it through the stage just sitting there in the field, feeling really, really average on the bike the whole day. The only thing I managed to do was to bring my teammate, Angelo Furlan, up to the front with about 3km to go. I wanted to do as much as I possibly could, so I just went up and took a big turn with the hope that Angelo was on a good wheel. I figured since I was losing steam

This was not a very good day for me. The frustrating thing was that I had great legs. I felt great. I thought I’d put myself into just the right spot coming into the finish and help up there and then it just didn’t happen. The finish today was just chaotic. I almost killed myself coming in. The day was pretty much under the control of Fassa Bortolo all the way from the start. They allowed a small break to get away, mostly just to keep things under control in the field, and then they just held a very moderate pace. Actually, it really slowed down toward the last 30km today. It was more like

We had a good day today. It was a long day, quite hot at times, but our guy, Cristian Moreni, finished second to that young kid none of us knew anything about. Cristian has been looking good here at the Giro and a day like today really suited his abilities to a tee. He’s really good on the short, steep climbs that marked the last half of the route today. As you know, those aren’t exactly my cup of tea, but Cristian just loves that stuff. After about 50 kilometers this morning – which was only an hour or so into the race! – he said he was feeling pretty good and so we tried to get him in

It was a long day in the saddle. A long day, a hot day and a day with a lot of climbing. It was a lot harder than I expected. We built our strategy for the day on the assumption that the race would be won in a breakaway today. Most of our guys were working hard to get into anything that went and we were always represented when something did go. Before the start my teammate, Rinaldo Nocentini, came up and said “I’ve already made the deal. There are four or five of us going to go right at the start!” Of course, our strategy was the pretty much the same as everyone else’s and the speed was

You never really know how you’ll feel until you give it a go at the line. Yesterday for the rest day, I gave up plans to go out on a short ride and actually stayed in my bed from morning until the evening. I had a bit of a sore throat, a sore knee and I wanted to let the ankle heal up, so I spent the day in bed sleeping and watching a couple of DVDs. I didn’t do a single meter on the bike yesterday, which is normally not a good thing to do on a rest day, but I really needed to give the ankle a rest. The ankle problem also caused some small knee problems for me – that usually happens when

It’s been a long time since I competed in a 10-day tour. The approach is a little different from the shorter tours – in a race this long, it’s important to conserve one’s energy for the critical moments. So at the start of the Tour de L’Aude, I took a good look at the race bible, which contains all of the stage distances and course profiles. With my team, we determined what we thought would be the most significant stages based on the difficulty of the mountain passes and the time trials. We have broken the race up into segments. The first stage did not look too difficult, so we agreed that

Well now, this is a nice note to start these Giro diaries on. Even though I won in the last couple hundred meters of today’s stage, this really began yesterday. For the last 24 hours, I’ve been very upset. Because of that, I’ve been totally focused on winning today. Yesterday was a very disappointing day for me. Coming into the finale yesterday I felt really good – better even than I felt today – and as we hit the last corner, McEwen hooked me really hard and I had to shut down my sprint. Last night, after that, we had a big discussion on the team, trying to decide how we were going to

Tour de L’Aude is a 10-day stage race in the South of France. The Aude region contains a portion the Midi canal, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and is situated in the Pyrenees and along the Mediterranean coast. This region is famous for it’s Mistral winds along the Mediterranean that make the wind surfing spectacular and also make the cycling quite challenging at times. The Mistrals greeted us on day one, as we started in the coastal town of Gruissan. Our bikes were tilted all day in the direction that the wind was blowing. My T-Mobile teammates traveled here from

We had Alessandro (Bertolini) up in the break today. Actually, we were hoping it was going to hold and, for a while there, it looked like it might. They were up there hovering at around five minutes and then, even when two or three teams threw their guys to the front of the peloton, they managed to hold the gap for a long time. There were points when we were doing 55 to 60kph and we were still not putting any time on them for the first 35, 40 kilometers, but no one can hold that for too long in a breakaway and the peloton eventually pulled them back in. It makes sense, too, since Petacchi

A bit of a crazy day, wasn’t it? With all the rain those last 20km were just absolutely unbelievable. It was amazing how much water was on the road heading into the finish, and that made things incredibly dangerous; but even if it had been dry, that course was right on the limit of what might be considered safe. Wet roads just made it crazy, and that’s where I figure I should start my thoughts here today. It really wasn’t the finishing straight itself, it was the route we covered coming into town. The last 3km were fine. I mean the rain made that dicey, but the closing stretch was just

It’s been a bit of an eventful day. First off, I really twisted my ankle last night. The thing is, I was just walking down the stairs to dinner. So I had to have that taped up and it’s a bit swollen and a bit sore to walk around on. I spent the early part of the day trying to test that out a bit. In fact, it was my ankle that really made me try a shot at that break today. I really wanted to do the sprint today, but early on I tried a couple of times to do a couple of good accelerations. It hurt my foot a little too much when I really accelerated, so I figured I should try something else… if

I’m relieved… I think my heart has finally started to beat again. As you might recall, the other day I said that I was not feeling up to contesting the sprint, figuring that it was not my day and I wanted to stay out of it, mostly out of respect for the guys who were in a position to contest it. Well, today I was feeling up for it, got myself into the mix and had a very, very, very close call when Cipo’ went down. I even had his bike clipping my foot as he went down, so I just missed it. I stopped breathing there and my heart is just now starting up again. Some times it is just so, so close

Well, a guy can’t be too disappointed with that. Today worked out nicely for the team. It was actually a bit better than we might have expected for the first mountain-top finish. Despite all of that heavy Saeco firepower driving at the front of the field, our little Alessio team got two of our guys - Franco Pellizotti and Andrea Noe' – into the top ten. Franco crossed in third, 16 seconds behind Simoni and Andrea took tenth at 34 seconds. Not bad. I’m sure that if you’ve seen any of this on television, you can tell that it’s really hard going up against Saeco right now. As far as I am

Okay, so it didn’t go so great today. I mean I sort of knew that this was going to be a tough one, but I figured I might last a bit longer than I did. I knew this day was going to come… it’s just a little hard to take. I’ve been feeling pretty good up until now, but, to be honest, I was in grovel mode pretty much after the first climb started. It was pretty hard today and I wasn’t too happy with how things went, but that’s normally the case for me on the first day into the mountains… it’s just at this tour, the climbing kicked in a bit earlier than usual. We’d been talking about getting

It was a chaotic day… pretty much like every first stage in a big tour. You’ve probably already read about the way today’s stage went and, as you know, the day started out at a very easy pace and just got faster and faster and faster as we got closer to Alba. At least for me, it wasn’t exactly the best course on which to start a three-week tour. I mean I do feel good – actually really good – on the road right now. It’s just that on a three-week tour it always takes me at least a day or two to get into the rhythm of it. In the big tours, the final 10 or 15km are just so much faster than

Well, here we go. This is the first big race I’ve done after Paris-Roubaix, and despite the fact that I’ve done the Giro d’Italia before, this time it’s all new to me. It’s just been a pretty strange time, these last few weeks, leading up to the Giro. Winning something like Paris-Roubaix really does a job on your life (see "Backstedt a big surprise at Paris-Roubaix"). For one thing, people are actually paying attention to me when I’m just doing little things like warming up for the prologue. That never really happened before. Today, media were constantly coming by to ask questions, others

Over the last week I have been in Belgium, at a hotel just outside of Liège. This was our base for the Ardennes classics of the spring: Amstel, Fleche and Liège. The hotel here is a bit of a bike zoo at the moment with several teams of riders cooped up in rooms, bikes and trucks filling the parking lot and fans flowing in and out of the lobby looking for a photo with their hero or a free hat or water-bottle. This week marks the transition in the season from the flatter cobbled races to the hillier races. Some of the riders from Roubaix will push through until Amstel but few will go all the

My T-Mobile teammates traveled home to America 10 days ago after a month of racing in Europe. They passed up on racing Flèche Wallonne in favor of a little rest, relaxation and build-up for the next set of races on the schedule. I was eager to race at Flèche, though I’d be without teammates – I had never competed in this classic race before and knew it would be a course that I would like. I got the opportunity to race with a mixed team, Basis–T-Mobile, a truly international squad with riders from Canada, the United States, Israel and France. They live in the Aude region of France between

Last Friday we finished up racing in the Tour of the Basque country. Nice terrain, green hills, and cold wet weather. The race is a five-day Hors Categorie UCI race which many teams have as an objective for the early season or use as a trampoline to gain fitness before the Ardennes classics. The race offers up undulating and mountainous terrain, with several climbs each day - 25 over the five days - with much of the distance of the race being covered on narrow farm roads. Our team went to Pays Basque with loose objectives. Floyd knew he would be able to race for the overall but the rest of

As a team, we made the most of our time between the Castilla and Flanders World Cups by scheduling a sponsor visit to our sponsor to SRM in Germany, getting in some solid training rides and organizing a pre-ride of the course in Flanders. The SRM headquarters is close to the borders of Belgium and the Netherlands. Ulrich Schoberer, the inventor of the SRM, welcomed us to the company. The company is named after him, though for English speakers, Schoberer Rad Messtechnik is a little bit more difficult to say than “SRM.” Schoberer is a great host, he took us for nice dinners, did some testing

Usually when the time changes in the spring of each year, it is accompanied by an improvement in the weather, but here in Salamanca, we experienced a serious digression in the conditions over night as Europe moved into to daylight savings time. We awoke to dark skies and snow flurries. It was hard to believe we were in Spain or that it was the end of March. In keeping with the mood, Cathy Marsal wished me a “Merry Christmas” as we were warming up. It seems like the spring weather has been especially harsh this year in Europe. Michael sent me a text message from France, where he was racing

Over the past week, I have been in Northern Europe getting reacquainted with the cold weather. I have had a good schedule in the last months as I have only raced in the south of Spain and Portugal and have not had to suffer and endure the frigid temps in the rest of Europe. In Dwaars door Vlandaaren, a one-day race in Flanders; I was initiated to the cobbles, bergs, wind and cold. All in all, it was a pretty good experience and one I would go back and fight through again. This year we have a great team for the classics, as Max, Devolder, George and Eki’ are all riding well enough to win any

The Vuelta Castilla y Léon is a three-day tour that started in Valladolid and traveled to Salamanca. The field was incredibly strong here, 160 riders, including several world and Olympic champions. The terrain is rather desolate in this region of Spain, as there are not too many trees, mountains or small towns in the countryside, so the high winds that nature provides have had a profound effect on the racing. T-Mobile started this race with five girls – Dotsie Cowden, Amber Neben, Kimberly Bruckner, Stacey Peters and me. After day one, we began calling ourselves the “Bad News Bears,” as

The Primavera World Cup runs over the last 120 kilometers of the classic men’s Milan-San Remo World Cup course. It starts in the town of Varazze, just West of Genoa. I traveled to the start of the race two days early to meet up with my teammates and pre-ride the course. My teammates, Amber Neben, Kimberly Bruckner, Stacey Peters and Dotsie Cowden, had just arrived from the United States. We had only five riders to start in Primavera, as there are some very important races going on the U.S. that our sponsors want to make a solid presence in, like Redlands and Sea Otter. ReconnaissanceWe

Murcia ended up being quite successful for the team: we accomplished morethan we had set out to with two stage wins and a solid team effort. U.S.Postal currently has the most victories of any team in the professionalpeloton which isn’t bad considering we were the last to start racing. Friday’s stage at Murcia was a little harder than the profile had suggestedand some serpentine undulating roads took most of the peloton by surprise,split things up and zapped a good amount of energy out of everybody’s legsand spirits. It ended up being good for us as the challenge of the course made therace

The race is off to a good start for the team with another victory for Max and USPS/Berry Floor. Our directors have a bit of a competition running, as there are currently two Postal race programs, one for the classics and one for the smaller tours and Ardennes classics. I think Johan is now up on victories, 4 to 2 against Dirk. The past few weeks in Europe have been frigid with snow in Majorca, Barcelona and throughout much of the rest of Europe. Races have been cancelled and training sessions have been indoors. It was a relief when we arrived in Almeria in the south of Spain on the

This past week in Australia we have felt as though we were stuck in a broken record. We have had one field sprint after another, starting in the Geelong Tour and ending in the Geelong World Cup today. Our team did not have a sprinter here with legs at the finish to contest the podium, and we knew this after day one in the tour. We tried our hardest to force a different outcome in each of the races, but we never had any luck forging a breakaway that would stick to the finish. Last year at the Geelong World Cup, a breakaway went almost at the beginning of the race. The wind was blowing, and

The four-stage Geelong Tour began Sunday night with an eight-kilometer prologue time trial. T-Mobile is the only all-American team here, but there are a handful of Americans dispersed on different teams. Jessica Phillips is riding with the German Nuremberger team this season. She will be based in Liepzig, Germany and racing in Europe most of the year, but their team has started the season in Australia with the tour and a short training camp. Meredith Miller, who is based in Copenhagen, Denmark is riding with the Scandinavian SATS team. SATS is a chain of gyms that is prominent throughout

The team has started the season better than it ever has with five wins to date. Last year we didn’t have five before the Tour and only 12 in the entire year. The teams in both Ruta del Sol and Algarve were strong and successful. The nice thing is that we hadn’t really planned on being in flying form for these races; they were simply build-up for the main objectives, so it is definitely a confidence boost and a nice bonus to have the victories under the belt. Going into Algarve we knew the last two days were to be key. The time trial was a long one, 24 km, with many false flat sections and

Being in Australia this week has been a stark contrast to the past few weeks I spent training at home in Boulder. One week ago, I was Nordic skiing or riding my bike in sub-zero weather, trying to avoid ice patches in the shady sections of the canyons West of town. On Friday, I was riding along the Great Ocean road southwest of Melbourne watching the surfers along the coast. It was 40 degrees Celsius, the sun was beating down on us, sweat was beading on our faces, I had sunscreen spread all over my body, but was struggling cover the one spot I missed on the back of my neck with the collar of

The first race of the year always feels a little odd. The change from a training bike and long ride in a group or alone to a race bike and an attacking peloton is quite extreme and the body senses it almost immediately. But by the second day, my mind was back into it, the legs had come around and it seems like just a week ago I was in the Vuelta a España. The Volta Algarve is a nice race to start the season, as the weather is fairly mild in the south of Portugal, the racing is quite tame, and the countryside is nice for racing with undulating terrain. The vegetation and environment seem

Training camp has finished. I am back in Colorado and will soon be heading overseas for the beginning of the season. In the last week the training load increased and that old competitive spirit reappeared in the team. We rode between 4.5 and 6 hours each day with one easy day and one travel day when we left Solvang, California for Scottsdale, Arizona and our "sponsor camp" - which consisted of a weekend of fine meals at a nice hotel, where we could both ride and meet up with our sponsors and friends of the team before heading overseas for the races. The new team jerseys were also unveiled

Another race season is quickly approaching and I have spent this past week preparing for it with my T-Mobile teammates in Buellton, California. It is always interesting showing up for training camp, as there are some strong indicators of who has been working hard through the winter months and who might have put back a few too many Christmas cookies. Training camp is often the only time in a season that puts all of the team’s riders and staff in one place at one time. This gathering forced me to reflect on my first races as a member of T-Mobile and on how much the team has progressed since

After three months away from the team, we are all back together again – with a few new additions – to prepare for another season. We are in southern California, just outside of Santa Barbara. We have enjoyed solid sunshine throughout the week (at least until Saturday) and have been taking advantage of the quiet winding roads and surrounding hills to improve our fitness before heading back over to Europe for the start of the season. For the past three months Dede and I have enjoyed several months at home in Boulder. It has been nice being settled in one spot, together. The last few years we

We had our first T-Mobile gathering for the 2004 season at the OlympicTraining Center in Colorado Springs last week. We met for four days, theobjectives were to spend time dialing in our positions on our new bikes,meet with the physiologists and nutritionists who are part of our PerformanceEnhancement Team, undergo some testing, outline our team goals, get toknow one another a little better and have a little fun partaking in some"team bonding" exercises. Actually, I came to camp thinking that Starbucks was a new sponsor of the team, as I had recently received a box of coffee, a coffee card

I only get nervous for a few races each season and the world championship road races had my heart racing all weekend - although, I am not sure if I was more nervous for Michael’s race or for mine. The races in Hamilton provided a few surprises this past weekend. After previewing the course on Thursday and chatting with many of the men and women about the difficulty of the hills, the expectation was that the races would be much more selective than they were. We encountered two climbs per 12-kilometer lap. The first was 1.5 kilometers and the second was 2 kilometers in length. This did not

This is the one and only time during my cycling career that I have had the opportunity to race the world championships on home soil (or almost home). The host city, Hamilton, Ontario, is just 30 minutes from the center of Toronto, where my husband, Michael Barry, grew up and just a stone’s throw from my own hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For Michael and me, it is a dream to race a world championship with our friends and family on site to push us up the hills. Michael grew up riding along the Niagara escarpment that we will race up and down in Hamilton. He has shared these roads with me

Saturday’s stage started at the gravesite of Michela Fanini, an Italian rider who I raced against a few times in the early 1990s before she died instantly in an automobile accident. Cathy Marsal and I were reminiscing about the last race we both competed in with Michela. It was the 1994 World Championships in Sicily. Cathy was in a breakaway with her and they both crashed just a few kilometers from the finish. Michela was a super talented bike racer and from what it seems like; she came from a cycling family. Since her death, her father has been promoting the Tour of Tuscany in her memory

Stage 2 has historically been the most decisive in the Giro Toscana — often, the race has been won or lost on this day. It was hot at the start of the stage, which took us up two short category-3 climbs followed by two 10km ascents to the picturesque town of Volterra. We had a laugh at the start of the stage, as Svetlana Boubnekova and Zita Urbanaite had a bit of a cat fight on the bike and were yelling and hitting each other. I am not really sure what they were arguing about, but everyone gave them a little space in the bunch and they finally seemed to work it out and quiet down. Mountain

I feel as if I haven’t stopped moving for the past week. Seven days ago, I was sitting tranquilly in our little apartment in Spain and since then, I have traveled to San Francisco, attended several sponsor events, visited with friends, raced in San Rafael and in the T-Mobile International, traveled to Italy, and started racing in the week-long Giro Toscana. Welcome to the world of a professional cyclist. Amazingly, I still feel energetic and am eager to get on the bike each day. While arriving at the prologue yesterday in Pistoia, we were notified of an unfortunate accident that had

Being in San Francisco this past weekend felt like a bit of homecoming, as it was my first visit to the United States since the Philadelphia Liberty Classic in June. I have been in Europe most of the summer, training and racing. It was neat to see everyone in American cycling gathered for this event. I have nice memories of the race in San Francisco. The last time I was here was to watch my husband, Michael, race through the streets and up the hills. I wasn’t racing much at the time and was attending school so I walked around the course, wandering through the hundreds of thousands of