What more fitting an opening to the Tour of California than the best racers in the world flying down asphalt between rows of palm trees, and who a more fitting winner than current world time trial champion Fabian Cancellara (CSC)? The Swiss rider turned a time of 3:51.211 to handily beat second-place rider Bradley Wiggins (High Road) by four seconds over the 2.1-mile course. “With my beautiful rainbow jersey, to win here in Palo Alto, it is really good,” Cancellara said.

Jennie Reed and the Madison team of Colby Pearce and Bobby Lea turned in a pair of silver-medal performances on Sunday as the Copenhagen Track World Cup concluded in Denmark. That raised the final U.S. medal count to five.

Things were back to normal for Sunday’s finale of the Giro della Provincia di Grosseto following Saturday’s rider protest when the peloton refused to contest in what they called a dangerous finish. There was no strike Sunday as Danilo Napolitano (Lampre) grabbed his second win of the 2008 season, out-sprinting Mattia Gavazzi (Preti Mangimi-Prisma Stufe) with Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas) crossing the line third. Pozzato, winner of the opening stage, claims the overall in the new three-day stage race.

Ruslan Ivanov, a man who for two years believed his career was over, has resurrected himself with overall victory at the Tour de Langkawi.

George Hincapie sprints to the finish line of the Prologue at the Tour of California

The second stage of the inaugural Tour of the Province of Grosseto on Saturday wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty. First, riders refused to contest the final sprint, calling the finishing straight too narrow and dangerous. So instead of barreling headlong down the sprint, the peloton rode at a snail’s pace across the line in protest, leaving Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas) in the leader’s jersey going into Sunday’s third stage.

He’s done it two years running, but scoring a pair of stage wins will be tougher than ever this year for J.J. Haedo. CSC’s big Argentinean sprinter currently holds the record for career Amgen Tour of California stage wins at four. This year he will have no fewer than three current and former world champion sprinters to deal with in the form of Paolo Bettini (2006-07), Tom Boonen (2005) and Oscar Freire (1999, 2001 and 2004).

The final round of the 2007-08 UCI Track World Cup Classics got underway in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday as the U.S. contingent collected a pair of bronze medals on opening night of the three-day competition. Sarah Hammer placed third in the women's 3000-meter individual pursuit while countrywoman Theresa Cliff-Ryan claimed her first career World Cup medal with a third-place effort in the women's 10-kilometer scratch race.

Holding a precariously small lead in the overall standings at the Tour de Langkawi for the last six days, Matthieu Sprick finally lost his hold on the maillot jaune Friday in Kuantan. Trying his hardest without result, Drapac-Porsche's young sprinter Mitchell Docker knew time was fast running out to lead the Tour de Langkawi, however briefly that now might be, and that the seventh leg could well be his last chance before Saturday’s queen stage to Fraser Hill.

It’s been the biggest race in North America for the past two years, and the third edition of the 650-mile Amgen Tour of California, held over a north-to-south route from February 17-24, will be no exception. This year’s Tour of California field includes two-time and reigning world champion Paolo Bettini and his Quick Step teammate Tom Boonen, two-time and reigning world time trial champion Fabian Cancellara (CSC), three-time world champion Oscar Freire (Rabobank) and U.S. national champion and defending Tour of California winner Levi Leipheimer in Astana’s U.S. racing debut.

With AEG’s announcement of the start list for this year’s Amgen Tour of California comes the revelation that Rock Racing, the revamped California-based team that hired several controversial riders in the off-season, will start the race with only five riders. All 16 other participating teams have fielded the maximum of eight riders.

Jose Perez Serpa (Serramenti-PVC) a climber by trade takes a sprint victory in Kuala Rompin

Peter McDonald (Drapac-Porsche) takes the last intermediate sprint

Alexandre Usov (AG2r - La Mondiale) edges Peter McDonald (Drapac-Porsche) in the second intermediate sprint of the day

Kurt Jambretz was in Malaysia capturing the action during the sixth stage of Le Tour de Langkawi. Not only did Matthieu Sprick hold his narrow race lead, but the fans were surprised by a sprint win by Colombian climber, Jose Serpa. See the sights and follow the action as it unfolded.

Before the race started, Jose Serpa was tipped to be a serious contender for the overall classification of the 2008 Tour de Langkawi. But with 25 teams and 150-odd riders, controlling the race is near impossible and making the right break is a bit of a lottery. So when things didn't go to plan on Day 1, he decided to tack and change course.

It’s been two weeks since Rachel Lloyd closed out her 2007-08 racing campaign at the 2007 UCI world cyclocross championships in Treviso, Italy. Lloyd, a native of Fairfax, California, was the highest-finishing American during the January 26-27 championship weekend, crossing the line in 9th place. She briefly rode as high as third, until waning fitness from a long season caught up with her.

Thor Hushovd (Crédit Agricole) has donned the first yellow jersey of the 35th Tour Méditerranéen after winning the first stage, a 120km run between La Crau and Hyères. The 30-year-old Norwegian, winner of the green jersey in the 2005 Tour de France, outsprinted Italian Liquigas teammates Francesco Chicchi and Alberto Curtolo to take the victory.

With rain clouds threatening to dampen Wednesday’s mountainous fourth stage at the Mallorca Challenge, overnight leader Filippe Gilbert (FDJeux) wasn’t sounding too optimistic about his chances of defending his jersey. “It’s going to be too wet and dangerous. It’s not worth crashing to try to stay with the lead group in this mountainous stage,” Gilbert told VeloNews before the stage. “I already won a stage. That was the main goal for this race, along with getting ready for Milan-San Remo. I will take it easy today.”

He'd won the first three bunch sprints, but each time there had been a breakaway ahead. Nonetheless, Alberto Loddo’s Tinkoff teammates continued to believe in him, so on Tuesday they sacrificed everything for him, only to see him boxed in at the finish. It was all for nothing. By this time last year he'd already won two stages and was on his way to a hat trick.

The members of Team High Road introduced themselves to their new neighbors over the weekend at Art's Cyclery in San Luis Obispo, California. High Road recently registered its headquarters in the California town, making it the sole American ProTour team this season. High Road manager Bob Stapleton introduced the athletes — some of whom were straight off a training ride as part of a team camp — to a packed crowd at Art's Cyclery. City mayor Dave Romero, also on hand, said he was thrilled to have a team of High Road's caliber based out of his town.

It is often said that races are won - and lost - in the off season. One thing is certain: The rider who steps to the top of the podium on the last day of 2008 Tour of California has surely been training with rock-solid focus over these past few months, and those who haven’t will soon pay the price. The Tour of California is back with a vengeance.

Steep climbs couldn’t slow down the peloton in Tuesday’s third stage at the Mallorca Challenge. Despite tackling some of the steepest roads in Mallorca’s dazzling Tramuntana range, the peloton came through for another mass sprint in the 168.4km stage from Pollença to Alcúdia.

A forced time-out can sometimes be a good thing. As long as you're allowed to return to what you did before, have the strength to come back and deal with the consequences, it can make you a better rider. Perhaps even a better man.

There’s a new title sponsor in domestic road racing this year, one that has already built a growing legacy in the sport. Bissell, the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based floor-care products company, enters its sixth year in pro-cycling sponsorship. Bissell's support for the sport began in 2003 with the U.S. Postal Service team. From 2005 to 2007 the company co-sponsored Discovery Channel, and last year it co-sponsored the Priority Health continental team. When that company scaled back its commitment, Bissell stepped in as title sponsor.

This time the sprinters got it right. A day after Philippe Gilbert (Francaise des Jeux) upset the peloton’s fastest men with a late-stage attack, the sprinters got it back on track Monday in the second stage at the Mallorca Challenge in Spain’s Balearic islands. A heavily bearded Graeme Brown (Rabobank) won easily ahead of Denis Flahaut (Saunier Duval) and Gert Steegmans (QuickStep) in an eight-up sprint that saw the bunch splinter in the late going in the 162.7km rolling stage across eastern Mallorca from Cala Millor to Son Servera.

From now on, February 11, 2008, will be known as a significant milestone in the globalization of cycling. It saw an successful all-Asian breakaway that lasted some 150km, and the first Korean winner in the Tour de Langkawi. Cycling is no longer a sport that excites only those in Europe, or attracts fans interested only in European racing. One of a quintet of riders who escaped on the longest leg of the race, Won Jae Lee (Seoul Cycling) wasn't the favorite - that was Meitan Hompo's Koji Fukushima, who initiated the move on his own after 60km before being caught 20km down the road.

Yury Trofimov (Bouygues Telecom) sewed up overall victory in the 38th Etoile de Bessèges on Sunday. The Russian won the five-day French race after finishing safely in the bunch behind Borut Bozic (Cycle Collstrop) in Sunday’s 145km finale into Bessè. The 24-year-old Trofimov took the jersey in the third stage and then followed the sprinters into his biggest win of his career. Mike Friedman fought into the day’s main breakaway for Slipstream-Chipotle and was only reeled in with less than 5km to go to set up the mass gallop.

After the dramatic events of Saturday, the sprinters' teams decided there would be none of the same Sunday in Sitiawan. However, a disorganized chase in the final kilometers led to chaos — but thriving in chaos was Jeremy Hunt, who showed that at age 33, he's still got the legs to beat the best. Without a lead-out train in sight and sensing a lack of unity, the veteran Briton, who switched teams this year to Crédit Agricole, found himself in a 10-man move that skipped clear of the peloton 5km from the finish.

After just one day in the saddle, the Tour de Langkawi finds itself in an intriguing position. On a stifling Saturday afternoon in the mainland's far north, a select breakaway group charged to the finish in Kepala Batas way ahead of schedule and more than 20 minutes clear of the rest of the field. And in one fell swoop, it's likely to have changed the race for overall honors into a 19 horse race.

Corruption, scandal, missing prize money, beauty, bravery, tragedy and of course, triumph have all been elements of past Tours de Langkawi, still one of the biggest races outside Europe. Though without doubt, “survival” has been a constant theme in each of those 12 editions, and survival is what brings us to Lucky #13 in the Chinese Year of the Rat.

Slipstream-Chipotle’s Magnus Bäckstedt has gotten back on his indoor trainer after suffering a broken collarbone at the Tour of Qatar. Meanwhile, BMC rider Steve Bovay had surgery Wednesday to repair damage from the same injury at the same race. Bäckstedt crashed on stage 5 of the Tour of Qatar, and flew home to the United Kingdom for surgery immediately thereafter. After having his collarbone bolted back together, Bäckstedt got back on the trainer Monday.

World four-cross champion Brian Lopes won the Men’s Open category at the January 20 Championship race of the 2007-08 Fresno Cyclocross Series at Woodward Park sponsored by Sportsmobile. It was the first time the 36-year-old Lopes had entered a cyclocross race.

Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi (Milram) makes his season debut this weekend at the 13th GP Costa degli Etruschi as he faces an appeal in the Court of Arbitration for Sport next month over elevated levels of Salbutamol dating back to last year’s Giro d’Italia.

Australia’s Anna Meares, Olympic champion in the 500-meter sprint at the 2004 games in Athens, miss her chance to defend her title after suffering a crash at the Los Angeles round of the 2007-08 UCI World Cup.

The injury report keeps growing for Slipstream-Chipotle early in the 2008 season. First it was Magnus Backstedt cracking his right clavicle in the Tour of Qatar last week. On Wednesday, Blake Caldwell went down in a crash in the opening stage of the Étoile de Bessèges in France to fracture his hip. The team is reporting he should be sidelined for about three weeks. Despite Caldwell’s bad luck, Slipstream-Chipotle snuck two riders into the top 10, with Mike Friedman taking ninth and Jason Donald slotting in for 10th.

Santa Barbara, California’s Adam Duvendeck turned heads with his eighth-place finish in the men’s sprint at the Los Angeles round of the World Cup, held January 17-20 in Carson City, California. The result stood as the top finish by an American male sprinter throughout the entire meet, and set the 26-year-old Duvendeck up as a strong candidate to represent the United States at the Beijing Games.

The “argyle gang” erased any doubt over the weekend that the new-look Slipstream-Chipotle was going to be competitive on the international stage with a strong start to the 2008 season. Racing on three fronts, the team scored a spot on the podium in Sunday’s GP La Marseillaise to open the European calendar with Ryder Hesjedal in third. Chris Sutton, meanwhile, took fourth overall in the Tour of Qatar and others on the squad dominated at the Tour of the Bahamas with victories in all three stages.

In a bold move, Kelly Benefits-Medifast team director Jonas Carney guaranteed Friday that his second-year team would place a rider on the podium at every stage of February’s Amgen Tour of California. Okay, not really.

Tom Boonen might be known as Mr. Classics, but the road to glory in April goes through the wind-blasted deserts of Qatar. Ever since trekking to this Arabic nation overflowing with petro-dollars for the first time in 2004, Boonen has used the weeklong sprint-fest as a trampoline for spring-classic success. “The last few years we’ve been good here, so it’s become somewhat of a habit,” said Boonen, who relegated Alberto Loddo (Tinkoff) to second with Luciano Pagliarini (Sauner Duval-Scott) third in Friday’s finale. “If we weren’t going good, then I’d be worried.”

Danilo Napolitano (Lampre) received a nice birthday present Thursday as he steered clear of a nasty crash that KO’d classics candidate Magnus Backstedt (Slipstream-Chipotle) and won stage 5 of the Tour of Qatar ahead of race leader Tom Boonen (Quick Step). While Backstedt wound up with a broken right clavicle, barrel-chested Napolitano bolted ahead of Boonen’s derailed train to snag his first win over Boonen, who retained the overall lead over teammate Steven De Jongh with just one day to go.

While USA Cycling hosts a variety of clinics and conferences, these haven’t included leadership conferences aimed specifically at women – until last weekend. Apparently the time is ripe, as USA Cycling’s Enhancing Leadership in Women’s Cycling Conference held at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs was sold out, and declared a rousing success by all those involved. “People are really excited,” Lynda Ransdell said. “They think this is the start of something … getting more women involved in USA Cycling in both racing and coaching.”

The Astana team camp isn’t Johan Bruyneel’s only project going on this week in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The recently retitled Johan Bruyneel Cycling Academy is also hosting 16 young riders in the same hotel as the ProTour squad. Bernard Moerman has run the operation for years under the banner of the Cycling Center with headquarters in his home of Oostkamp, Belgium, and more recently with the Albuquerque satellite program.

Maybe Tom Boonen is mortal after all. After winning the opening two stages of the 7th edition of the Tour of Qatar (three if you count Sunday’s opening’s time trial), Boonen was relegated to second in Wednesday’s 131.5km fourth stage when a brisk wind and a surprisingly strong Alberto Loddo (Tinkoff) took him down a notch.

Eddy Merckx is a living legend, but don’t ask many Qataris to point him out in a crowd. The 62-year-old Belgian can’t walk unnoticed down any street in Europe, but put the Cannibal in front of a crowd during the Tour of Qatar, and most locals couldn’t tell you who won the most men’s races in cycling’s history. Merckx is in Qatar this week acting as a consultant and advisor for the seventh edition of a race that he was instrumental in creating.

Despite spills and splits in the bunch, Tom Boonen (QuickStep) just keeps stacking up victories at the Tour of Qatar. The Belgian bomber won for the second day in a row despite getting caught up behind a late-stage crash that pushed the race leader into a second group with about 40km to go in Wednesday’s jittery 147.5 third stage. When the group came back together, QuickStep drove it home to deliver Boonen to the line in winning fashion in what’s his 13th career Tour of Qatar stage win

The first day of the second annual Serotta Science of Cycling Symposium offered participants some welcome opportunities to take on a few sacred cows of the sport.

Having a group to head out with each morning at our team training camp in Mallorca last week was a change after having spent six winter weeks either riding alone or with just one other rider.

A storm blew across the Qatari desert Monday, but it wasn’t one of the sirocco winds that can scour this flat desert wasteland. Instead, it came in the form of a super-motivated Quick Step team that left the Tour of Qatar peloton flayed like a lonely flag tattered in the wind. Coming a day after its team time trial victory, QuickStep didn’t miss a step and hammered through stiff crosswinds in Monday’s 137.5km second stage from Al Zubarah to the Doha Golf Club to shatter the race into pieces.

Slipstream-Chipotle came within two seconds of a Hollywood ending in Sunday’s opening team time trial at the seventh Tour of Qatar in the first race of what will be an ambitious 2008 campaign. Anchored by big engines Magnus Backstedt and David Millar, Australia’s Chris Sutton crossed the line first for the argyle gang in 6 minutes, 37 seconds, and looked to have the win in the bag with only defending champion Quick Step still on the short but fast 6km out-and-back course along Doha’s palm-lined corniche.

Never did the man who came to the 2008 Tour Down Under with aspirations of winning a sprint or two believe it was possible to win the race overall. But on a picture-perfect Sunday in Adelaide, that's exactly what happened to Andre Greipel.

It was a hat trick, but not quite the hat trick some might have predicted at the beginning of the year. Dutchman Lars Boom scored his third world cyclocross title Sunday, adding an elite gold medal to the junior title he earned in 2003 and the U23 rainbow jersey he scored at last year’s world’s in Belgium. His Rabobank teammate, Sven Nys, however, had to settle for third, missing out on an impressive triple of his own — a world title to add to his World Cup crown and the Belgian national championship — losing a sprint for second to Czech rider Zdenek Stybar.

Lycra and burkhas are the unlikely companions this week as the seventh Tour of Qatar cranks up Sunday in this oil-rich state protruding into the Persian Gulf like a thumb. There’s nary a mountain, but plenty of sand and wind in what’s become a popular season-starter for riders — 130 of them this year, representing 24 nations on 17 teams from the United States, Europe and Asia.

It appears Andre Greipel is a man who can do no wrong. Before this week, the palmarès of the 25-year-old from Rostock amounted to five wins in much smaller stage races. But all of a sudden, he's stepped up to the ProTour level in a very, very big way. And after a third stage victory Saturday in Willunga, he finds himself the likely champion of the 2008 Tour Down Under with just one stage remaining.

Arnaud Jouffroy lined up as the odds-on favorite on Saturday at the world junior cyclocross championship in Treviso, Italy. He didn’t disappoint, but he had to fight to live up to expectations. Based largely on the strength of his sixth-place finish at world’s last year, the fact that the five men who finished ahead of him had graduated to the U23 category, and his stellar results all season, the 17-year-old Frenchman was the pick of many in a sport often dominated by Belgians.

The stage has been set for a showdown of epic proportions. In searing heat, a highly animated fourth stage of the Tour Down Under had the potential to impose time gaps, but the finale in Strathalbyn saw the fourth bunch gallop in as many days. High Road's Andre Greipel took a convincing win over race leader Mark Renshaw, who kept his ochre jersey, thus leaving the door to overall honors wide open for Saturday's stage in Willunga.

The finish may still be three days away, but there's every possibility the 10th edition of the Tour Down Under will come down to the wire. And get this: The winner may well be the sprinter who can climb best.

So far, it's a Tour Down Under like we've never seen before. In years past, after two stages there's been only a handful of riders left in contention. But this year is clearly different: After Andre Greipel's scintillating stage victory in Hahndorf, three riders have the same time overall - all of them sprinters.

It's been four years coming, but on a baking hot Tuesday in Angaston, Mark Renshaw finally delivered on what he'd long set out to do. Maybe it was the hours spent behind a motorbike over the Australian summer, paced by his father over the dead roads of Bathurst in country New South Wales. Maybe it was the added strength that comes with three full seasons as a professional, under the wise-old wings of team manager Roger Legeay.

Sprinter ace Robbie McEwen says he won’t be jealous come July about Cadel Evans’ rising prominence on Silence-Lotto for the 2008 season. With Evans bucking for the Tour de France overall, McEwen will take a back seat on the Belgian team where he’s enjoyed marquee status for the past decade en route to winning three green points jerseys.

American Jenny Reed owns a trophy case full of World Cup medals — 17 to be exact. But before Sunday night, only one of them was gold. The 29-year-old Reed doubled that Sunday night by winning the keirin, holding off a hard charging Willy Kanis of the Netherlands in the finals. “With the keirin I’ve always had a good level of confidence,” said the Momentum Cycling ace, who took her other World Cup gold in the keirin at the Manchester World Cup in 2004. “But when I know my sprint is going good, that bumps my confidence up even more.”

Pat McDonough has faced his share of ups and downs since taking control of the U.S. track program after the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The lowest of the low came at the 2005 world championship, where the U.S. earned no medals at its home track, the ADT Event’s Center in Los Angeles. That failure was followed by another loss, when Australian coach Gary West — whom McDonough had chosen to rebuild the program — quit after only a few months on the job.

Hanka Kupfernagel and Lars Boom (Rabobank) won the mud-splashed eighth round of the UCI cyclocross World Cup on Sunday in Hoogerheide, the Netherlands. Coming just one week before the world championships in Treviso, Italy, the race was an important benchmark for checking who is on form — and two riders definitely not up to snuff were U.S. champions Katie Compton (Spike Shooter) and Tim Johnson (Cannondale-Cyclocrossworld.com). Compton was a non-starter, reportedly suffering from jet lag after returning to Europe. And Johnson was a DNF, thanks to an untimely cold.

Former sprint king Mario Cipollini will indeed race for Michael Ball’s Rock Racing team this season, his lawyer confirmed Sunday. Cipollini spent last week at the U.S. team’s training camp in Malibu, California. But on Thursday, he threw some doubt on whether he would be joining the team. "It's not an easy transition," he said in a telephone chat with Rai television. "We'll see. We're still in talks. But compared to two days ago, things are a bit more difficult. Something has happened."

It was an unpredictable precursor to the Tour Down Under as Germany's André Greipel, a relative unknown to most, upstaged his more fancied local talent to claim first blood among the sprinters in the Down Under Classic. The fourth-year pro, not quite as muscled as his Australian counterparts Robbie McEwen and Mark Renshaw - the two riders he convincingly beat to the line Sunday evening in Glenelg - patiently waited for Graeme Brown's Rabobank train to tire before his High Road crew placed him in the hot seat two-and-a-half laps from home.

Scott Sunderland’s ride of a lifetime in the men’s 1000 meter time trial netted the young Australian his first-ever World Cup gold medal, and smashed his existing personal best time by nearly one second. The effort also sent the hulking 20-year-old back to the Australian team pits with a trash can in-tow. Sunderland, whose massive legs and enormous neck appear better suited for a football game than a bike race, spent the next 15 minutes buckled over, losing his lunch after his winning ride.

Defending champion Martin Elminger will be one of five past champions contesting the 10th edition of the Tour Down Under, which begins in the South Australian beachside town of Glenelg on Sunday, January 20. Stuart O'Grady (1999, 2001), Mikel Astarloza (2003), Luis León Sánchez (2005) and Simon Gerrans (2006) make up the rest of the past winners back for another crack at the title. However, they may well face their biggest challenge yet.

Seventeen-year-old Taylor Phinney can pen another page in his quickly growing book of cycling successes. Riding just the seventh individual pursuit of his career, the high school senior rode with the calculated panache of a veteran to grab his first-ever World Cup victory, defeating Dutchman Jenning Huizenga in a winning time of 4:26:09. “I just suffered through it. I think the person who can suffer the most wins this race,” Phinney said. “I didn’t expect to win when I was six or seven laps in.”

When American Mike Friedman takes to the ADT Event Center Velodrome in Los Angeles for the qualifying round of the men’s World Cup scratch race Saturday afternoon, he’ll do so with the confidence that comes with winning a gold medal at the previous round in Beijing, China, in December.

Dear Readers,
Welcome to the latest edition of The Prologue, the weekly summary of news from the world of competitive cycling by your friends at VeloNews.com.

It was a rocky 2007 season for the three ProTour Spanish teams. Inconsistent results and nagging questions over the Puerto doping investigation overshadowed many of the highlights for the Spanish Armada during last year’s campaign. None of the three Spanish squads – Caisse d’Epargne, Saunier Duval-Scott and Euskaltel-Euskadi – managed to win a major tour or classic, though Samuel Sánchez saved what was an otherwise lackluster season for the Basque team with a late-surge in the Vuelta a España to finish third.

Dear Readers,

German sprint ace, Erik Zabel, said Thursday the 2008 season could very well be his last in the professional peloton. Zabel, a record six-time consecutive winner of the Tour de France's green jersey, discussed his future plans as his Milram team unveiled a significantly restructured squad for the upcoming season. The 37-year-old German, who hit the headlines last year when he admitted to having "briefly" used the banned blood booster EPO early in his career while he raced with Deutsche Telekom, said he is already thinking about life away from the bike.

Cyclenews (September 13, 1974): Sue Novara takes second in the sprint at the track world championship.

With six weeks of solid riding and several five-hour rides in my legs, my bike is starting to once again feel part of my body, and it now also seems to be moving more fluidly.