Biking Bros

We are Dwayner(Svein) and The Young Man(Christian) and this is our word

So today’s ride went got a bit out of hand, haha, kind of misjudged the size of the loop I had planned and then after I forgot to charge my Garmin my ride ended up being 2h longer than it was suppose to be. It was suppose to be 5.5h with some efforts on the hills, definitely got in the hills, figured I got in about 4000m of climbing, so when I did finally roll in after what was probably my longest ride ever I was hungry, thirsty and tired. Did get to ride some pretty amazing roads though, through the many small postcard like towns speckled within the mountains. If you ever get the chance to come to Girona don’t think twice. 

Hey YoungMan… here’s a good mac tutorial video. Hope your having fun with your pearly white shiny new rig. Esto fue muy divertido.

Since the Portugal tour I have been back here in Girona, taking a bit of an easy week to recover from the past two weeks efforts.  I moved from where I was previously staying with Lukas, on the outer borders of Girona, to the team’s apartment in the heart of the old part of town, actually I think just one or two doors down from where that Armstrong fellow used to live, and it is absolutely spectacular. Waking up and opening the balcony doors to the narrow cobbled streets below, the building hundreds old years old, rich in history, surrounded by tiny alley with shops and restaurants filling every crevas. Its one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. After I learned that I would be based out of Girona until at least worlds Amber quickly jumped on a plane over to come and stay with me for a couple of weeks to hang out, see me and the sights. Our days so far have been busy with shopping, eating at the great tapas establishments, going to the local markets and even a trip to the beach yesterday. The easy days only last so long though and by the weekend I will be getting back into the full swing of things to get prepped for worlds. With not much team racing going on they are looking at getting me into a couple of Belgian Kermesses before doing GP Isberge and worlds.

Mythbusting the Canadian Olympic coverage All right my first bikingbros post is a rant.

The Olympics are over - I barely watched. I have a hard time watching the Olympics because they just make me mad. Maybe I’m bitter because I was never good enough to make it… there would be some truth to that. But really its the commercials on TV and the commentary on CBC.

I get frustrated with the multi-million dollar commercial productions from companies like Bell who just seem to crawl out of the woodwork on a four year cycle to capitalize on the marketing opportunity of the games. All the while I know most sport in Canada operates at third world levels. Then we have CBC commentators bemoaning our athletes performance. So typically Canadian, lets whine aboot something we don’t like - and then blame the government.

So here’s some Olympic myths busted: Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Martin is going to win the Tour de France.

Crazy hard day, legs were tired, rode the groupetto in with Tyler and CJ. Dan showed his world class climbing skills finishing 8th on the day and no sits 9th overall. 

170km, 3500m of climbing, single file all day. Hard. Helped get Dan up there a bit for finally then sat up in the last km, legs tired after probably one of the hardest days on the bike ever. Guys saying that this is probably the hardest race you will ever do in you life. Enjoying it though, getting bottles and whatnot. Tomorrow 2x Cat 2, 3x Cat 1 in 146km, think my hardest day ever so far is going to be put to shame. Going to sleep now.

Hard day today, same old routine, about 50km in the first hour and again nothing was able to stay away until everybody who is not Portuguese start yelling to let the break go and the yellow jersey take a nature break. Even then one more guy always tries to go, he usually comes back and gets harassed for attacking the yellow jersey until he just ends up at the back. Eventually a small break did get up the road but Liberty Seguros was quick to defend never letting the break gain more than 3 minutes even though the top GC rider was over 10 minutes down, but I think simply defending the jersey for these guy isn’t enough and they are looking to win every stage that finishes on a hill. Today making that 2 for 2 for them after they went first and second on the stage. Dan had a good ride to finish up 7th loosing just a hand full of seconds. To put things into perspective Dan rode the 7km finishing climb at a 400w average, weighs just 60kg, and sat in the whole climb. I just rode up with Lukas trying to help him minimize any losses, everyone is starting to get tired.  The next two days are going to be super hard. Break?

Great interview with Dwayner on Pez Cycling, check it here..

www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=6209&status=True

The last day for the sprint for Tyler today as the next three stages all finish on hilltops, no worries we have Dan to take care of those for us.  So today we decided to take it a bit easier in the morning, figuring that we were wasting a bit to much energy chasing all those futile early break, as it has been clear that everyday thus far the Portuguese sprinter’s team were always keen to have everything come back together for a sprint. Finally after covering 48km in the first hour something finally went once again though it took some yelling and the yellow jersey to stop for a nature break for it to get some time on the field.  From there it was just keeping Tyler well positioned on the climbs,riding out in the wind, pushing him while he takes a pee, basically doing anything to make his day as easy as possible so he can just unleash it all in the last few hundred meters of the race. The finishes thus far have been pretty crazy with tons of roundabouts, crazy corners and steep climbs in the closing kilometers, making for some really hectic racing and today was no exception in a sharp right into an uphill going into the last 300m. Our job usually starts about 15 to 20km out when we start making sure to that Tyler is close to the front, riding out in the wind to take him up the side and we try to have him and CJ well positioned in the last couple kms. Usually in the last couple kms its so strung out that if they are well positioned its not to much problem staying up there and then CJ does his final leadout for Tyler, either putting him on another top sprinter’s wheel or doing a straight lead out and dropping him off with about 250m to go. My job is usually done with about 2-3km to go and from there we usually just sit up and roll into the line, and hopefully as your rolling across the line we see our man sprinting to victory during the recap on the jumbtron. Unfortunaltly today Tyler got taking into the barriers and it being an uphill finish once you have lost that bit of speed there is no coming back in the remaining meters. Tomorrow it will be for Dan with a 7km finishing climb. Still looking for the breakaway.