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From Poland: Stage 2

August 03, 2010 - Filed under: Rider Blogs

Comments (2)

Falling into a routine is fairly easy at a stage race. It certainly helps that we cyclists are surrounded by a staff of directors, mechanics, and soigneurs whose job it is to make our lives focus as closely to just the bike as possible. The have a selfless job, so it goes a long way to say thank you now and again... and then again in case they didn't hear us the first time.

Wake up, eat breakfast, relax back in the room, pack our suitcase, hop on the bus, drive to the race start, race meeting, race, bus, shower, hotel, dinner, massage, and then bed. Repeat.

The big asterisk differentiating the Tour of Poland from nearly every other race we do is that everything takes place here about four hours or more later. Whereas a normal race start is often in the late morning, say eleven AM or so, today's stage three of Poland for example gets rolling at four in the afternoon. Following simple logic, or perhaps just addition with hours, that means we're just starting the stage after most other stage races are finished!

This is merely an observation that I'm passing along to you the viewer, who presumably is somewhere besides lining the streets of Poland late into the day. This makes for much more casual mornings and considerably later nights than normal.

Yesterday's slog through Poland was nearly 260km all said and done with the lengthy neutral section tacked on before crossing the official start line. At over six hours, but never terribly stressful for the first five and a half, it made for some lengthy conversations in the pack. Gabriel Rasch flew the Cervélo TestTeam colors proudly in the breakaway, which unfortunately was assumed doomed from the beginning with so many strong sprinter teams here and a fast and flat finish. Dominique and I worked hard in the final fifteen kilometers of the finishing circuit to set up Martin in the sprint. Eleventh is not the podium or victory we're searching for, so you can rest assured that we'll be out fighting hard in today's stage three... even if that means we're hard at work late into the evening.