Breaking Mirrors! Stage Race Perils,,,

At best my voyage to France has been 50/50 on the scale of success and failure. Which in cycling, is pretty normal. It is the hardest sport in the world by far, it will steal your wallet, punch you in the face and kick you while your down. So basically you have to cherish the good things you have done in your career and not concentrate on the setbacks...

As the weekend started, we headed for Orleans on Thursday for Friday start of my first big French Stage Race, Tour De Loriet. I was kind of nervous, but just wanted to have a good showing and make it to Sunday where the one Sprinter's stage would happen. 

We arrived after a 4.5 hour drive in the team box truck. We unloaded, and then were given new team track suits for presentations and dinner. So they were pretty sweet, presents always make things fun. As we came into the hotel restaurant, our itinerary showed that we would be getting the full five course treatment for meals we would have! This was pretty awesome, finally we moved away from team ham sandwiches to something more exotic. Our first dinner was amazing, and unfortunately I had not the best time sleeping before the first stage. Not sure if it was the nerves or the hard bed, sleep just did not happen.

Getting to the staging area, we all kitted up and went for the team presentation. The day looked to be cold with possible rain showers. I also was told I couldn't wear my non-issue team arm warmers, so today I was just going to have to suffer through being cold. As I was getting my shoes on, I was able to sign my first autograph to a guy that looked like Kim Jong Il's brother. So that was cool. Finally got to warming up, and had some weird issues with my chain dropping, so went back to the team car and my rear derailleur was super bent inwards, so as soon as I touched it, the derailleur snapped off into my hands. Seriously, at this point I wasn't sure weather to laugh or cry. 

Everyone from the team went into a panic as we heard from the announcer that all riders were departing in 7 minutes. The bad thing is that the BH Connect frame uses its own style hanger, and the team only had extra hangers for the G4 style frames. Next thing I know my pedals were on a size small or xs small spare from the truck. Trying to get the saddle height as close to we could. I had no time to change the 90mm stem to something more fitting either. Then bam, I was off on a bike that was way to small and was completely unadjusted. 

As we had the first neutral 4km to get out of Orleans, I knew the day was going to be miserable. There was no possible way I could even ride the drops, the saddle height was one inch higher than the maximum suggested height and the shifting was beyond sticky. Thankfully I was a master at making campy work under duress. 

Next thing I know, we are stopped for the official start at km 0. Then we are off. I had no computer or the notes for the stage were on my bike, so I was hitting things completely blind. I knew that there was a prize at the 45km mark and figured I could see how the legs were for that. Unfortunately, we were off like a rocket. The racing was extremely fast for the first 100km, which we covered in 2 hours. Part of this due to a repetitively flat par-course, since we only had two categorized climbs before hitting the finishing laps where there were 6 categorized climbs.

As the kilometers passed, I noticed some extreme discomfort in my knee. I was pedaling complete squares. My position was completely off. This would be fine for just hanging out, but not at those speeds, distance and intensity. Finally the third time up the climb I completely snapped. I couldn't even pedal. So I figured I would ride a steady tempo and finish the day. With one time left up the climb, I had the race director ask me if I wanted to continue and of course the answer was "oui." No matter how much it hurt, I was making it to Sunday. Not but 30 seconds later, his car swerved in front of me. I stopped, we argued and then I was forced to abandon. 

Not but five minutes from pedaling, the swelling in my knee started and also extreme pain. Moving into the team vehicle and changing was extremely painful. This was not good, since this was the knee involved in the horrible crash in Loches. Being pretty upset with the day, everyone knew that it was going to happen. Getting thrown onto a bike you never have ridden, then having to ride a course like that meant nothing less than doom. 


The team seemed to miss the split in stage one, but then Kalvis was able to win the field sprint. Moving to Stage two, a crash and bad crosswinds created a break that all the teams except ours and the Slovak team were in. The Slovakians had 3 riders abandon during the stage, so bringing it back was not going to happen. Especially since the yellow jersey's team had a rider in the move as well. 


Our team salvaged some face as Kalvis won stage 3. This let off some pressure and the team went into the time trial with a grain of salt. We finished up and headed out for our long drive home.


Not sure how my knee was going to feel, I spent my Monday morning building up a spare 56cm frame. Got all the measurements dialed in and took it out for 2 hours of steady tempo. Thankfully after 1.5 hours my knee finally started to feel ok. Hopefully my slew of bad luck will turn around since I don't remember breaking any mirrors.