August 5, 2007

This past weekend was my first race back in Europe in almost 2 months. After going from feeling like I would never be able to ride my bike again to feeling the best I’ve felt in a long time I was very eager to get back. San Sebastian is a 230-kilometer trek over hundreds of 500-meter climbs and a handful of 6 to 8 kilometer ones. Needless to say it is very difficult race that favors a rider who is very explosive. For me it is a good race to build form, but not much more.

My race went a little different then I hoped, but next week I will know if it was for the better. I had hoped to just ride in the peloton to adjust back to the racing rhythm, but a very unusual race formed in the first few kilometers. A break went with 23 riders and no Discovery! This was not a good situation. Ten riders are hard to chase, but 23, well that’s really hard.

So my race then went from adjusting to racing in the peloton, to dragging it around for 170 kilometers. Man, that was a
hard course to chase on too. Anyhow, if our team was to play any role in the race we had to keep this break close.  Awesome training to say the least.

Now I have 6 days to prepare for Tour of Germany. Last week I logged in 32 hours of training with the last of those days being the race. Now it is time to taper a little so I come into the 9-stage race ready to work hard and build my form even more.

I would like to thank everyone for standing behind me while I was ill. I cannot tell you how important you guys were to my recovery and now I am excited to perform at my highest level ever in the coming months. Thank you!