Milano World Cup

Ciao...gratzie...prego.
Well this post could be about 10 pages long if I don't police myself, but I'll try to do it as briefly as possible without taking out too much of the details that made this trip to Italia pretty fantastic.

Logistically not as easy as you would think. Stef drove us to Charleroi airport in Southern Belgium Friday afternoon. What I love about southern Belgium is that it is french and it's nice to be able to read signs, understand what people are saying and not feel like a half whit.

So we're waiting to board, we look over and see that Sven Nys is on our flight as well. Pretty ironic, well ok it's not ironic, but it's just cool to see that sometimes we think alike.

Off the jet, cab ride to the hotel in Bergamo Itay, which is for sure one of the nicest places in the World. Waiting to check in I see this guy in the hall, humm that guy looks a lot like Verveken.
Mainly there was a good reason for that, it was Verveken and his buddy Stybar. Cool thing about Verveka' is he's totally down to earth and Wendy and Helen know him a little, so they chatted a little. I tried to think of something funny to say...but I was also trying to pretend like I was really cool and so I said nothing. I think it worked.

So I had the best 8 Euro ravioli ever for dinner. I could write about it, but I mean , fresh pasta in Italy, enough said.

Next day, hop on a bus to the train, train to Milano. Really cool train station. So now we were looking for a bus to Linota airport...then cab ride to Linota NH hotel. Luckily our bikes followed in the van, we traveled with an overnight bag only. It was pretty cool to be in Milan, get a little tour through part of the Centrum on our way to the hotel. It must be off season, cause the hotel wasn't very expensive but it looked super Euro chic.

I'm still trying to understand the whole "bidet" thing. I mean it looks like a toilet, but it's obviously not for that. So I think it's for washing purposes as the soap beside it was called "intimate wash". Seems like a huge fascination for washing private parts, I just didn't think that it's necessary to have a whole area designated for such a procedure, really whats wrong with just washing in the shower. Maybe I'm just a Moose, but I just really can't see myself ever using one of those. Maybe they just had extra pipes in the bathroom and needed to hook em up to something. A water fountain would be nice.

So, the Milano course. On the edge of a lake. Long pavement drag on some grass, lots of sweeping corners and steep ups and downs as part of the course is a BMX track. A couple sweet burms, some tacky thick mud, some long straights, more sweeping turns, shallow stairs a few kick ups and downs, some fast barriers and voila.

Womens race.

Pretty big crash on the starting straight and Natasha had to scrub some speed which didn't help with the fact that she was already in the third row. The course did get really congested at one of the climbs as some girls weren't able to ride it, then there was a crash in one of the bowl sections and Tasha had to dig to get around some of the girls. She put in a really great second half of the first lap and rocked the second lap, she was going pretty good until she lost traction in a loose section and wiped out a little. She worked pretty hard to come back from that and put in another couple big efforts only to once again wipe out 2 laps later in a similar part of the course.
She put in a solid ride, everything is falling into place and the stars are starting to align for her.

She was looking a lot more like the rider I know she is. I think the rest did her some good and expect that everything will come to blossom next week. We're not really putting the pressure on her though. We know she has all the tools necessary to pull off a great ride but the lessons we have learned along the way have been extremely valuable and are definitely what we will be building next years success and the years after success on. So lately we have had a little more of an open attitude as we have controlled as many of the variables that we had control on up to this point so she's just staying focused but allowing herself a little room to breath.

This season has already been a huge success and it's just one more chance for her to put some extra cream on the top. I know that once she puts on that National Team kit, she will have the desire to feel the pain and it will make her hungry to go out and grab a hold of her performance and strangle it.

Mens race.

Well I have to say that this week I eased off on a few things, first was training, I took two days off and just did a few sprints here and there and just "piano" in between. Also, I knew travelling to Italy I wouldn't have as much control on my diet and such so I just gave myself a little freedom and didn't stress that there was no Muesli on the breakfast table. Ok well I brought my own oats, but I ate some Nutella and a chocolate brioche here and there.

So, just to set the mood. Milan, by the lake, 10 degrees, sun is shinning bright, screaming Italian fans, some mud, but not insane amounts, just enough to make it sticky. No leg warmers no undershirts, thin socks. Viva Italia!

I told myself that I was going to rid the start demons today. So I made sure the coffee was flowing, the bike was good, head was good, highly motivated, all systems go and I really felt like I was rocking the course. Call up, well sort of in the 6-7th row. Got the elbows out.

Gun goes, great reaction, into the pedals, making my way up and.....all of a sudden Bart Arenouts (RaboBank) goes down, not sure what happened, but as I was coming straight up into him I slam on the breaks skid and just barely miss his wheel. If you think I'm exaggerating, check it out...
http://cyclingnews.com/cross/2009/jan09/worldcup9_09/index.php?id=/photos/2009/jan09/worldcup9_09/worldcup9_092/amen104
{that's my butt to the left)
Ahhhhh. So I loose almost all momentum. No prob, get back to speed, huge traffic jam on the first hill, jump off, run, ok. I had the pedal to metal and I miscalculated a corner and hit a snow bank, bobbled, but corrected it then screwed up my line coming into the corner before the stairs and dropped my chain as I bounced my bike off a rut really hard, as I didn't want a repeat of Zolder where my chain got stuck in my my frame, I bent down to fix it. Once again DFL during the first lap of the World Cup. Last week I got mad, this week I just raged!
But I used it to just start riding my brains out as hard as I could and just staying 100% focused on getting the job done. I just thought that I would just ride as it if my life depended on it.

For only the second or third time during this trip I was truly on a mission. The course was coming together really well for me. Especially since the lines were getting progressively harder to ride as the course deteriorated, my laps for the most part actually got faster.

There were a lot of things that went through my mind, I loved the speed, big ring for 90 % of the course so yah it was just great. I started catching guys and just riding through them. I caught Francis Mouray and ran past him through the barriers. It was pretty good. I'm happy about what I did with the hand I got dealt and that was all I could do. Only shitty thing is they pulled me just before the pavement cause I would have made the same lap as the leaders but as the start finish was super long I would have been in the way of the photos for the sprint finish. But just for the record I was on the same lap, so I finished 41st. Best yet World Cup performance, by far. I would have been just about 6 minutes down, maybe a few seconds more cause I turned myself inside out and back over again not to get lapped. It was a real visceral kind of gut wrenching experience, it is the whole reason I started racing cross, cause it hurts so bad.

After the race I was wrecked. It was amazing, I felt like I had never raced that hard in my life.
So if you are wondering how hard it is race an Elite World Cup it's that hard. Excluding the first lap misfortune's, I rode technically far and above what I've ridden and perhaps harder than ever and it was barely enough to make the lap, it's that fast. There is just not a whole lot of room for error when you start out from the back.

Final thoughts.

Italy, we loved it. Absolutely beautiful, great food, but beware of cab drivers who give you "flat rate", ie rip you off. If you love great tasting food, go to Italy. And I don't think I've ever heard anything like cheering in Italian, it just sounds so cool.

Se amate l'alimento grande dell'assaggio ed il lato bello del paese dovete visitare Bergamo, Italia. La vista del sole di regolazione sulle alpi prenderà il vostro alito assente.

DSJ