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Tour San Luis Stage 3

The queen stage of the race was a solid day for us at Liquigas-Cannondale. Nibali and Samiento showed their climbing form finishing just a few seconds behind a flying Contador and Leipheimer on the summit finish.  For me, my first big race in the hills of 2012 was allright.  Its was certailnly painful at times but that was to be expected.  other than that, just the typical getting water bottles and keeping Nibali out of the wind.  We made a big effort into the bottom of the final climb keep our climbers in perfect position as the crosswind shredded the peloton down to only 30 or so of us before we even got to the climb.  My work and my legs, pretty much done I swung off and rode up the climb at a mellow pace.  Glad to see my teammates bopping around near the front of the GC.  Vincenzo is a former winner of tomorrows time trial so we will see if he can make up some time.

The decent off of the 2000+ meter Alto de Nogoli was a ripper.  It was defenitely the funnest part of the day.  It was more or less immaculate as well, in stark contrast to the debris strewn road with sand and water crossings we had done a few days earlier.

Time trial tomorrow, “rest day” for me.

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Starting 2012 With Maximum Misery

Well, that was a fun day.  The peloton kicked off the 2012 season here at the Tour de San Luis with a memorable first stage, although its one Id like to quickly forget!  Lets just say I found out why one of our team cars has the snorkel on it.  San Luis threw the most atrocious weather it could at us to welcome us to the region.  In fact, I would rate it as one of the top 3 coldest times Ive ever had on a bike.  I was really on the edge for a little while, If I hadnt been able to get a new rain jacket and rain gloves I would have been toast.  Needless to say, we had every factor except for snow.  Pouring rain most of the time, with a section of hail in there for a bit.  It was so miserable that the peloton could hardly race, we just rode slowly curb to curb in survival mode until the feedzone when we thankfully started to pick up the pace a bit.  But until then, riding easy while soaking wet doesn’t keep you very warm.  sometimes I would just ride in the wind to the side just to get warm again! Of course there were a lot of crashes today as well, despite the nearly the entire route being out and back on a straight highway.  At one point, I was taken out in a big pile up, then was chasing back on guttered out in a crosswind just getting completely drenched by the team cars just to our side.  That was incredible fun.  Amaazingly it dried up for the last 50km, at which point the crosswinds really heated up and it was a full gas in the gutter for the next hour, to which my hypothermic waterlogged legs had not much of a response.  Our GC contenders were safe in the winning bunch, but the rest of us were behind, missing out on an opportunity for our sprinter Viviani.  The only thing that could have made the day more miserable is if it was actually raining as we started.  It was pouring rain 20 min before, dry at the start, and then commenced again about 4km into the race.  so, you know, that was nice at least.  Its always the worst to START in the rain. you can put up with 5 hours of rain easier if you at least start out dry.  I do want to find out how the moto camera guy was feeling…he was sitting on the back of a moto all day wearing…a tank top.  He was either totally screwed or just a true badass.

To continue the less than pleasant day, we drove an hour back to the hotel crammed 5 people in a car.  I was glad to see even Nibali was tired after the stage, cuz I was hammered.  He was fast asleep even as the stereo was blasting the Village People song Y-M-C-A! 

Training Camp and Easing in to Argentina

Id seen some photos from the Tour de San Luis last year that included the peloton crossing a fairly sizeable river, up to the wheel hubs in water.  So I guess I wasn’t too surprised to see the rig below waiting for us to pick up our gear at the airport.  Yes, that’s a proper Land Rover type 4WD vehicle, complete with a snorkel.  I havnt seen any other teams with such a set up, so surely if it comes to river crossings and barren rocky deserts, team Liquigas Cannondale will have the most able follow car out there…

In reality, I havnt seen this thing do anything but pick our bikes up from the airport and then sit in front of the hotel all week.  But mayble ill be in for a surprise in a few days.

Anyways team Liquigas-Cannondale is pretty popular down here.  My teammate Vincenzo Nibali won the race in 2010 en route to the Vuelta Espana victory latter in the year, and we are looking to repeat his successes as well as pop in there for the sprint stages with our star speedster Elia Viviani.  We arrived a week prior to the race to adjust to the heat and the time change and to check out some of the stages.  We havnt really done a whole lot of reconn at all actually but fortunately (or not) a few of the stages are literally out and back on a long straight road.  good fun.  Stage 3 will definitely be a doozy…we rode it the other day.  A massive 25 km stair stepping climb in the middle followed by a ripping euro style descent on American sized road,  littered with South American style debris (rock fall, sand traps, water crossing, and a herd of goats). Im sure the organizers will do their best to clear it out come race day though. 

Other than training, you eat and sleep and training camp.  So ive been sleeping a lot.  Eating wise, the culinary aspect has been less than exciting.  We did have a nice dinner at a proper Argentinian steak house one night with some of our VIPs in town for the race.  While the steaks were quite large and tasty, the weiters didn’t serve them on swords or offer a few more kilos of various meat products to our plates, like they do at an American “Argentinian Steak House”.  which was fine…a nice steak and a glass of malbec made me happy after a week of eating this….

Oh, its nice to be back in race mode.  flavorless grilled chicken and steamed vegetables.

After the race ends, I will be first in line for one of the “King of Panchos”  famous…pancho…or whatever it its he makes in this little shed on the side of the road.  Im sure its delicious.

And in other news, I like San Luis.  The people are nice, roads are good, the city is safe.   My daily evening jaunt has provided a few entertaining moments.

Theres a lot of awesome old cars still kicking around, including this horse towing the back of an old pickup truck as a trailer, with two people inside.

Its all about meat here in Argentina.

well that’s all the entertainment for now.  An easy day tomorrow and the team presentation, then the 2012 season will be underway on monday! 

Reconn of Stage 3, Vuelta San Luis

Training Camp, San Luis Argentina

Back to Summertime in Argentina

I am finally in San Luis, Argentina with my teammates after two very long travel days.  The legs didn’t feel so hot today but let me tell you its nice to feel a little sun and heat here in the southern hemisphere summer!  Check out our locale here on Strava

O2 Intervals @ Fascat Performance Center

I used the recent snowy day in Boulder to pound out some oxygen supplemented intervals at the Fascat Performance Center.  After a long block at altitude, it was a chance to condition the legs a bit to the higher power outputs when Im at a lower altitude racing in Argentina at the end of the month.  The intervals feel normal until you get off the bike, then your legs hurt quite a bit cuz their not used to going so hard for so long!  Check out my suffer face in the video…