Hi everyone, Sorry I have been slacking on the posts lately. Not a whole lot has happend though. I am slowly improving here but it is still very hard. I have been training a lot and i know that I am getting faster it is just that everyone here is allready so mutch faster than me that i am just now starting to catch up. I went to France on Monday, it was awsome! i went to the beach and the weather was perfect. If I ever move to Europe i would want to live there, on the coast of France. A lot of ppl spoke english and there are rolling hills on the coast but a few miles inland there are mountains, It is a perfect place for a cyclist.
Oh, there is one realy cool thing that happend. One day last week I was riding in a town close to here and I met a groupe of riders. I could tell that several of them were Euskatel riders because they had there full kit on and they were all on new black orbea orcas. So I joined them and started talking to some of the riders in my very broken spanish, then one guy came up beside me and started talking to me in fluent english, which is very rare for this area. It turns out that his name was Pedro and he is the team doctor for team Estana and has been working with lance for the past 2 years. He went on to tell me that all of the Euskatel guys (there were 5) who were with us are on the Tour de France selection for the team. He went into detail with each rider about how many tours they have been in and what stages they have won. I was riding with royalty! a few of the Euskatel guys spoke a little english so I talked to them a little, wished them luck in the tour and shook there hand. I rode with them for about 2 hours. It was by far the best experience since I have been here!
To be the man you got to beat the man!!

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates. i have been very buisy here. The last few races I have done since my last post were bad. Not even worth talking about. Since then, I have totaly changed my training rutene. The competition here is unbelievable, My last race averaged 44kmh. that is about 30mph. And it was not flat. There were 2 major climbs, the rest of the course with rolling hills. I do not race this weekend because it is the Basque championship and I am not Basque so i cant race. My next race is next weekend. I'll talk more then. l8r.
To be the man you got to beat the man!!

What can I say?? I look pro!

So today Dani and I were starting a 4hr ride. We climed "Dima" which is a 11k climb to get to the plateau. you see, most of spain is on this plateau at about 3000ft above sea level. But we are near the coast and at sea level, where it is VERY mountainous. On the plateau it is just rolling hills, plus it is about 15 degrees cooler.So this would suit our training perfectly. Anyway, we were about half the way up the climb and we came upon a group of riders. as we past they started talking in basckey (Bask) and cheered at us as we past them. After we had past them I noticed Dani was laughing. I ascked him what all of the cheering was about and he said that they all thought we were pros because we had identical bikes and we were climbing so fast(which we were not). To top it off i was wearing the Cycamore Cycles jersey!! So Wes, you may be getting a call from from Velo News wanting the scoop on your newly established pro tour team!!
To be the man you got to beat the man!!

Today i rode with dani. He is a little faster than me but he doesnt totally blow me away. So today was 3hrs of mts and very tight decents. he worked with me a lot on my technique for the decents. we are goin out for about 5hrs easy tomorow. He said he will take me to his village fiesta, which is a three day party every town here has a few times a year. Free beer and wine!!! Although not at the same time, of course!! l8r
To be the man you got to beat the man!!

This is the team van with all of the bikes lined up in front of it. Mine is the one in the fron with botles in both cages. I will upload a few more pics here but look on my facebook for a bunch more.

To be the man you got to beat the man!!

well, today I finished up my first full weekend of racing here. It was very hot both days with highs in the 90's. Yesterday the race started at 3pm so the heat was a big factor. There were 4 major climbs on the 140K course. i held on through 3 of them and got dropped at the start of the 4th one. I ended up getting passed by the broom wagon, ending my day about 50k from the finish. Three of my team mates finished out of our 9 starters. All who finished were in top 10 including a second. i met a new teamate who speeks a good bit of engish so I am very happy about that, It waill make things a lot esier. Also, i learned a bit about some of the other competitors... A guy on my team is the best dirt bike racer in all of basque country. A guy on an other team is the son of a famous Moto GP racer but i dont remember his name, go figure! Another guy on my team has won many downhill mtb races and has competed at U23(?) worlds.

Today the race started at 9:30. I was told that this race would be very flat escept for a big climb iin the last 10k. The spanish obviously have a very distorted meaning of flat, granted there were no other mountains on the course, It was rolling the whole time with a few short "climbs" of about 10min. Because it was "flat" today we were flying!! I heard we averaged 33mph. Today I worked on building my confidence with fighting for positions in the peloton. And I think I did reasonably well. I was in the top 25% of the peloton most of the time. In the first 50k of the race we were on very rough roads and one of my bottles fell out of the cage. So, i got to practice getting food and drink from the team car in the caravan. It was very nerve racking because you must gap yourself a little from the back of the peloton and hope there are no big attacks or you are screwed. Before I went to the carevan I found my new english speaking friend and he went back with me to help pull me back to the peloton if need be. I am very gratefull for that. But I was still nervous! So after that fiasco we still had a while before the climb. so i just sat in for the most part and waited. The climb finaly came and I was doing ok. I was not near the leaders but i was holding my spot in about the middle. Then i started to cramp a bit in my calfs, i think from not totally racovering and replenishing from yesterday. I had to let up a bit and lost about 20 places. By now everyone was in groups of 5-10. I settled in a groupe with a teamate who i knew desended well but there was a kicker before the real desent and I lost there wheel. I decended mostly by myself and finished with another group who cought me at the bottom. i dont know my place but I know there were at least 30-40 riders behind me, and i finished!!!! Regretably, this is the first race I have finished here. Anyway, today i learned a lot and built up some much needed confidence. although my decending is still a big limiter for me here. Many of the decents are similar to the SC side of Ceasars head but the raod it about half as wide. (the climbs are the same as the decents). Oh well, i just have too work on it... again. Next weeks race suposedley has a lot of mountains with very tight decents, i have to step up my game... a lot!!!!!!!
To be the man you got to beat the man!!

First Race Report

Today was my first race out side od the USA. It was a huge eye opener... USA does many things better than europe but bike racing is not one of them. We took one of the 6 team cars to the race. when we arrived I found that every other rider there was afilliated with a team verry simillar to mine; they all had several team cars, matching team bikes, sweat suits/podium clothes and custom water bottles specially made for each team. If you didnt know it was a U23 race you could have easily assumed it for a proffessional race.

I started the race with the goal of staying with the field. and I did for the first big loop. It included 5 two plus mile climbs immediatley followed by a decent. Then on the seccond lap four riders from the same team attacked and blew the field apart. I was somewhere in the middle of the placing when people in the group I was in started attacking. I didnt have anything else so me and some others waited to be caught by another group. We did and stayed with them for a while.

It started to rain. I have been cmplaining about my tires to my coach all week saying they are too slick. I realy did not want to race them but he said they will be fine. Today we were on a decent and I was taking a turn very easy, didnt hit the brakes and I still slid out because of the tires!! I was mad, to say the least!! But at least it is just road rash and nothing is broken. I am going to get back on verstiens first thing next week.

Next weekend I have a race sat and sun. They are both U20 races so I will try to do better there.
To be the man you got to beat the man!!