Tuesday Night Worlds down in TarMac tonight...the "Pain Train"...and I signed up for an "A Class" ticket. I don't know if I'm just still coming off the week off or if things were really hard tonight but I feel like I just got taken out back, put in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds (bonus Gold Star to the first person who gets the movie reference). At one point I was going so hard I'm sure I saw dead people (and they weren't the other guys suffering when my Security Bank teammates decided to make everything hard). Michael Barry, pro cyclist and NEw York Times columnist wrote recently that he had a team manager that told him to ride "until he saw Jesus." I spoke with the Lord tonight and He told me that suffering was good for me. Then I spent the next hour trying to convince my body not to void the contents of my stomach and simultaneously to chase down the paceline that had just gapped me. At one point I thought I had sort of gotten back on top of my body and then Jake went hard and I was blown to smithereens. After that I rode hard tempo until my front tire mercifully decided to die a slow, hissing death and I was able to soft pedal that last few mies in. Since the ride, I've just a little nauseated and light headed. I hope I do better next week.
The Tour today continued it's somewhat unpredictable ways with two surprises in first and second place with Stephan Schumacher taking out the win and Kim Kirchen just beating David Millar for second. The biggest surprise was Alejandro Valverde losing a over a minute to Cadel Evans. I'm not sure if this is the beginning of the end for Valverde or if he'll get to recover a bit tomorrow, make a showing in the medium hilly stages later in the week and then blow up. Either way, Evans now has about a minute on all of his pre-race rivals but it seems that he now has a few more wild card/dark horse candidates to contend with. Kirchen shouldn't be a huge surprise given that he rode well for much of the Tour de Swiss before blowing up in the race's mountain time trial. He could well be a thorn in Evans' side for the rest of the race and right now he has a twelve second lead over the race favorite. American Christian Vandevelde also rode well today and if he can do well in the mountains is positioned for a top ten finish in this year's Tour and a huge statement from the Garmin-Chipotle team.
Tomorrow is a regular sprint stage and I don't expect the sprinters to make the same mistake twice. Expect Credit Agricole, Quick-Step and the other sprint teams to keep the break close until the finale. If Cavendish can get in the right place he'll take the day and Team Columbia (of which he is a part) seems to be the best team in terms of organization right now so I expect they'll do everything they can in the last 20 km to keep Kirchen up near the front out of trouble and to set Cavendish up for the win.
More to Come. I'm off to see if I can't get to feeling better.
