Amuuurrrica

This is going to be a heavy post but bear with me. At the moment I’ve decided to stay with my wordpress blog, seems to do the trick but will be updated soon with a solid calendar and links!

To keep this post as light as possible im going to do daily highlights from the past 2 months. Not everyday and some days have a few highs. Here we go…

To mine and my close friends knowledge way back at christmas time I had secured a marvelous contract with the one and only Bontrager Livestrong team formly Trek Livestrong. For those of you who don’t know, Bontrager LS is owned by the most well known man in cycling, Lance Armstrong. With contracts signed and flights booked I was set to fly over to the states on the 19th of February and this is when the highlights begin.

I was lucky enough to spend the day before I left racing the Rev Classic down in Hamilton. Up the road most of the day and finished 2nd behind Jeremy Vennel who flew across to me and almost passed me! in the final ks. Mike Northey was 3rd, so it was a choice last outing in Kiwivelo Kit with the homeboys and support of my old man.

I was pretty relaxed pre-flight. But after giving the parents a hug goodbye and walking to my gate I must admit it was a preeeetty daunting feeling leaving home for 7 months. Oh well, if its 7 months like the first one has been then yeaaah boy, living!

So Auckland-LA-Chicago-Madison. My first chance to meet and greet the sponsors and my new teammates. Plus look around the Trek factory to see how our bikes are made. Highlights here were meeting the team, touching snow, seeing treks being tested until they broke and the Hullabaloo(500m races on trainers, Axel our team manager won, the belgys took it very serious)

On to the business end. Madison to LA! Then a quick drive north to a Dutch village in California called Solvang, a very cool town, surrounded by huge bergs. I walked into my room and literally could have drowned in the amount of kit I received, one thing that is insane about Livestrong is that we really get looked after! Thanks staff!

So kit check, now something to ride! Here’s a pic of my new rig, a Trek Madone with Sram red, nourishing! And so the training camp begins..

Day 1 – 3hrs. Cruisy ride where we split in to two teams to ‘medium effort’ paceline. It became a race and yea we finished in ones and twos…Highlight – Meeting Lance. Did an embarrassing double take in the carpark pre-ride, ‘Is that Lance!’, yes it was and he’s a good character, easy to talk to on rides, if he wasn’t dropping us!

Day 2 – Figueroa. 5.30 hrs. Ouch. The biggest climb I’ve ever done…twice. So cracked at the end. Imagine climbing Mt Ruapehu twice and this was a little longer. Highlight was definitely the downhill! We raced up the second time, for the last half, Lance put a few minutes into us. Enough said ha. Luckily I had my Honey Stinger nutrition to keep me alive! (if you ride and haven’t tried a waffle from these guys, you havent lived)

Day 3 – 165k Loop. I’ll call it the Goat loop because of a rogue goat on a sweet descent we went down. Some of you may have heard but this was the day pretty much the whole team crashed. Two separated shoulders, a cracked scaphoid and a few bruised boys. I luckily avoided the crash. But there’s always a highlight to each day! Another sponsor for 2012 of the teams is Strava, who let you upload your ride from your garmin to their website. This allows you to see the details of your ride but also shows your ride time for certain climbs. And gives you a placing for that effort off other users times. Lets just say from then on every ride was a Strava record ride!

Day 4- An hour cruise on our super fast Trek Speed Concept Time Trial Bikes. If only I had one of them at worlds last year he he! We also had a young kid from Solvang join us for the ride. The ongoing joke of his name being conrad not Cooper(real name i think, eeek!) didn’t end. Poor kid got called Conrad the whole ride, typical cyclist eh, ‘I ride my bike’.

Day 5 – Gibraltor! 5hrs. Possibly the coolest climb to date I have done. 35 minutes to race to the top for an amazing view. We rode through Santa Barbara via the beach before going up. We had Connor Ellison as our Director in the car for the day. At 12 he was the youngest rider to compete in RAAM(race across america). He loved it! His sister was good-looking so that kept us boys entertained the whole ride.

Day 6- Rain. A planned double day with two up time trials in the arvo was cut short by some freezing conditions! Solvang just reassured us it was winter, not the beautiful summer weather we had been experiencing! Todays highlight was Steve Blick, the King Pin of Oakley with his magically bag of tricks! Lets be honest, if your going to buy sunglasses for riding or casual, the coolest ones are Oakley. And our team has been hooked up! Steve is full of energy, I asked him if I could get some XLs, nek minnit, I have some custom yellow and white XLs. Too cool.

Day 7 – Goat loop reverse. 165k. 5Hrs. No crashes this time, just the boys doing some solid lapping. We raced up the 8k decent with the goat up it. Bloody fast and smacking hairpins was painful but felt glorious for all! As it was the last ride of camp it seemed necessary to race the last 10k home. I almost had Lawson Craddock on the leash but cracked up the small berg to finished 3rd behind a flying Ryan ‘Beastman’ Eastman.

A huge thanks to all the staff for an amazing camp. Good sensations! It was then on to Austin to stay with two teammates Nate Brown and Gavin Mannion pre heading to Belgium for my first race. A quick summary of my time in the Ghetto, my teammates are top notch guys for putting me up in their bachelor pad. It smelt and I had to sleep on a foldout couch but they treated me like royalty.

Austin-Brussels. I forgot to save the voicemail from Eddy Merckx saying he was outside to pick us up. The number of looks we got walking behind him, oh boy oh boy oh boy! Our trip started with the mutual agreements us boys would use Belgian slang and hand gestures as much as possible. Calling people weasels and flapping our hands at our sides, pinching people and saying “mmmm Faaat” and pumping our fists at passing cyclists to insist “Full Gas” became the norm.

We were staying at a hotel near the Merckx Fortress. The garage, gym etc use to be Eddys factory so the place is massive. We spent a lot of time there after rides being mothered by Axels mum. Home cooked food and coffee on tap, it made us forget about the Belgian sun, Ha!

Deinze-Ieper. 174ks of Cobbled bergs and dodgy Belgians. It was our first race as a team and the first race of the year for many other teams so to say the peloton was on edge and nervous would be an understatement. We all managed to miss crashes and splits for the first 2 hours to then have all our bad luck happen in the same 10k. I got my front wheel taken out and crashed, luckily to be fine, and after putting my bike right continued to chase for the rest of the race. However when passing the cars I see my teammate Josh Atkins, fellow Kiwi, on his back in pain(he was fine, just a bit of blood, a broken shoe stopped him from finishing). Mean while as the race split Ryan Eastman Punctured. And a little while later whilst we were trying to chase on Jasper De Buyst(Belgy, looks like a young Griepel, so fast!) dropped his chain again. Oh well, we all finished, with 2 in the main group. A very good skills session for bunch riding to start the year!

I am now back in Austin staying at Lawson Craddocks Duplex(townhouse). Its way out of the ghetto and has everything I need! I’ve been able to do some solid training the past few days as I gear up for Redlands, a four day stage race next week. Pretty keen to sink my teeth into some tour racing.

Following Redlands I jet straight to Belgium to race with the National team. Will be doing some sick under 23 classics! Flanders and Liege to name a few. Then its back to America to Boulder for some altitude training before Tour of Gila. Bontrager LS has been named in the 16 teams to compete at the Tour Of California which is huge! What would be even bigger is if I got named in that squad!

I plan on updating my blog quite often as the season goes on throughout the year. Otherwise you can follow me on twitter, @OramNewZ or Facebook.

Thanks for reading. Chur!