Last week/weekend was my first tour with Bontrager-Livestrong. As soon as I hear tour, I do get a little excited, and I was definitely amped to see how I would compare against some top US riders. Just for a quick rundown on the basics for Redlands. I’d been training in the hot and humid Austin, getting hell lost, but hey I wasn’t complaining about the extra hour training I would get in everyday! Have to drop in a huge thank you to Teammate Lawson and his brother Parker who let me stay at their bachelor pad, legends. So after a quick fly to Ontario I was back with the boys! It’s always great to be back with teammates and even better to be under the great hands and guidance of Reed, the laughter never stops. Even managed to crack a few smiles and laughs out of our Mecano Bill, who was at home with the old ‘El Burrito’ next door(a burrito café). Any who down to the racing….
If you’d like to see a daily run down of the stages at Redlands check out our new team website. http://www.bontragercyclingteam.com , it’s a real cool site, links to twitter, bio’s on all the boys and constant updates on what we’re up to next.
First of all, before you can start a race, you need somewhere to stay. Have a look at the photos below, definitely better than any hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Redlands is an hour from LA, so there’s a small smog problem, like hay fever, but with views like this we were living.
Prologue. The real tester of form. Luckily Bontrager are letting me test a new saddle, so my position was dialled. Watch out for it, should be a big competitor on the market! We pre-rode the course the day before and morn of and all had solid warm ups. 5k rolling up hill, with a nasty kick to the finish. Ended up 13th, 20 or so seconds down on the leader. I felt in one word, Horrible, Horrible, Horrible! But if you feel good during a prologue you’re not going hard enough!
Stage 2 – 195K! Enough said. Longest race I’ve ever done. It was the beginning of Paddy Bevins animal like movements(3 stage wins!) and my slow movement up on gc. Not much happened really, a race of slight attrition. Was good reading the communique after the stage though( a run down of results and fines from the race). A few riders who dropped were caught running across a field to re-join the bunch ha.
Stage 3 – Crit time! I love crits, even the insane ones like here at Redlands. 150 odd starters on a 1 n a half K circuit. It was strung out like spaghetti all day, crashes galore! No time lost but a few lives lost, only so many risks a man can make in his life!
Stage 4 – Sunset Loop. I’ll call it rain loop. Taranaki like conditions hit us 4 laps into a 12 lap circuit called the sunset loop. The circuit of 12k or so literally went straight up, flattened off for the feed station, then plummeted down back the start of the climb in a criterium like fashion. If being single file wasn’t bad enough, the temperature halved as the rain fell down, from 18 to 9. All the boys admitted we’d all never been so cold. It took Joe and I an hour after the race to stop shaking uncontrollably. Joe, unknown to himself, was so cold he was crying at he raced the final laps of the finishing circuit that followed the 12 sunset loops. So inevitably the conditions caused carnage on gc. Only 30 or so actually finished without having a pro-rated time(estimated time on the lap they dropped). Joe jumped up to 15th gc and I fell a little to 17th overall. One for the memory books!
If you’d like to look at some photos from the race and behind the scenes, I urge you to look at Emily Mayes website. From what we’re eating to the laughs on the massage table, she’s snapped it all
As I write this I’m sleeping across 3 seats(ohhh tu meke!) on my flight to Belgium to join up with the NZ national team for a few big one day classics! Keen beans to meet up with some hometown mates and even better to be back racing with them! Anyway here’s the dates, I’ll let you know how we go.
April 7th – U23 Ronde Van Vlaanderen(tour of Flanders) – Cobbles!
April 12th – Cote de Picardie(U23 National Team race) – A hilly race topped off with pinchy finishing circuits
April 14th – Leige-Bastogne-Leige – Back with Bontrager-LS, the U23 version of one of the seven monuments in classics cycling
Kia Kaha!!
Oram
James Oram - NZ Pro Cyclist 