Time flies when riding a yellow Trek Madone bike. About three months of training are done already and routine took its toll on the days of hard work passing by. And hard work it really was. I spent most of the time since November on the beautiful spanish island of Mallorca, to ensure the best circumstances for my training.
It wasn’t easy to leave family and friends behind, but northern Europe isn’t just the best place for a cyclist to stay in the winter. So after our first team meeting in SA and a short stop for christmas and new year’s, it was once again time to leave for better conditions in the south to get in the miles you’ll need when the classic spring campaign is on your schedule. For that Gerald and I rented an apartment near the mediterranean capital Palma de Mallorca. The island is perfect to train on, you can find flat roads, climbs up to 15k and if you want you will always find some other pro cyclists to ride with, since it’s a traditional place for riders and teams to go in the cold period of January.
Bradley Wiggins owns a house there and you can meet him almost every day in the mountains on the north coast or looking for now local Andreas Klier on the small hills in the central area, all getting ready for the season.
The next destination was the old tuscan city of Lucca in Italy, where I am at the moment and our team has its second training camp right now. It was cool to see all the guys again and of course, getting all the new equipment and stuff which was waiting for us at the service course. All the riders made their homework as far as I can say, but also the staff put in a great effort to build up all the bikes and prepare all necessary things we’ll need during the season.
With the first races starting in about two weeks, the upcoming days will be a hard piece of work with intervals to heat up the engine and some long distance rides to be prepared for the classics like some of them will be more then 250 even 300 km!
On the program is our european kick-off here in Italy at the Trofeo Laigueglia and then there are already some big races waiting for us.
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad will be also my first personal highlight, as I love the belgian races and their atmosphere. After a few days more of belgian racing, we’ll come back to Italy to start at our big spring goals Tirreno-Adriatico and then the prima vera corsa, Milan-San Remo. A dream will come true as I never did La Classicissima before in fact I never raced in Italy so far – but I know the roads and will try to be in top condition there to support the team as much as I can.
I’m convinced our team has the power to make a major impact in these first races, so I’m looking forward to more invitations coming in afterwards and I really hope that we can take part in another big classic, hopefully De Ronde – Tour of Flanders or even the queen of the classics, Paris-Roubaix! But by then, I’ll be riding a Trek Domane!
