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Will Dickeson: CT Blog - Tour of California
Will's Ramblings
Ok So Tour of California is over, well for me anyway, the last stage is about to start.
After I had been in Boulder for a few days, Lucky rocked up from wherever he was in some central american 3rd world country. Got in a few good brew stops and also had a good dinner with Shippy and Anthony Brooks (old school MTB hitta) plus coffee time after they had hired MTBs and gone out playing in the snow. Hopefully shippy has not lost any of his good looks after faceplanting late in the day.
Yeah i'm supposed to be having a 12 month summer but it was snowing in Boulder last week, was still pretty cool to go for a ride in, even though our clothing sponsor has been a bit lacking in the warm kit department so far.
I managed to start feeling ok in Boulder before the tour started, even got in a good ergo session at the Livestrong house and then it was time hit the airport.
Tour of Cali has been pretty cool, the first couple of days at the hotel before the race started were pretty hectic. There is lots of media and sponsor stuff to do, always getting called off to do an interview or photos but its pretty fun since im not used to it. We also did the Jellybelly factory tour which was really cool and got to got nuts in the gift shop also.
There are a bunch of videos on the Tour of Cali website about the factory tour plus all the other behind the scenes stuff so check it out:
http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/sponsor-features/jellybelly-dayinlife-10.html
Anyway we got racing in an old gold mining town called Navada City which was cool, and there were thousands of people there to watch. All the teams rock up with their motor homes and team cars, vans and trucks and it makes for a pretty big show. We are pretty lucky cause we have such a cool sponsor that everyone has heard of and people always flock to our van to say g'day and get their free jellybelly samples. Its really cool out on the road as well because we would be the best supported team after the big names like Lance, Schleck, Cancellara etc. Going up hills, there are always people shouting ' Go Jellybelly' so its a bit of a buzz.
As far as the race goes, we are a pretty small team compared to some of the ones here so for us, the week is pretty much all about TV time rather than trying for a position somewhere in the top 20 or something.
The first day we missed the break and I spent about 15km trying to get across with a couple of riders which we were not able to do. Since we had missed it, we offered to have me ride on the front with Columbia HTC who wanted to bring it back for a bunch sprint. I got a few comments from back home so this must have got some TV time anyway and it also allowed our riders to sit near the front on some of the narrow roads and scetchy descents. In the sprint there were a bunch of crashes which took our guys out of contention, as well as guys like boonen and o'grady.
After that, the goal was just for someone to be in the break every day. First it was Friedman then Will Routley on stage 3 and he also won the most couragous jersey, then Jeremy Powers and then I got in the break on stage 5. It was pretty lucky for me as I was feeling pretty tired and had been hanging on to last wheel for 50km. Then I finally got to the front and it was the first attack that i covered that turned out to be the break of the day.
I was feeling pretty good but the legs couldnt handle the attacks near the finish so I got dropped a bunch of times and just had to drag myself back each time. There was a massive crowd at the finish so that was cool to ride in with, even though we'd been caught by the bunch and watched them fly right past.
I def paid for it the next day which was an epic 215km day with heaps of climbing. The first climb was 6km in and i got dropped - legs just had nothing left. The Sag wagon came up to me at about 30km and said i was last on the road and a buch of guys had already stepped off, so that was it for me. I think about 20guys abandoned and another 10 rode the whole thing but missed the time cut so it was a pretty brutal day.
Im now still haging around on the tour for the last couple of days, taking it all in and helping out where i'm needed.
I fly back to Boulder in the morning and then have a couple of weeks to recover before my next race in Tulsa. I'm feeling pretty smashed after racing through Asia and then this, I've pretty much been training solid since xmas so gonna take it really easy. Weather is supposed to have come good in the mountains too so plan on making the most of that!
Cool, i'll keep you updated.
Will
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