James Langedyk: Cycling Tribe Blog

So it has been 4 weeks since I arrived in Canada. I left Australia at 11 on a Monday to avoid our winter and do a big international racing season in Canada and America. An epic 51 hours later I arrived in Canada, to my surprise it was snowing, something I didn’t expect, it was freezing! My first thought was that this is going to be really hard to train in, especially considering the week I left Australia it was 28 degrees. But to my relief it did get warm, and then it got cold again. Once I had spoken to a few of the locals I found out that the weather in Quebec is more volatile than in Melbourne.

I’ll start off by telling you a bit about the city of Quebec and Canada. The old city is a beautiful old European type city, it has old stone buildings and cobble streets, with high walled street front buildings and steep winding hills. There is a magnificent castle at the top of the city that looks over the St Lawrence river, that runs from the North Atlantic Ocean, through Niagara Falls (which I found out is a mere 12 hours from Quebec, doesn’t look that far on the map!) to the great lakes, its cannons that are placed strategically all along the border leave a reminder that there has once been a battle fought along the shores of this little city. After speaking to a few more locals I discovered that 402 years ago the French founded the town of Quebec (hence the French Language and culture) and when the English found out there was land to be had, they tried to invade (that’s history of Quebec in a nut shell).

So the team I have come over to ride with is the Louis Garneau team, we wear a nice pink, white and black kit and race in Canada and some of America. I am living in Louis corporate condo which is a 3 story apartment across the road from the Garneau factory, it is a Great little place, I would say about 2 or 3 years old. In the Condo I am living with my only other Australian Team mate Shaun McCarthy, who hails from Bendigo.

We have raced 5 small races to date, 2 time trials, 2 crits and a 3 stage tour, I have been feeling pretty good in all the races. My first race I did was a 75 min Crit in Montreal, I was pretty nervous at the start but as soon as the race started the nerves eased and I got into it, not knowing who to follow both Shaun and I missed the main break, not without some effort to try and create some moves for ourselves. I ended up winning the bunch kick and got 14^th.

The next race we did was a small time trial on a Tuesday night, something a few of us do to get a extra hit out during the week, it was an 11.5 km race, we didn’t end up racing till 8.30 at night and by then it was starting to get really cold and dark. Shaun ended up winning and beating me by 5 seconds, we had beaten 3^rd by 1 minute, and we did the course in 13.13 and 13.18 respectively, averaging 52km/h.

The next race was a 19 km time trial near Montreal, with a better field including some riders from the top Canadian team Spider Tech and the national TT champion and 10^th u23 world tt rider from Kelly Benefits David Veilleux. It was a freezing wet day. As I warmed up the rain started to turn into snow before it then returned to rain! I ended up getting 5^th averaging 47km/hr which I was pretty happy with.

Then we had another Tuesday night race, this time it was a 40km Crit right around the corner from the condo, it was a super fast course with 70 riders in the field, A break of 3 got up the road including Fly V rider Charles Dionne and my team mate Shaun and one other guy, I was in the next move of 3 trying to chase them down which we couldn’t do, in the end Charles won over Shaun and I got 4^th, it was a bit of fun and a nice little hit out.

Then we came to our first tour and first road race, we had a 90k circuit race, an undulating course but pretty good, I got away for a lap by myself which was a bit of fun, I felt pretty tough riding off the front solo, but I found the race very negative so they chased me back pretty early, then 2 of my other team mates got away on the last lap and ended up staying away, in the end I won the bunch kick to get 4^th.

In the arvo we had a 11.8 km time trial, I had a bad gut warming up so I thought it might be pretty tough. I felt pretty tired and ended up getting 3^rd 12 seconds down.

The next day we had a 136km road race, a break got up the road and we had our team chase it down on the last lap, I was feeling good for the sprint and had a few team mates that were going to lead me out, but as the finish got closer they got white line fever and attacked, our team leader who was first on GC tried to get away at the finish ( which he didn’t need to do he was up by 1 min), so I was left by myself chasing small attacks and at the end I had to sprint twice before the finish and I ended up getting no where in the sprint. I was pretty angry at the circumstances, but we ended up winning the tour and getting 2^nd and I got 5^th, so for my first tour I was pretty happy.

So in the next few weeks I am going to America for the killington stage race and have tour de Beauce in 3 weeks which is the biggest race we will do.

So ill keep you all updated on my training and racing over the next few weeks.

Until Next time!

James Langedyk

To visit Jame's website CLICK HERE