Todd Wells

Rain

It's a long drive from Sainte Anne to Bromont, just ask Susi

It rained a bunch last night and this morning. The course was a quagmire today, just like last year. It was fun to go slide around in the mud, I hope it stays wet for race day. 

The Dart spent the day setting up his Twitter account today. His name is afircanmtbkid but for some reason it isn't working yet. 

We have a discussion going on how long it takes for a concrete foundation to harden in a tropical climate. He says it takes at least 3 months, I say it's a few weeks. Does anyone know?

I have been drinking liters of diet caffeine free Coke lately. That would be good except for all the chocolate milk I've been drinking. 

Flipper takes the best photos. 

Here's a shot of Sandy working on the bikes

I was reading Rude's site yesterday and saw he had a link to Much's site. She is a road racer that went to school at FLC for a little while and races some cross. She has a great site and I wasted a bit of time checking it out: http://www.rebeccamuch.missingsaddle.com/

Bobby got here yesterday from SA. He is the old Team Manager for Specialized from last year and still works closely with the team. Benno went to pick him up and Bobby immediately locked the keys in the car. Benno somehow found someone in  the parking lot who knew someone who was a locksmith. 10 minutes later the door was open and it only cost 25 Canadian dollars. Bobby and I are always joking around so it was nice of him to give me some material as soon as he got here. 

I wonder what Winstons' doing right now......

Wasting Time

Before I forget I want to congratulate Howes on winning the U-23 Road National Championships in Bend this weekend. I thought he was riding fast in that crit in Longmont a few weeks ago. 

The key to a successful World Cup campaign I think is to be good at wasting time. Why the need to waste time? World Cups are mentally and physically demanding. To compete back to back to back takes a lot out of you and recovery is huge. What's the best thing for physical recovery? Laying in bed. That isn't always the best thing for mental recovery though. OK, I lost my train of thought on this one. 

Colt has been doing an awesome job filming the races this year. I think he gets better every race so here is his latest, Mont Sainte Anne: 

So in addition to riding and sitting in bed all day, we had a little mental rest/stimulation at the Kart track. Apparently Absalon is also a big fan of Karting, as is the entire French team. Here is their Grand Prix race start. 

The Dart had the fastest time in our group race. I was better then last time but still way off the back. Benno, Rafa and the Dart all had a pretty good race going The karts work your arms though. By the end of the race I could barely hold the steering wheel. I was a little sore yesterday but am feeling better today. 

This picture isn't very clear but that's Susi cleaning the Dart's shoes before a ride in Sainte Anne. It's not everyday the World Champ cleans your shoes. I think he did a good job too and might have a good shot at getting at job at the DIA shoe shine booth after he's finished racing. 

Here was what it looked like when we drove to Bromont on Monday. 

Here is what it looked like when I left Durango last week. 

The internet is horrible here, going in and out. That's all for today. 

I wonder if it's going to rain this weekend.....

Hanging out in Bromont

Benno clipping tires

Dylan clipping tires

Now all I need is a picture of Sandy clipping tires. These guys work extra hard when it's muddy modifying tires. You should see all the rubber clippings on the floor of the trailer. 

Today has been awesome in Bromont, sunny and warm. I am still trashed from the race this weekend. We rode 2 hours today and it felt like I would barely be able to finish the ride. I took a good nap and now I'm getting ready for a massage and some go karts. 

The internet at our hotel is strange, it will work great and then all of a sudden nothing. The Dart and I are back to sharing a room this week after having a whole condo with Susi to ourselves. 

I have been trying to replenish my depleted energy stores by drinking huge quantities of chocolate milk and eating KitKat bars. We'll see how it turns out. I've snuck in a little salad here and there but mostly junk food. 

Tomorrow we get to check out the course. I hear they took out the 4x climb and added another section, guess I'll know for sure tomorrow. Other then that not much is new here. We waited 2 hours for our dinner to come last night since we don't have kitchens at the new place we're staying. 

I wonder if Winston has gone to the dog park lately......

Lights Out

Another almost good race. If I could drop all these almosts and just have one actually good race I would do it in a second. Today's race started out well enough. I had a crappy call up, 36 but I moved into the top 20 at the end of the start loop section. I picked my way up through the race and had caught the Dart at the end of the 2nd lap, we were 9 and 10. I then proceeded to move up to 5th for the 3rd and 4th lap before the Dart passed me back on the 5th lap. The lights started to flicker then and I knew it was going to be hard to hold on for the rest of the race. At the start of the 5th lap I was 5 minutes down but still in 6th place with 6Ks to go. With 3Ks to go I was still in 6th but the lights were out. I lost 5 minutes in the last 3Ks and dropped 9 places. That's right, 9 places. Giant explosion. I have been wanting to push it harder because I always feel like I try to save too much energy. Today I pushed it way beyond and could barely ride my bike at the end. I was 10-15 minutes away from getting some good UCI points for Worlds, getting my first World Cup prize money of the season, moving up on the start grid and getting my first real result of the year. It didn't happen, maybe next weekend. It was nice to be part of the race for a few laps, but very frustrating to lose it all at the end. I guess that's racing. Tomorrow we're off to Bromont. I wonder if it's going to be raining there too......

Canada Eh

It's good to be back with the team. I arrived in Canada last night after an early morning flight and I mean early. Meg woke up with me at 4:30 am to drive me to airport, Winston also. The travel was smooth. Arrived on time with all my bags and Benno was there to pick Rude and I up. We got stuck in some Montreal traffic on the way up to Sainte Anne but after we got out of town it was smooth sailing. Internet(intermittent) in the room, Tour on TV, cool weather and plenty of room. What more could you ask for? I've been reading this book on Pablo Escobar and I can't put it down, except to sleep. I've been logging in the sea level sleep. 

Tonight was Claire's birthday party, it was a big as she turned 40. Too much cake and food but it was fun. Even the Monk Dawg was there. He's working for the Global Trek team in the North America and driving the Troy Lee/Redbull/Honda truck for the outdoor and supercross moto races. 

I've been working on this update all day and this is all I got so maybe tomorrow's will be better. 

One more thing, they've changed the course here a little bit and put in a new steep rock down hill. One of the Merida guys crashed and broke their arm on it the other day. I saw a girl crash there pretty hard but she got up and rode away. 

I wonder what Winstons' doing right now....

Tour Time

I've been logging in the Tour time. I think I've seen this stage 4 times today. That was a horrible crash with Jens Voigt yesterday. Glad to hear he is doing OK, I thought it was going to be way worse. 

I think I made the right choice to stay home for a few more days. Benno probably won't think so though since it's 3:30 hours from St Ann to Montreal and then 3:30 hours back to St Ann. I'm feeling much better though and even went motor pacing today. Meg and Winston took me in the car. Winston has his nose in the wind the whole time and I was just tucked in behind the car. 

The weather here has been awesome. It rained yesterday afternoon which was nice since it hadn't rained in a long time. Today it was in the mid 90s and nothing but sunshine. After the motor pacing session I hit the Gulch and the trails were prime from the rain yesterday. I wish we could have a US Cup race here in Durango. I have the perfect 15 minute lap course in mind all along the college and Chapman hill. We could do the short track at night at Chapman hill too, it would be awesome. 1 day, XC in the morning, STXC that night under the lights. 

Another roadie positive today. How does it take so long for these guys to get popped. What kind of test takes 2 months to get results from? I wonder who will be positive from the Tour come September. 

I'm on the early flight out of Durango tomorrow since all the other flights were sold out when I changed my ticket. You gotta get up mighty early for a 6am flight, even in Durango. The only good thing is there shouldn't be any road construction at 5am. 

I wonder if I'm going to get a breakfast pizza from Wolfgang Puck tomorrow in DIA........

Not the Best Weekend

The buildup to Nationals was perfect. Hung out in Vail with Meg, Winston, Bob, Rude and G.C. all week. Meg hit the stair stepper while watching the Tour.

Vail was perfect all week. We did some sweet mountain rides.

We did some intervals too that weren't so much fun. There was a Tiger Woods 08 WI contest at Bob's one night. I didn't play but Rude had a sore hand the next day.

Winston was having fun hanging out with his "Manny(man nanny)", G.C.

We left Vail on Thursday for Granby. The drive was cool, a long dirt road section along the river, some good cowboy country. Our condo left a little to be desired, aside from being on the 3rd floor so we had to bring all our crap up it was pretty hot. Top that off with the giant sky light in the middle of the room which had it lit up like Christmas at 6 a.m. every morning. 

Race day finally came and everything was going to plan. I had good legs and was climbing pretty well. I guess those couple of weeks cutting calories leading up to the race had paid off. The course was really bumpy and the Epic was awesome. There was a short, steep 1 to 2 minute fire road climb that was smooth and the rest was rough. 

I rode most of the race with JHK with him hurting me the first two times up the climbs but I would catch up pretty quick on the descents. The 3rd and 4th laps we rode together not too hard up the climb and I would get a small gap on the descent but nothing much. I had a couple second gap going into the final lap but JHK hit it hard on the fire road climb and got a gap on me. That was the one section of the course I was going the worst on. I was chasing and hoping to keep it to with in 20-30 seconds to have a chance to close it on the descent. About 1/2 way up the single track climb I had a mechanical that rendered my bike unrideable. I thought I might still be able to walk it in for a decent place since the National Champs have a lot of UCI points. I underestimated how long it would take to walk the remainder of the course in road shoes and only managed to trash my legs for the next day's short track. Should have turned around as soon as it happened and called it day.

After the race I couldn't stop sneezing and coughing and thought it was just from the dust. Today I'm still sneezing though and seem to have caught a little cold this weekend. Talk about bad luck. Does it ever end?

The short track was better but not great. I managed a 2nd after riding in front for over half the race. Craig attacked in the middle and I was already tapped out and couldn't chase. Not a bad result but no jersey. The course was straight up and straight down. Not a typical short track course that's fast and usually has group racing with attacks and some drafting.

I was suppose to go to Canada tomorrow for the World Cup this weekend but decided to go a little later in the week and hopefully get back to full health before leaving for the weekend. I'm happy to see the form is good and am looking forward to racing at sea level instead of 8,200 feet. Also looking forward to the 2 minute climbs instead of 15 minute ones and maybe even some mud. 

I wonder if the Dart is sitting on an SA air flight right now....

Crackers

JPow is going to have some competition on the 1s and 2s from WW. 

Winston takes the brunt of our boredom on long drives, even when he's just trying to sleep

And when he's awake.

So how much stuff can you fit in a Tundra? 

That's a lot of wheels. 

We've been hanging in Vail for the past few days. The training has been awesome, the weather has been great and the accommodations top notch. We rode the Meadow mountain loop yesterday along with Battle Mountain. The trails and wild flowers are going crazy right now. What else have we been up to? 

Taking naps, sitting in the river after rides, eating at Bob's Place, hanging out in Vail, mostly sitting in front of the giant TV watching the Tour 4 times per day. We have also been spending some time at the Buck and other local coffee shops. Last night Rude, G.C. and Christian had a Tiger Woods 08 WII contest at Bob's place. 

The Dart won the African Continental Championships last weekend, congrats. no a surprise though. I think he even had a flat tire or some other issue and still won by over 10 minutes. 

Tomorrow we're off to Granby for Nat's. I wonder if they're going to have Versus and internet...... 

Longmont

Saturday we stole Ned's bike rack, loaded up the Tundra, and Meg, Winston, Rude, G.C. and I headed up to Longmont. Why Longmont? There was a crit on Sunday we decided to do to get some high intensity racing in before Nationals. 

I did get some high intensity in during the race. There were quite a few of the Garmin devo guys there along with the Livestrong team and a bunch of other fast front range riders. I managed to get into a break in the middle of the race with Howes and Baj(not sure how to spell his whole name). We got a maximum gap of 30 seconds on the field but were caught with about 20 minutes to go. I was suffering the whole time and could barely pull though. Those road guys have some high end. I was happy when we were reabsorbed by the group and my heart rate could drop below 186 for a few minutes. 

We drove up to Vail last night after the race and are kicking it at Meg's family's house until we head to Nationals in the middle of the week. It's really nice here in Vail right now. Had some breakfast at Bob's place, the best breakfast place in the valley. They have about 30 plasma TVs and they're all tuned to the Tour. 

Rude, G.C. and I are going to head out on a Vail bike path ride, one of my favorite bike paths in the country. Almost forgot, Winston was sick the night before we left and he was suffering in the car on Saturday. He threw up 3 times, only once in the car and just a little but the guy was in the hurt locker. He's doing better now though and is back to bouncing his tennis ball and chasing it around the yard. 

There were only 2 crashes in the race yesterday, one on the corner after the race finished and the other when a guy's rear wheel slipped in his drop outs right before a corner. His back wheel locked up and he slid sideway until his tubualr wore through and blew up. That was a good glue job because it didn't come off and the guy kept it upright and managed not to take out any other riders. Good bike handling. 

We are traveling with 6 bikes and 5 spare sets of wheels and tons of bags. Nothing like traveling light. 

I wonder if we're going to see Bruno tonight....

STXC

Just finished the Durango Devo Short Track race. The Devo crew has been holding short tracks for the past month up at FLC on Wednesday nights. I can't believe how many people are racing and spectating. It's great. 

Saw that Vogel won the Swiss National Championships last weekend, Susi was 4th. It's amazing how many great mountain bike racers come out of Switzerland. Naff was 5th and Nino 6th. Gugan, Fluckinger and host of other riders were up there. That's a stacked field. Just about any one of those guys are standing on the podium at the World Cups on any given weekend or even the top box of the World Championships. 

The training has been going well, doing some intervals, some long rides, went motor pacing this morning. Meg is getting really good at motor pacing. 

I bought a new tube for the River today at River Sports over by the BMX track. The tube is sweet with a nylon/kevlar cover and mesh seat. I did a short tube run with Rude and TT before the short track. The tube worked awesome. TT had a new gore tex cast after busting his wrist 2 weeks ago on the rock ride in Big Canyon so he can float the river. I have been taking zero pictures lately so the text will have to do. 

The Tour has been great so far this year and I hope it stays exciting. There are a big group of people planning on attending the Britney Spears concert in Vegas the day after the PRO XCT finals. I don't know who is more excited, Meg or Susi. 

Oh yea, while I was buying my tube today and some Aqua Seal for my new cross tires Winston jumped out the window of the truck and ran away. I looked frantically for him up by the highway and down by the BMX track. We go there sometimes, rip the track and then he plays in the river so I thought he might be down there. After 20 minutes of running around in my flip flops yelling for him I went back to the store and he had walked inside via the side door. I thought for sure he was going to be flattened up on Highway 160 and felt like I had just done a VO2 max interval when I finally found him. 

I wonder if Elka is going to hurt me during my massage tomorrow....