Thursday, December 02, 2004

I had the bike set up on the trainer ready for a ride but actually getting my motivated to hop on was a struggle tonight. Eventually I convinced myself I needed to do something if I'm going to be halfway competitive this weekend.

I did a warmup of about 5 minutes then went at an above average pace for 40 minutes before cooling down for another 5 minutes. Gearing was 36x13. Not a huge gear but I'm not concerned with big gears right now. My main concern is getting the heart rate up, tapping out a good tempo with a nice pedal stroke and breathing properly. In that respect I think I achieved the goals for the ride.

Today's weight: 158

News Item of the Day: Michele Scarponi (Domina Vacanze) has signed a two year contract to ride for Liberty Seguros, according to Italian sources. The 25 year-old climber with six wins this season will join Joseba Beloki at Liberty, with the latter signing a one year deal with his former manager Manolo Saiz.

Beloki said that he was eager to return to the directorship of Saiz, as his best performances were with ONCE. He said that while his results were mixed in 2004, 2005 will be the year in which he shows more of his old form. Beloki wants to put his 2003 crash behind him and is confident he will reach grand tour podiums again.

Liberty Seguros is now looking very much like the strong ONCE team of old, with Beloki, Scarponi, Roberto Heras, Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano, Marcos Serrano, Isidro Nozal, Jörg Jaksche and Allan Davis all part of the team.

Viewpoint: A pretty strong team that Liberty has re-assembled. Beloki for the Tour, Heras for the Vuelta and maybe Scarponi for the Giro with young Davis going for sprint wins. The others are all good strong riders. Nice team.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home