Liege picks

I'm throwing picks together rather late so no analysis of previous Liege races. After my Roubaix picks got shut out, I have had two solid races at Amstel and Fleche. Off the top of my head, I had a 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 10th. Not bad.

For tomorrow, I could pick some of the same riders again. But, in the spirit of keeping things fresh, I will not pick any of guys from the previous two races even though I believe they will do well again.

In alphabetical order.
Igor Anton - in the mix at Fleche but went a little too early. Hopefully, he will follow up with another strong performance
Francisco Masciarelli - he's a bit of a longshot and will probably serve as a worker for Garzelli but he has talent. Maybe he pulls out a surprise
Franco Pelizzotti - He's finished top 20 in this race and his form should be starting to come around in advance of the Giro.

My wildcard - Remy DiGregorio

Last minute picks

I think Fleche Wallone has already started as I type this but I'm putting in some picks real quick.

I'll stick with Horner again
Go with Kreuziger, instead of Nibali
and lastly.... Contador. This is more of a curiosity pick. A big name that could potentially do well but not much experience lately in these races.

My wildcard pick Ben Hermans

Amstel Gold is on the calendar this w...

 

Amstel Gold is on the calendar this weekend but I figured I would go back and review my picks for Roubaix.

A blind monkey could have thrown darts at a board full of names and done better I did last week.

Who did I pick? I believe my selections were Miller, Chainel and Boom. DNF. DNF. DNF. How about them apples?

I also wanted to see how Sagan and Popovych did. Sagan finished outside the time limit. Thankfully, Popo actually finished with the "main group" of 23 riders. Officially, he came across the line in 30th place. If I wanted to use a really positive spin, I could say he tied for 13th since those 23 riders were awarded the same time. The faster I can forget about those picks, the better. Thank goodness for another race this weekend.

Amstel lends itself to having the same people often finishing in the top 10. No less than 15 riders have finished top-10 multiples in the past five years. Only 29 riders have finished top-10 in that same span of time. Four of the 29 have retired. Nine have been suspended from the sport for doping and one (Ricco) has served his suspension but his team is not in the race. That leaves only 15 of the starters on Sunday having finished top-10 in the past 5 years.

You would think this small number top-10 finishers would open the door for a few new people to crack the top-10 for the first time. That is quite possible. Last year was a breakthrough as six people finished top-10 for the first time. On the other hand, there are not any schlubs in that group of 15 and I could see nearly all them being good enough to finish that highly again. That list includes the two Schlecks, Cunego, Freire, Gerrans, Gesink, Gilbert, Ivanov, Kolobnev, Kroon, Leukemans, Nuyens (maybe not), Pineau, Rodriguez and Valverde. Not many names there that I would bet against.

With all that said, here are my choices.

Chris Horner - he's riding a hot streak and good on the climbs

Vincenzo Nibali - pretty good in the hills and an attacking rider. Hasn't done a lot this year but maybe he has been pointing to these hillier Classics (crosses fingers)

Ryder Hesjedal - Not a great climber but good enough and he just seems to get stronger every year. Always seems to put in solid performances.

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As usual, I am very slow in writing anything.  Last weekend's Spring Fling Crit at Tilles Park was on tap.  In the day's leading up to the race I could not decide whether to do both Masters and Cat 3/4 or just one of the races.  Eventually, I decided to do the two races and looked at it as good training and it was.
The first race, Masters 40+, was uneventful for me.  I floated around the pack without ever really doing very much.  The big moment was a large pileup involving 8-10 riders.  The race was neutralized for 30 minutes while an ambulance attended to several injured riders.  It was a rather ugly crash that I watched happen in front of me.  It was one of the wrecks where you see bikes doing flips in mid-air and and guys heading face first toward pavement.  Never a pretty scene.
Even more disturbing may have been the sheerness of local legend, Shawn O'Neal's, white shorts.  They did not appear to be threadbare or deteriorating, as shorts sometimes do.  They simply were not very opaque and made for a much too visible butt crack.  There really needs to be an end to the manufacture of white, yellow or any lightly colored shorts. 
Fortunately, Shawn got into a break so that I was not witness to the eyesore for too long.  When the race was neutralized, he promptly dropped out of the race and changed into his regular clothes because he was entered in two other races later in the day.  Rather amazing that a person would drop out of a race and not take part in the restart when they are, at the time, in a lead group 15 seconds ahead of the pack.
Once the race got going again, the pack did get caught so maybe it didn't matter. But, if they had had four riders instead of three would things have been different?
I couldn't get clipped into my right pedal on the restart and was gapped almost immediately.  With the pack chasing madly to catch the leaders I was fighting mightily to catch back onto the back of the pack.  It was a fruitless chase and I quit after a few laps to save my legs for the second race.
The Cat 3/4 race was more riding in circles trying to move up through the pack.  I usually have problems moving up through the pack on this course.  The road is a little bit narrow and has just enough bends in the road that you have to pick your spots to gain a few positions and then hold it, which I am not particularly good at doing.
I did manage to weedle my up toward the front late in the race and was just about to make a big move with a little over a lap to go when I got cut off by the two leaders in one of the aforementioned bends in the road.  Timing is everything.  All my momentun was slowed, I got swarmed and was in no spot to be a threat in the finish.  I gave a decent effort though and hit 43mph in the finish.  I have never paid much attention to my speeds before.  Mostly because, for years, I did not even have a bike computer.  But, I was impressed by 43mph.  Maybe that is nothing special.  I don't know.

Roubaix Picks

Time got away from me this week and I am having to put together some picks for Roubaix at the last minute.

No review of past results or anything. I'm just going to throw my choices out there.

In alphabetical order
Lars Boom - his cross experience has to help him, doesn't it?
Steve Chainel - Bbox has been racing really well this year so I am hopping on the bandwagon
David Millar - I'm crossing my fingers on this one and hoping he does not have a bike throwing fit on one of the cobbled sections. But, he had a strong Flanders and I'm banking on that form continuing.

Guys I want to watch: Yaroslav Popovych - former U23 winner before he got sidetracked into stage races and being domestique to Armstrong.
Peter Sagan - was really strong earlier this year but is way too young to do well at this this race but I am curious to see how he gets along. Another guy, like Boom, with some 'cross background.

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Anatomy of a headwind

This past Tuesday I drove over to Columbia for a workout. Whenever I need to do intervals of even a moderate length of time that is where I go. No stop signs, very little traffic, basically flat roads and relative closeness to home make it the ideal place for me to do this type of workout.

The days leading up to Tuesday had been breezy and coming out of the south, as is often the case at this time of year, when temperatures begin to rise and the warm air is pulled up from the Gulf of Mexico. I will not go crazy with hyperbole about the wind. When I look back at the weather data, the winds were supposedly right about 18mph and gusting to around 28mph. I will only say that when you are riding straight into those wind speeds, it sure feels like the wind is blowing stronger.

The planned workout was four, 5-minute efforts at 280-290 watts with 2.5 minutes at 180-200 watts between each effort as a recovery. Cranking out the watts when pedaling into that strong headwind proved to be relatively easy, but it did not make for fast riding. The fun part came when it was time to return to the car.

Below is a chart of the workout. I only included the last threee 5-minute efforts for a reason that is too long too explain. But, that is good because I covered basically the exact same distance in the 20 minutes ( three 5-minute efforts plus two 2.5-minute recovery periods) into the headwind than I did in the 13-14 minutes of easy pedaling with the tailwind.

The purple lines are the wattage and blue lines are the speed. Basically, I was going maybe 15mph when doing an above threshold effort into the wind. The change in direction is rather obvious as the speeds shoot up to about 25mph average while only averaging about 150 watts.

Gustav Larsson shows why doing a reco...

Gustav Larsson shows why doing a reconnaissance ride of the Paris-Roubaix cobbles is not always a good idea.

 

Ronde van Vlaanderen picks

Ronde van Vlaanderen picks

First, a few observations.  When people think of Flanders, one of the first name that comes to mind is Tom Boonen.  That is a normal reaction, he is always in the mix and animating the race.  However, he has only finished top 10 twice in the last five years.   On the positive side, those two top 10 finishes were wins, four and five years ago.  His trend seems to be win, or finish somewhere between 1th and 20th.

Another name that is high on many lists this year is Fabian Cancellara.  Again,  Fabian is a very strong rider.  I would be hard pressed to leave him off my list, too.  But, should he really be on all those lists.  Only once in the last five years has Cancellara five in the top 20 in Flanders.  That shocked me.  I think there are some extenuating circumstances with that stat.  I think he broke a chain last year and I seem to recall some sickness a couple years ago.  So, it is likely that he would have better results but, the fact remains, he has had his difficulties in this race.

Devolder is like Boonen.  Stijn has won the last two years, but nothing beyond that.

If you are looking for a guy that always seems to be in the mix and a threat to win, go with Alessandro Ballan.  Four times top-10 in the past five years.

The second best in terms of top 10's these past five years has been George Hincapie.  But, as good as consistency is, I think every rider would like to have Boonen and Devolder's record in this race over Ballan and Hincapie.

Ballan and Hincapie are, of course, on both riding for BMC this year.  BMC is getting some notice for their team and deservedly so.  The lower half of their team is unimpressive but their top four riders (Hincapie, Ballan, Kroon and Burghardt).  In addition to Ballan and Hincapie's seven top-10s, Kroon has two top-10s and two top-20s while Burghardt has a top-10 and a top-20.  I don't believe there is a team in the race that can match that.

On to my picks, in no particular order.

Sylvain Chavanel:  He has been rather quiet this year so I am not terribly confident in this choice but hopefully he is laying low and targeting this race.

Aleksandr Kuchynski:  Had a strong spring last year, but has been a little more quiet this year.  I think he is capable of doing well and has one top 20 in Flanders.

Bernhard Eisel:  Won Gent-Wevelgem last week.  He has been top-20 a couple times before.  And, with HTC-Columbia having lost so many riders over the winter his role is more prominient.  He goes into the race as their leader instead of being a worker.  Besides, he is damn nice guy.  I may have to write something about that sometime.

Wildcard:  The CX'er in me is rooting for Boom even though he is probably a little too young and inexperienced with Flanders to really break through.
 

Review of my Gent-Wevelgem picks

Review of my Gent-Wevelgem picks

 

Last week I chose Farrar, Bennati and Hoogerland and they did reasonably well.  Farrar finished 9th, about a minute behind the leaders.  Bennati finished a so-so 25th, three and half minutes behind and Hoogerland.... well... ol' Johnny was aggressive in trying to bridge up to the leaders with 70-80km to go.  Not sure what he was trying to do there but it was probably a support role.  That's not typically a winning type of maneuver.
 

Forest Park wrapup

Forest Park wrapup

 

Sunday was my first crit of the season. 

 

I got the day off to a great start with a call from work at 12:30am.  An hour later, and problem solved, I crawled back into bed only to wake up several hours later, exhausted, congested and feeling like I had a bloated head.  After breakfast I had laid down in bed, watched a little streaming video of Gent-Wevelgem and hoped to get a little bit more rest.

 

My body felt a little better after the nap.  As much as anything, the simple act of deciding what to wear, packing up all the gear, loading the bike into the car and all the other routine acts of race preparation seemed to do as much good as anything for my general condition.  The conditions were chilly and wet so just resigning myself to having a couple unpleasant hours on the bike was half the battle.

 

And, unpleasant it was.  Temperatures in the low 40's, windy, wet.  I quickly made up my mind to race just the Masters and not try to do Masters and Cat 3 back-to-back.  After changing clothes, Giuseppe and I headed eastward along the roads in Forest Park and the headwind and spitting rain stinging the skin made for an unpleasant start to a  warmup.  Never has the left hand turn, up the hill to the Art Museum, felt so good.

 

Race time came and I was not excited to be there.  I floated around aimlessly at the back end of the pack, as if I was begging to get dropped with one good acceleration.  Eventually, my head got in the game and I put in a short little effort.  After that, I actually did a little racing.  I tried to follow Henderson on the prime lap.  That was almost laughable.  His attack did not seem that harsh but the consistent application of power had me gasping up the little rise to the final turn.  Sitting in the pack for a little while sounded like a good idea after that.

 

All in all, it was a good race.  Giuseppe put himself in a break and the rest of were busy marking moves by others.  Dyer marked Henderson’s winning bridge, while Christophe and I were covering others trying to get up to Giuseppe’s group of four. 

 

All in all, it was a good day with the team getting 2^nd, 3^rd, 7^th and 10^th.