Darren Lill wins in Mt Hood

Great News over my morning coffee! My "home boy", South African Darren Lill (BMC racing) won today's stage in the Mount Hood stage race in the US, narrowly beating Australia's Rory Sutherland to the line. Darren pulled off a great "coup double" by winning the stage and taking over the yellow jersey. He's only leading Sutherland by 1 second, however today (friday)'s stage is a hilly mountain stage. Darren won this stage of the race last year, and his chances of keeping, or even increasing his grip on the overall lead of race are therefore much strong (what with him being a climber and all). I also came across this TV interview with Darren from the great people at the Velonews.com web-site. Here Darren is being interviewed after a long day in the breakaway of a stage of the 2007 Tour of Missouri.

http://www.velonews.com/vntv/?Art_ID=1613

Good luck to Darren for the rest of Mt Hood!

Darren's secret to success? Loads of home made Jam from my very own plumb tree in the back garden. Shhhtttt, keep it to yourselves! The UCI doesn't test for Jam (yet). :-)

Tight legs in Chateaux de la Loire

A busy couple days up here in Central France. Sunday's race was a big disappointment for me with my crank coming loose at the half way point and forcing a much hated DNF. Despite the DNF my legs felt pretty shot that evening, but hoping to ride into form for the next 2 weekends I headed out Monday morning and got in a nice 3+ hours for bit over a 100km, going West to the Chateaux de la Loire part of France, and going past the stunning Chateau Chenonceau. I did the same thing Tuesday morning as well. Wednesday I had a much needed 2 hours massage. It's been a while since I've had a massage and due to a broken leg when I was younger and a crash in the US in 2004 that displaced my pelvis and saw me visiting my Osteopath regularly for about 2 years, I have very very tight ITBs on both legs. It usually takes about 2 or 3 weeks on very regular massage to loosen them up, so hopefully I can get that taken care of this year.

I have FINALLY started doing short intervals. The time of year has come where there are a few short circuit races which mean lots of accelerations, and some hilly stage races where I'll need good accelerations to follow attacks or go for the King of the Mountains jersey, so I've been going out and doing very short rides but with regular 30second all out sprints. It's a bit late actually to be starting those now, but better late than never.

A Week dissapointment.

Well that was a waste of time. Wasn't feeling great but was doing ok, always at the front and off in the breaks that mattered. And that in a CRIT would you believe. The kind of thing I suck at because of all the repeat accelerations. I probably would have done ok and scored a couple points at least, but my bloody crank came loose of all things. A bit odd, but there you go, so I was out of the race at the half way point. Oh well, that's the way it is.

Add that to last weekend's stage race which started with a poor Time Trial where I finished 17th but still within 30seconds of the winner, followed by a road race that saw me and my young teammate Hugo get away in a chase group trying to bridge across to the 7 mean break... we worked bloody hard for some 60 odd km, we had 42seconds ont he peleton with 6 or 7k to go, which had been a pretty stable gap all day. And the course was really hard. Then with 2k to go we could see the peloton behind us and they caught us with 1km to go. What a dissapointment and waste of a day's very hard work. Hugo, who was in line for the White jersey of best young rider thanks to our chase group, ended up missing on that jersey, and I missed out on sneeking into the top 10 overall.

Team Time Trial Champs Silver

Last weekend went ok, and I felt really strong, went off and tried to bridge up but "only" got 9th. Then yesterday (Thursday) was the Pyrenees Team Time Trial Champs, we hadn't ridden a TTT together with these 4 riders in the past, so it was a bit touch and go. But with a couple of more experienced TTT riders we put in a good effort, got the Silver medal and might have clinched our selection for National TTT champs, and possibly even Road and ITT champs. So watch this space, we/I might be headed over to this year's Alpine (I think) National Champs.

What a bunch...

Right, only a day before a Stage race near home, then off north for a couple races... I hope I start feeling better as I didn't feel great at the TTT and haven't felt great all week.