Valkenburg

What a glorious day! My first three days here have been amazing; mid twenties, no shortage of sun and not a breath of wind. The last two days have been spent exploring the area south of Geleen in the very most southern part of the Netherlands. This area is where the Amstel Gold Race is held every year and to put it in the most basic terms, there are 50 climbs (between say 1k to 3k) within a 30-40km radius and to get in some solid riding you can simply create a plethora of different loops over different bergs until your heart's content.  

Yesterday we started out coming through Valkenburg and straight up the Cauberg which is the finish for Amstel, it's so cool riding up this hill with all the painting (Schleck, Boogerd, Evans etc) half faded on the road, and the finish line is at the top year round so there's no shortage of half wheeling going up the climb.  The day before yesterday I had recently Pez'd fellow anglophone, James Spragg, play tour guide and show me round a bunch of different locations; all adorned with the suffix 'berg'. Good to know that my new training ground, despite being in Holland, is anything but flat.  Now for some pictures...

Brad and Loh enjoying the sun

I am also enjoying the sun

Enjoying  the green surroundings

Enjoying the Dutch bike path systems

Enjoying the car free centre of Geleen

Definitely enjoying finding an asian grocery store in Geleen (yes I am as shocked as you!). Then compounding that enjoyment with the fact that they had fresh rolled sticky rice parcels filled with minced turmeric chicken. Yes, there was a lot of enjoyment on my behalf.

 I can survive a month without food but 3 days without Fish sauce and I am in serious trouble.

Ciao

Jono

FAQ

Who: Marco Polo Cycling Team

Where: Geleen, The Netherlands

How Long: 4 months

What Races:
To put it in simple terms, 6 weeks racing various tours, kermesse races and 1 day road races, amateur and pro level in and around the Netherlands, France, Germany and mostly Belgium.

Then 2 weeks of agony in Qinghai ,followed by a rest week or two

Then another 6 week European block as above, then a trip home via another week racing in the new Tour of China which is rumoured to be hilly!

Why: Why not?

Life in Geleen: So far so good, a small town, certainly not Melbourne sized. The biggest difference so far is that in Aussie terms we are out in the 'sticks'. Instead of a few hundred kilometres between towns, it's more like <5 kilometres.

Enough: Yeh.

See ya.

The European Chapter

And thus it begins.

Welcome to the foreign land of the Netherlands. Welcome lush green scenery. Welcomes obscure but useful bikepaths. Welcome offensively flat countryside punctuated with bergs to the south. Welcome confusing and humorous language. Welcome sun and 25 degrees. Welcome overwhelming cool bike culture. Also welcome swift adaptation to the new time zone thanks to caffeine.

Not so welcome abundance of average coffee (but still warm, comforting and making me go to the toilet since 1989). Very much unwelcome lack of south east Asian cuisine (sniff). Feeling a bit unwelcome myself if I try to ride on the left hand side of the road..'what, they drive on the right here', queue horn, "BEEEEEEEEEP", woops.

Blah blah blah, so on and so forth. This joint is different to Melbourne, but at the same time similar, still a developed, westernised kind of country and frankly I'm more than happy being here. Which is a good thing, as I have 4 months to go. Plenty more stories as they come to hand. It's just me, a slow net connection and a pantry of food getting me through the post ride afternoons.

On a side note, KLM have taken my award for shittest plane food in the aviation world.I call it the Very Offensive Meals In Transit (VOMIT) Award. It it highly prized. Let it be known that every time you serve customers a powdered egg omelette God/Allah/Buddha/Vishnu kills a kitten. A cute one too.

So just think about that KLM.

Bye for now!

Picture time

Photos from Korea

 Hotel view: Beautiful Jeju Island. You can see the pre race presentation stage in the distance

 Stage 1, Roll out.

Leaving the neutral section, stage 1, uphill and into the wind and rain.

 Many hours post stage 1, plane transfer. Very over it by now, tired and grumpy for sure.

Brief moment on the front, stage 2

 Stage 3, pacing back on after a flat. Downhill, tunnel, fast, fun.

Stage 3, Out of tunnel, nice view!

 Jimmy, our mechanic, also a big fan of fresh Korean seafood.

 A typical Korean sex motel (aka love motel)

 Trying to have a team meeting in the overheated, sweaty and stuffy sex motel room!

  Haidar in action: Drink time

 Loh on the rest day, top of the 1st KOM for the next stage!

 On the way up...

Heading back to the motel, rugged up of course.

That's it! And I have to say a massive thanks to Marco Polo Cycling Team and the organisors of the Tour De Korea for another great adventure..flight to Hong Kong departs in 1 hour. Sad sad reality awaits!

Ciao

S.H.I.T

That's it. The race  is doooone. It has been a tremendously long two weeks of travel and racing. The mental stress had built up and built up and was finally let down last night with a few beers and about 5 animals worth of meat.

The last stage was amazing and ridiculous at the same time. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

What's Brilliant: Racing through the heart of Seoul. We started with a lap around the olympic park then looped out a highway and the river, u turned, came back, jumped off the highway and raced up and down around this crazy hill near where the president (or prime minister? I am frankly 100% ignorant on South Korean government structure..) resides then through some more big streets to end up finishing near the town hall smack bang in the middle of Seoul. Very cool. Very Brilliant.

What's Silly, Hopeless, Idiotic and downright Terrifying (S.H.I.T): The lack of traffic control and entering numerous massive intersections, with traffic, and, no marshals to tell us where to go! Mayhem. So as we were chasing after a group that split off on the dangerous cobbled speed hump descent (that's another story!) out of the presidential house/park/thingamajig we took two wrong turns and ended  up stuck in the middle of a 5 lane road with cars banked up infront of us and behind us. We were screwed! Then even worse, the commisaire makes light of the situation by docking our group a hypothetical 3mins 20sec after saying he'd give us bunch time. What a Sha-mozzle. A brothel. A veritable logistical train wreck. Only beer and grilled carcass's can remedy such a shame.

So now I am about to fly out back to Melbourne and will be MIA on the blog front for a few weeks. The plan at the moment is to head off to Europe by the end of May whereby a massive 3 months of racing awaits. So unless I get any hilarious stories to tell it's bye for now!

Jono

5500 Calories

Is what I burnt today in the looooong 241k spent saddled up today

225 stage + 10k neutral + 6 k warm up.

It was fairly hilly with lots of lovely things to write about but alas I am tired and about to go to bed! So just a quick post to say nothing really changed. Other than octopus, preserved egg and spicy tomato sauce sandwiches are really something special.

Oh yeh, we got more snow flurries at the top of the 2nd KOM today (900m), but no mass freezage a la stage 7.

And another newsflash to say that I am really sick of banana powerbars

Ciao.

Frozen To The Core

Man oh man, that was tough! Like crazy, ridiculous, just stupid tough!

Picture this: Start line, 6 degrees, icy wind but no rain. Ok this sure sucks, but it's managable.

2k into the 10k neutral the rain she begins to fall. The temperature also begins to fall, 6 degrees down to 3, where it will remain. 4.5 Hours to go. For some reason everyones motivation also begins to fall. Oh crap... ....Oh shit.... hmmm Oh well. Everyone has had one of these rides before. No feeling in your hands or feet, can't brake, can't change gears, don't even think about trying to get food out of your pocket and so on (on a side note I tucked my gels into the end of my knicks so I could access them with frozen hands). Generally it is bad. Real Bad. (second side note: I have a pair of medium winter gloves and a pair of full on winter gloves, I chose the medium ones. Massive error.)

Picture this, I crossed the finish line and found my Directeur and said: hey grab my bag and come with me, I can't use my hands so I need you to undress me! So like an F1 pitstop we ran into some bathrooms at the finishing stadium and I had my Directeur and Masseus on either side of me ripping off clothes, towelling, cleaning and dressing me. It was like a whirlwind of action while I stood there blubbering unable to conjugate correct sentences because my lips were so cold! Then our interpreter came running with tray of coffee and green tea! Legend. Then my Directeur pulls a packet of caramel waffle biscuits he had been saving from Holland. Oh thank you god!

So the race was great fun in racing terms, really jumpy and really fast. Lots of breaks and attacks and no negative racing, just good balls out aggression. In the end I couldn't quite bridge to a group of 15 that had formed at 35k to go and ended up missing an important split. Then bunch shut down and we lost heaps of time! Not helped by taking  a wrong turn at an unmaned intersection. Never mind. I was riding aggressively and attacking when I could so I am happy to say I gave it my best.

My top GC aspirations are done for this race now but a decent placing is still possible with two mammoth stages to come. I'll be spending a good 12-14 hours in the saddle the next two days. Let's just hope it warms up.

It's a pity but my two remaining Malaysian teamates Haidar and Loh both suffered like dogs (doesn't everyone?) but couldn't last the distance in that cold. Talk about a shock to the system, 35 degrees and sun to this filth! Oh did I mention it started snowing in flurries after the finish? Even worse, this morning on the rest day we rode up one of the climbs for tomorrows 225k stage and there was snow everywhere from about 400 metres of altitude and beyond. Let's hope there is no snow tomorrow...

Bye for now