So this past weekend I finally met the majority of my teammates, got a sense of the team dynamics, and what to expect during the upcoming year. Saturday we went out for about 170km in West Flanders. Flanders is broken up into East and West regions with West Flanders being the area with all the “bergs” or monstrous little climbs.

We met up at the team headquarters in Wettern, a smaller town just outside of Gent, and we all left together from there. The riders all looked really fit and were definitely no joke! I asked who they rode for last year, etc. while we were warming up at the beginning of the ride. The responses were pretty impressive. Some of the guys had rode for the Murphy&Gunn/Sean Kelly Cycling Team, a few rode for other Belgian pro teams, one guy (Hamish Haynes) was a victim of the Pedaltech Continental Pro Team debacle and was now riding for us, and then there were a couple younger riders in only there first of second year under 23.

Anyway, after about fifty kilometers we were in Oudenaarde which is smack in the center of all the classic Tour of Flanders climbs. Needless to say, we hit about a half dozen of these bergs. They included the Kruisberg, Kluisberg, Oude Kwaremont, and couple others that I can’t recall the names of. Regardless, what started out as a nice team training ride turned into a battle up each of these damn hills. Since the first big race on our calendar is less than two weeks away each rider wants to impress the director and show that he has the form to start in these events.

The director, a soigneur, and mechanic were in the team car following us the entire ride so they really did have a first hand view on how everyone was shaking up. It was also nice because we only had to carry one bottle and no food or tubes. We just dropped back to the team car, got whatever we needed from the car and rode back up to the group. Anyway, my legs felt good and I was able to stay with the first three or four over the top of each climb. The guy from Murphy and Gunn really throttled it on the hills, but after he told me he was making the breaks with Chocolade Jacques last year I don’t feel too bad about hanging onto his wheel for dear life!

Following the ride, we had a nice team lunch/dinner where everybody got to chat a little more and get know one another. All told there are thirteen guys on the team with riders from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, USA, Britain, Italy, and New Zealand. It is quite an international squad but having a handful of riders from English-speaking nations will make life a little easier. Furthermore, there will be some people to train with now. It definitely gets old training alone in all this crap weather!

Well now it is nose back to the grindstone. I have another hard three day block of training (160km each day with blocks of intensity peppered in there) then this weekend the team is training together on Saturday and I’m hitting a kermesse on Sunday to hone the form before the Beverbeek Classic. All in all, a pretty busy schedule but one that I’m really enjoying.

Hope everyone is getting excited for the season back home!

David Wiswell

www.echappeonline.com

P.S. Ya the numbers from those rides are alright but I’m not exactly the smallest guy around either…