schmalz Today I’m here with Pavel Gonda of BH/Garneau, who’s making his way through the East Coast races. How are you Pavel?

Gonda I’m good, a little tired after the racing, but I’m good.

schmalz You always claim that you’re tired, especially after weekend races. You claim that you’ve been out ‘til 4 in the morning then you wake up, then you ride away and win.

Gonda Wow, it’s not true that you’re tired when you wake up at 4, after doing so many races. Also, the results were good, now this weekend after this Saturday it’s more recovery. I was racing more crits, collegiate, I felt, I have no team, I felt tired, almost could not stick with the group. Yet, at the end, I crashed because I was so tired I just could not control my bike. So, at last, the tiredness showed up.

schmalz It finally caught up with you, eh?

Gonda Yeah.

schmalz I guess, you did Battenkill, you won the 2 race at Battenkill, were you the highest placed amateur at the pro race?

Gonda I’m pretty sure I was. I was looking at the results, at the top ten, there were no amateur guys. I think that the next one was maybe Dan Zmolik from AXA who finished 21st, I think. I’m not sure though.

schmalz You’re both Czech. Do you have any bond because you’re both from the Czech Republic?

Gonda No no no, we don’t…he’s kind of a silent guy…the most we spoke together was maybe at the race, at the parade at Battenkill. We weren’t talking much, only about, it was so fast, someone broke away, and the pace, hellish speed, the first lap was maybe 27 mph, I’m not used to this speed, it was hell on earth.

schmalz I know that you were afraid the pace would be too high in the Cat 2 race, so you just stayed away and it was pretty easy for you, right?

Gonda You know the race was easy, but it hurt maybe more than the pro Battenkill. After I finished I just could not walk, because it was my first breakaway where I was with just one guy for three hours, and alone maybe half an hour, so the legs were really really tired the next day.

The pro Battenkill was the other way around. The legs hurt during the race, and when I finished I felt I could race again. I don’t know why it’s different, but that’s how I felt.

schmalz So how did you get to be in the US? You’re studying at NYU, correct?

Gonda Yes, I’m studying masters program, masters of law, only one year program, so I will have to go back to Czech Republic this summer. I don’t like it because I love racing and training, being a free man, but I have to go back to work and start being a lawyer slave again. There will be no time to train for me.

schmalz So you’ll be absorbed by the law again once you get back to the Czech Republic.

Gonda Yes, definitely.

schmalz How did you get into the sport?

Gonda You know, this question my friend asked me two days ago. To be honest I really don’t know. What I remember, my first race, after having trained 300 km a year, the race was the beginning of May I think, the guys trained 1500 km, maybe even 2000, seven times more than me. I realized I could be good at this sport, I guess that’s when it started. Then I met my friend who was something between amateur and professional, he would be a cat 1 here I think, he took me under his wing, he showed me how to train, how to race, he introduced me to people. That’s how I started, back in 2003.

I had three good years of biking, when I was studying, and then in 2005 I started to work, so I finished training and biking. I took it up again the last April of 2009.

schmalz So you’ve only been racing for about 7 years then?

Gonda Oh yeah, I’ve only been racing like 4 years, if you don’t count the 4 years I wasn’t on the bike regularly.

schmalz How’s the races in the Czech Republic? Did you just race or did you travel around?

Gonda Just the Czech Republic. I never traveled so much in one year. The longest you go in the Czech Republic is two hours, maybe three hours. I never traveled so much as I traveled here.

And the racing is very different, we don’t have any categories. There aren’t that many guys racing. So you start racing with the pros from the very beginning. Which means the first year you don’t finish races. You finish maybe 50 miles with the pros and then you just pull back in the field and that’s the end of the race for you.

schmalz That’s gotta be a pretty frustrating way to start your racing career, isn’t it?

Gonda You know, I don’t think so. It’s more a challenge than winning here in cat 5, I don’t want to be, you know, rude, but for me it was always challenging, it helped me to train, I had to get better very quickly to do races with them. It kept my motivation. After one year I was able to race with the pros 80 or 100 miles. I think that your system of categories doesn’t allow you to do that, it’s so much slower here.

I think that maybe you’re right, you don’t win, but for me, I didn’t mind, I don’t think. I was focused on racing with the best Czech riders and focused on in one year I will be able to finish with them. My best results are 13th in a stage race, and being 30th in the Czech national championships. I consider that a higher achievement than being all the time first or third in cat 3 or cat 2 here.

schmalz In the Czech Republic you don’t get to be called a sandbagger either, because you’re making your way through the categories.

Gonda Yeah.

schmalz You’ve traveled all over the US in your brief time here, you’ve gone to Arizona, you’ve gone to other states to race too, haven’t you?

Gonda I’ve also been to Arizona and Texas, after I finish my studies here I definitely want to go to the West, taking my bike with me, so I hope I will be able to race there. I was invited to the Tour de Beauce, the Canadian stage race, by the Louis Garneau team. It’s not sure yet, but I hope I will be able to go there. I’m looking forward to it, because it will be six days of 100 mile races, I’ve never done so long races, six days. It will be the biggest stage race, the biggest challenge for me, my biking season. My biking season ends in two months.

schmalz And you get a chance to take your cowboy hat with you, right?

Gonda Yes! Yes! And my boots! I lost my hat in a cab when I was riding to airport, I will definitely buy a new one. I have the cowboy boots still.

schmalz So when you go back to the Czech Republic you’re going to have the cowboy boots and the cowboy hat, people are going to wonder what happened to you, aren’t they?

Gonda Oh yes yes. I think that my friends would like to be here as well, such a wonderful year as I do now. But they don’t, I guess they will like to hear what I did here. I’ll loan them all this stuff, they will feel like real cowboys in Czech Republic. It will be fun.

schmalz It’s funny that you’re here basically for school, I guess a semi-vacation from a bike racing standpoint, you basically started as a cat 5 last summer, didn’t you?

Gonda Yeah, I was upgraded after the first race, because I was racing a lot of UCI races, so I wrote USA Cycling that I did those races, and I won the race here, it was the Prospect race in cat 5, they gave me a quick upgrade of course, and then I have to bike through all the categories. It was pretty good, there were many criteriums here around, it wasn’t hard to get upgrade points.

So I upgraded in one and a half months, maybe two months. So now I upgrade to cat 1.

schmalz And last year, I don’t think you ever shaved your legs, did you?

Gonda Oh I shaved the legs for the last race, for the cat 2 Boston professional criterium, so I didn’t shave the legs until the last race.

schmalz I remember seeing you at Floyd Bennett, you went off the front with Scot (Willingham), you had hairy legs, a bike I couldn’t recognize, I had no idea what kind of bike that was. It was a Czech bike, wasn’t it?

Gonda No, it was a German bike. But I was always a funny boy on the bike, because I never had a good bike, you know? I always look ridiculous on the bike, everybody was just looking at me and saying “what the hell is this boy doing here?”, and they were always surprised that I was able to beat them, they kinda started to like me. I was like a child in professional Czech cycling environment. My position was a bit awkward, all the time.

schmalz It’s funny, you’re coming over here, you’re basically starting as a cat 5, and within a year, less than a year, you’re up to cat 1. You’re kinda doing what most US racers want to do in the span of five or ten years. You come over here, you do a coupla races, “Oh, I wanna be cat 1 now, do some pro races for a bit, then I’m going to go back to the Czech Republic and maybe not race as much, or never again…”

Gonda This year I will try train before work maybe two hours a day, so I guess I will be able to continue this year and we will see how it ends up the next year. I think I will be able to be competitive in cat three racing at this level. I can’t imagine my life without sport, so I will try to train as much as possible during the  weekdays and just enjoy my biking  or whatever sports—I love cross-cointry skiing on the weekends. I guess that’s how my life will look when I come back and start working again.

schmalz In the Czech Republic is there an equivalent of master’s racing, where the older guys race together—is there anything like that? Or is it just like you said, all the categories together?

Gonda There definitely are master’s race, I don’t know whether I will do them or not. The mountain bike racing there seems better than here—I haven’t done any mountain bike racing here so I can’t compare, but the good thing it that every weekend you can race maybe 3 to 4 mountain bike races in a 100 mile area around Prague, so it’s really easy to find races and there are professional guys coming and amateur guys coming. You can choose the quality of the race, you can tell who’s going to show up and who’s not according to the prize money. Although we don’t have any categories, like better races and worse races, that might translate mountain bikes races into categories, so I guess I will be able to be competitive and get top five in those better races, and I will also do the races with the professionals and I will be, you know, 60th. I will ride just as a challenge for myself. You know, I’m used to fighting with myself and fighting with other guys from riding with the professionals from the three years between 2003 and 2005. 

schmalz And when you go back, don’t shave your legs, let your leg hair grow out, so they don’t know what’s coming at them. Let it grow long!

Gonda (laughs) I’m not sure, I crashed in the last crit and I’m pretty happy that my legs were shaved. They weren’t really shaved, I hadn’t shaved then for two weeks, but it was better than nothing. I would’ve had fur growing into the blood—it’s not nice, so I think I will keep shaving them.

schmalz You obviously have a lot of natural talent, because you went from five to one in a year’s time, were you athletic as a kid?

Gonda Yes, I always was athletic, I always did sports. I played soccer. The other sports I didn’t do on a competitive level, but I always did it with competitive players. I would say all my life I did sports and I’m generally good at sports.

schmalz And you picked up a bike—how old were you? Were you in your 20s when you first started?

Gonda When I started to race I think I was 22.

schmalz It seems like since you’ve come to the US, you gone nuts, because you’re racing collegiate too, and I know there’s been some mornings where you’ve raced in the parks in the city and then you’ll get on a train  and then you’ll go and do a collegiate race, but sometimes you’ll end up winning both of those races—you’ve done that a couple of times, haven’t you?

Gonda Yeah, you know, what I try to do… All my training was to do as much training as possible, so this kind of training is the best for me. Because I think more races—they are only training for me. Racing one and a half hours in Central Park isn’t good enough when you want to compete with the pros in a 5 hour race.  It’s just natural that you hop on the bike, ride to New Jersey—I went to Rutgers one time on my bike and raced there again. I think that’s why I grew so quickly from where I was last year to where I am now. It’s just a lot of work, a lot of time. You know, it hurts—you don’t have any time for yourself except biking, my studies are really bad now—but it’s good, what gets you further. 

schmalz So basically your training plan is to race early in the city, then get on your bike, ride to Rutgers, race again, and then ride home?

Gonda Um, no, I wouldn’t ride home. It was too late.

schmalz Oh, ok,  so you get a ride back. To get a little bit of rest…

Gonda Exactly, I usually go to races on my bike. In the fall it was a rule more than an exception, and I just hope that somebody would take me home all the time.  That’s what I did in the Bear Mountain race, I biked up there. It was around 60 miles, and then I did the 60 mile race in cat three, and I was really happy that someone gave me a ride back because, to be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to go back.

schmalz How did you do in the Bear Mountain race after you rode up?

Gonda I was second, I was first in the field sprint.

schmalz Oh, so you didn’t win, but you weren’t tired.

Gonda (laughs)  Oh, I could’ve won, I made a mistake, we almost had the guy, he was maybe 10 seconds, 20 seconds in front of us on the last hill and I was just lazy. You are in the finish of the race, you are just lazy. Although you can make another effort, you decide not to do anything and you hope that  the field will catch up with this one guy, and the field didn’t because everybody was as lazy as me, so that was my experience. Now this year I’m just a very aggressive rider—I try to break away, I try to do what my body can do, and I don’t ever think that the other guys will do some work for me. I think I took a lesson from that race, and from some other races. I did this mistake only from being crazy.

I was never a breakaway guy, I thought of myself rather as the guy who could stick with the field and sprint in the end. I don’t know when I started to break away—it was here. I never got into a breakaway in the Czech Republic. It’s impossible to get into a breakaway when there is a field of professionals. I don’t know, I started being aggressive here in the USA.

schmalz Have any of the pro teams in the US been talking to you at all? Have they been trying to steal you away from our BH/Garneau team?

Gonda No, no, no, to be honest I’m not that good. I was racing this Sunday with Jamey Driscoll, who is on the Colavita team, and there is such a big difference between me and him. He just rode away on a pretty long uphill and there was no way I could stick with him. So no there is a big difference between me and the professional guys.

schmalz But what if you stopped your college partying life Pavel and got to bed at say, midnight every night? Do you think being a pro would be a possibility?

Gonda Yeah, there definitely is, but I only partied with the guys sometimes. After two or three parties, I just started to be tired, and I’m not any longer going out with them on Fridays or Saturdays. So what I’m doing is going out with them on the weekdays and I try to sleep at least 6 hours or 7 hours before the races. 

schmalz Sure, much better plan…

Gonda Yeah.

schmalz You train yourself, I assume?

Gonda Yes, I do. In spring or in summer it’s really hard to find someone who does the same training, the same intensities as you do, so in summer, I definitely train alone. But in winter on the slow long endurance rides, I prefer being with the guys and talking and just doing everything which can make your 6 hour training ride a nicer and more comfortable ride because I hate being alone on the bike for 6 hours.

schmalz Do you do that many hours during the summer—or do you just race and rest?

Gonda No, no, no, now it’s just shorter training. During the week on Tuesdays I usually do a 2 hour endurance ride and on Wednesday I do sprint intervals, and on Fridays it’s openers to warm up for the racing, then Saturday and Sunday it’s racing. That’s my racing week. So no, I’m not training 6 hours anymore.

schmalz Plus you have to make time to go out on the weeknights. Well Pavel, best of luck and I guess that the law’s gain is cycling’s loss, and once you’re back to the Czech Republic, you’ll be back in the suit and back in the office.

Gonda Yeah, but I will always be a fan of cycling, I will always follow cycling, and I will always go on the bike again and suffer with guys who have trained a lot more than me, so I will be bike suffering again.