24 April 05: World Cup #1, Spa Francorchamp

My goal for this first race was just too try and preserve a reasonable start position for the next world cups. I had not raced the previous two weekends, which I usually need to gain good speed. My body feels like it has recovered from my flu, but I have a very annoying cough that will not go away.
The race course was held on the formula one track, which was very impressive to see. We started on the same start line as they use, which then has a nice small climb before flattening out. I was in a good position until the flat section when swarms of riders passed me as my legs were lactating to the max. I could do nothing, and had to settle for around 50th place into the first singletrack.
From here it was a tough battle of small climbs and very technical single track. I was coughing a lot and even spewed up a few times, so was going nowhere. Finally I settled for 40th position.. a bit of a disaster!
Julian Absalon won, which means he is now olympic champ, world champ, and world cup leader... who can stop this guy?!?! Well, good for Bianchi that's for sure. (As was Di Luca's pair of wins last week!)
Now I really have to focus on getting rid of this darn cough, and trying to get some speed together before Madrid in a couple of weeks.
Bye
Kashi

In the last week I’ve had a light flu. It started last Monday with a strong allergic reaction, probably caused by the pollen in the air. I have always had a lot of trouble with allergies, and there is not really too much to do. Most of the drugs we can take are not good for the riding, so I normally try to avoid them. In this case though, I should have been using them!
On Tuesday my sneezing turned into coughing, although I was still feeling just fine. I had to cut out all intensity in my training, but I still managed a few decent rides, including a really fun MTB ride on the circuit for the upcoming Grand Fondo de Montello. The course was just full of fun single track sections (… too bad it actually rained on Sunday for the race, and they had a horribly muddy course instead!)
So, hoping for the best, I traveled with the team down to Tuscany which was where the weekends Liquigas Cup was. But it was that morning that I started feeling the worst, and sure enough by the evening I had fever and spent 2 days in the bed instead of racing. I watched the race out of the hotel window and it was once again a fine battle between Julian Absalon and Marco Bui, with Julian coming out on top for the second week running.
Saturday afternoon I was feeling better, but my manager told me that I should go home, recover properly and don’t worry about next weeks races. We have the first world cup in 2 weeks, and this is the priority. So, now I am back home again, and today I rode 4hrs to try and sweat out some of the crap that’s in my body. If I’m strong again tomorrow I will know that all is okay.

02 April - Liquigas Cup, Nalles

Instead of taking the auto route through Italy and stressing with all the speeding traffic, I decided to take the mountain roads through to Nalles. This road goes from Switzerland, up over 2 lovely passes, one of which I had to drive the car onto a train, which then took me through the top part of the mountain. Nalles is really more like Austria then Italy, and so they have much nicer bread! The hotel we stayed in (hotel Wilma) had a area with swimming pool, sauna, Turkish spa, etc.. that was fit for kings. Very luxury! The hotels we stay in are very random, sometimes they are fantastic, other times real shit holes!
Well, onto the race. It was the same course as last year, and a pretty decent field once again. The start was a very steep asphalt road, lasting almost 3min. This was too fair for me, and I was about 30th by the top. I’ve been trying to work out why I have such trouble at the starts, but its very tricky. So, playing catch up again, I weaved my way past riders until the final lap, and ended up in 6th place. I really should have been on the podium today, but that’s racing. Up front it was Julian and Marco until Marco punctured, then it was Julian with a huge gap… and he won his first race for the season.