April 2, 2008 – The season is intensifying and we are now entering the heart of the spring campaign. As my season began slowly, I needed some quality training at home to find my race legs, and with many solid weeks of training I started in Italy at the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali last week feeling confident that my fitness was improving and motivated to animate the race.

In between races, while at home, I have been doing many sessions in the mountains, with intervals oscillating in intensity to simulate racing on a climb. The last hour of a session would be either behind our Vespa scooter, with my wife Dede driving, or riding in a paceline with a few of the many pros that live in Girona. With each session my watts were steadier, higher, and my legs seemed to ache a little less.

Coppi e Bartali is a hilly weeklong race in mid-eastern Italy and is complete in that there is a team time trial, a sprinter’s stage, a hard circuit race and a couple of good mountain days. The race is not a primary goal for the team but is a great race for building fitness as we near our spring objectives.

Riding at the front is always a lot more work than sitting on wheels in the peloton, so when I had the chance, and good legs, I would attack, or work for the team to pull back breakaways to build on the work I’d done at home. The team had a good shot at doing well in the overall classification with Morris Possoni, our little climber – and with the rest of us a shot at a stage win out of a breakaway.

We animated the race and each day, in the bus we compared SRM’s and our power outputs for the day – some were impressively high: over 5,000 kj in five hours on one day when I was in the breakaway, and Marco Pinotti hit and impressive 300 watts average for a 4-hour stage where he pulled a breakaway that nearly upset the overall classification as the chasing peloton disintegrated under the pressure of the pursuit. Sadly, Marco and Morris were caught with under 10km to go.

The results didn’t speak for the efforts the team put forth and I don’t doubt that in the coming weeks the results will begin to improve, as the riders seem motivated and on form to win. I finally feel powerful on the bike, comfortable at the front of the peloton and in breakaways and am excited for the coming events.

Next week we’ll be in Pays Basque, perhaps one of the hardest week-long races on the calendar as the courses are relentlessly hilly and the Spanish peloton is motivated to win in front of the fervent Basques. From the Basque country, I will head up to northern Europe for Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne and Liege Bastogne Liege and then straight into the Tour of Romandie in Switzerland.