Spring Is Here...

Well, we're done with Tirreno-Adriactico are now heading into the whole focus of the week, Milan-San Remo - La Primavera.

I improved a lot over the week and feel that I'll be in with some possibility of making a good result in tomorrow's race. When you have a long race like Milan-San Remo, you never know what is going to happen; how you are going to be at the end of 7hrs; or who else is going to be good. Sure you have some idea, but there are always surprises at the end of such a long race - and sometimes you can even surprise yourself by how good you're going.

That happened to me last year when I wasn't really good at all the week before MSR during Tirreno Adriactico, yet on the day of San Remo, I was going really well. Even in the early parts of the race I wasn't going overly good - getting dropped a couple of times - but in the last hour I was as good as anybody. So there is always hope.

The last days of Tirreno Adriatico were hard - especially the penultimate stage, which was one of the hardest days I have done on the bike for some time. Seven hours in total. I went pretty well though, and climbed about as good as I'm capable of, given my genetics. Although I was still 18min down on the mountain goats!

The last day was the traditional finishing circuits, culminating in a sprint. So naturally after his win the other day, we lined Tyler up for the sprint. It all worked out pretty well. I was stepped back into my old role of doing lead-outs again. We managed to place him on the back of the Cavendish-Columbia train with a 1km to go which was just perfect and although he never got around Cav, he did what he could.

Tomorrow is MSR. I feel that I'm ready so I hope that I have the luck that I need and I can give it a good crack. Initially we would have had an awesome team for the race but we have lost a lot of guys through injury and illness this last week so will really miss some of the guys who are out of action; mainly Maaskant and Miller, who would have been our two best riders for this race. Anyway, not much we can do about that so we'll just have to do what we can with horsepower we have.

Julz
Team Garmin-Slipstream

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