Finished

I often get words or phrases stuck in my head during races, particularly so on long, and sometimes monotonous stages of a stage race. These words and phrases get tossed back and forth in my head in a repetitive fashion like a hamster in a wheel, and are usually accompanied by a hollow stare at the wheels ahead of me.  Sometimes ten or twenty kilometers will go by, and I hardly remember I have raced. I'll have zoned out.

On the last lap of the World Championships last week, the word bouncing around in my brain was "finished." Halfway through the last lap, I found myself positioned at the back - or more precisely, sitting last wheel. As other riders would inevitably sit up, I was prepared to come around and close the gap, and latch back onto the long, thin line the peloton had become in it's dash to the finish. With seven kilometers to go, I found myself sitting behind two South African riders who had found themselves detached from the back end of the race. This time, I chose not to come around. I knew my usefulness for my compatriots was over at that point, so I sat up, and rode in easy. At first I was riding alone, and the word "finished" was still bouncing back and forth in my brain. At 3k to go, I was joined by my teammate Ian Boswell. We rode in together, watching the jumbo-tron, and listening to the commentators, trying to take in the race that was ahead of us. The French went 1-2. Impressive.

It was a good feeling crossing the line at the top of the hill, and for the last time, I thought to myself "finished." I had just finished my first World Championships, and my 2011 season. Our Trek Livestrong soigneur, Reed McCalvin, had come over to work for the national team for the worlds, and I greeted him with a broad smile as I crossed the line.

It's been a good season. Even better than I could have imagined. I got to stand on podiums, and wear jerseys in the US and Europe, and towards the end, topped it off with a European win.

At the same time, I finished my season with a lot of learning points, takeaways, and areas for improvement. While I felt elated to be finished, I also felt motivated to improve my weaknesses. Now is the time to take it easy, enjoy some time at home, and enjoy whatever bike riding I do. While it was fresh in my mind though, I jotted down a list of my thoughts on 2011, and my goals for 2012. I'm sure I'll revisit that list when I'm looking for motivation to train hard this winter.

Until then, I'll be getting in some good time on VA singletrack, and hitting the local cross scene here and there.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the support this year. It's been a good one, and hopefully I can start next year right where I left this one off.

WORLDS

The World Championships are tomorrow. After that my season will be finished. What a year. I'm really looking forward to a little down time back home.

After Tour de L'Avenir, I went to spend the intermediary week before Worlds at the national team house in Belgium. I have to admit, after the Aosta, L'Avenir duo I was pretty spent. I had raced 14 of 20 days, with nearly every day being at my limit. Physically I was pretty wrecked, and mentally I was a little sidetracked after a disappointing Tour de L'Avenir.

In between now and then it's been all rest, with a one day race in Belgium last weekend. The five of us U23's doing the Worlds all lined up for it, intending to use it as training a week before the big one in Copenhagen. Intermittent rain and slick cobbles took down all four of the others. Somehow I managed to squeak through unscathed. Unfortunately, two of our best guys for the Worlds, Rob Bush, and Jacob Rathe went down hard, and are still hobbling around a bit from their crashes. Not quite what we were hoping for when we toed the line last Sunday.

We've been here in Copenhagen for a few days now. I've had several opportunities to train on the course, and have also done some walking around the local area. Denmark seems like a cool place and while I'm looking forward to heading home, I wouldn't mind staying around a few days after our race to play tourist.

Also, for those interested. The U23 road race will be on Universal Sports live on Friday, and throughout the day on Saturday.

Tour de L'Avenir Update

I’m sitting in our new hotel in Italy here at breakfast. It’s 8:30, and the other boys aren’t up just yet. Yesterday was the longest, and hardest stage here at Tour de L’Avenir. The day was made even longer by a 400-kilometer transfer after the stage.

Yesterday we drove from an area near the French Alps, through the Mont Blanc tunnel, and back through the Valle d’Aosta where we were racing just a couple weeks ago.

By the time we got to the hotel, we were all pretty blown. It had been another rough stage for us. We are the only team staying at this hotel, and our weary minds were somewhat consoled by the hotel’s hospitality. USA welcome notes greeted us, and they made a special dinner menu in English. When we got to our rooms, we found homemade “Tour de L’Avenir” chocolates on our beds.

With only two stages left, it’s nice to have a hotel without other teams. It gives you a little more of a feeling of separation from the race, when you’re not actually at the race.

As the “U23 Tour de France”, the Tour de L’Avenir is the biggest espoir stage race in the world. We went into the race with big goals, but unfortunately the race has yet to have gone our way.  Some of it has been our own fault. On a couple occasions, a threatening breakaway has rolled with no USA representation.  That being said, we’ve also fallen victim to bad luck at bad times.

Yesterday, we figured our GC hopes were pretty much gone, but with a mountain top finish, the team wanted to set me up to try and win the stage.  This time, going into the base of the final climb, I flatted. The Mavic neutral support gave me a wheel, but then my shifting stopped working. A few minutes later, the team car rolled up and gave me a functional spare. At that point, the race was gone and I was forced to ride up the climb by myself between the lead group and the gruppetto.

That’s bike racing. There are a lot of factors that go into getting a good result, and sometimes it just doesn’t swing your way. In these last two stages, we have nothing to lose. I figure we might as well be opportunists and make the best of what we’ve got. We’ll race aggressive, and try to make the breakaways. Who knows, maybe we'll end up walking away with a nice result by the end of the week.  

A Euro Win!

It's funny, in my last post, I mentioned I had never won a race in Europe. Well last week that changed. Aosta was a race that just got better and better for me. The first couple stages were a little rough, but later in the week I found my groove.

Going into the race, Marcello, our director, insisted we not go over our limit in the race. We could go for stages, but the GC was not a goal. There is only six days between Aosta and Tour de L'Avenir, and the race is definitely hard enough to put you in a hole.

The climbing is relentless, and the stages are long, particularly so for a U25 race. Not one stage was under four hours, and the "easy" day featured a solid 3,000 meters of climbing. Even the time trial was uphill.

I knew I wanted to try and win a stage, and I also knew that doing so, or even just making the key splits on the climbs would also set me up for a nice GC position - an added bonus. Stage 5 was the queen stage of Aosta, with the finish in Torgnon. The stage featured just one small climb in the first 80 kilometers, but in the last 90, the profile had three major climbs at over 1,000 meters of gain a piece. These climbs took a solid 45 minutes to an hour at race pace.

I knew I was feeling good when on the second to last climb, there was a split where only the top ten riders made it. I looked back to see the yellow jersey gritting his teeth, yo-yoing back and forth, on and off the last wheel of our group. He was already over his limit.

Long climbs offer an opportunity to get a look at how everyone else is sitting. Some guys are stoic, regardless of their actual condition, but with others, you can get a good idea of how they are feeling based on observation. Listening closely to respiration rates, and examining changing riding positions are both good indicators.

By the top of the second to last climb, I was pretty confident I was one of the strongest riders in the lead group. Thoughts of winning the stage began to creep into my mind, but I knew I had to make it down a very technical descent first. My descending improved dramatically throughout last week, and in the 25k descent down Col du Saint Pantaleon, I was riding great. I could stay right on the wheel, and was tackling the twists and turns with confidence.

Almost as soon as we hit the base of the final climb, Fabio Aru, the eventual GC winner started attacking. I have to admit, at that point, I didn't think I was going to make it. I was sprinting out of the saddle, bike and head swinging back and forth, with drool hanging out of my mouth. Aru was strong, and his effort brought the lead group down to just him, two Frenchman, and myself.

The yellow jersey was gone, and upon seeing this, I tried to get the guys to work. We all could benefit from him losing time, and I asked them to just cooperate and we can race it out in the last few kilometers. Nevertheless, they were reluctant. I couldn't understand what they were doing. The race was in our hands.

Out of frustration, with a few kilometers to go, I attacked. I looked back after railing it around the next switchback, and saw them chasing below. I had a gap. Aru was yanking on his bike, giving it in full on pursuit. The two Frenchies struggled to stay on his wheel. It had clicked. My lead group companions weren't working because they simply couldn't.

 At that point, I knew I would win the day. There was a lone breakaway survivor up the road, but I swallowed him up quickly. As I came by, he tried to jump on my wheel. I clicked it down a couple gears, and accelerated. I wasn't taking any passengers.

At 1k to go, the camera man came up to me yelling "Go Dombrowski!! South Carolina! No, sorry, south Virginia! You make proud!" Even in my state of suffering, I had to stifle my laughter.

Normally a final effort like that would have me crossing the finish line, head down, swinging back and forth like a paperboy, just waiting for a push from the soigneur to the car. This time though, I came across with my hands high in the air, and a smile across my face. I made eye contact with Janis, our soignuer, and saw his big Belgian smile. We made contact for a high five after I rolled across the line.

It was an exciting day for me, and I felt relief. To me, the race was practically over. All that remained was Sunday's uphill TT. That wouldn't take much though. I just had to pedal the bike.

I thought I could win the GC after Saturday's queen stage. I was 1:18 down on the Russian Nikita Novikov, and :38 down on Fabio Aru. After my performance Saturday, I figured I could put that time into the leaders on the 10k climb. Marcello followed in the team car, and used an orange safety cone to yell at me from the car.

I went as hard as I could, and mustered a third place on the day. Not what I was hoping for but certainly nothing to be ashamed of. I came into Aosta with training in mind, but left with a best young rider jersey, a stage win, and a couple stage podiums. For me, that was something to be proud of.

P.S. - That was an insanely hard race... on Saturday's stage I did 4,850 kJ's in five hours. A whopping 350 tss! That's after averaging 4,000 kJ's per day every day of the race before that. Ouch!

Aosta Update

Wow. This is a hard race. I've heard it's world's hardest U25 race. At this point, I don't think  I could string together many coherent thoughts, so I will post in bullet notes. In addition, my hands are cramping as I type... yes, that is the state that this race leaves you in.

-The climbing is just nauseating. Today's stage (stage 4) had 8,000' of climbing... it was the "flat" day, and was a field sprint.

-Stage 2 and 3 were big climbing days with around 12,000' of climbing a pop

-I've been averaging around 3,800 kJs per stage, and that's doing the minimal amount possible to make the selections

-Yesterday I attacked with 5k to go on a climb that flattened out to a alpine village in the last 3k. There were remnants of the breakaway still up the road. I managed to ride through the break and catch everyone but the very last guy who had two and half minutes. I was literally licking my lips, watching the gap come down, smashing the pedals. I wanted to win so bad. A Euro win is something I haven't achieved. I rolled in for second.

-Yesterday I took the best young rider jersey with my ride. Today I kept it. Today didn't go quite as smoothly as I hoped though. I crashed 90k into the race.

-The descents are crazy. The Russians are crazier. One of them flipped over a guardrail and fell onto the switchback below yesterday. Scary stuff, but good experience for the future.

-Tomorrow is the hardest mountain top finish of the race. It is preceded by a 15k climb, and a 20k climb. It will be game on.

-This race is "training" for Tour de L'Avenir, and we've been instructed to not kill ourselves with the race being a week out. That being said, I do want to defend my best young rider jersey, and I do plan on attacking in the mountains tomorrow.

-The last stage is on Sunday. It's an uphill TT. I'm hoping to smash it.

-The Aosta valley is beautiful. I'd love to do a training camp here.

Lucca

I'm here in the SRM house here on Monte San Quirico, a small village on a hill overlooking the walled city of Lucca here in Italy. To say the training here is good is a massive understatement. The roads are incredible, and I feel right at home with a seemingly endless array of climbs.

I'm staying with five others, and some of the national team staff in the "Lemonaya" - a house originally designed to store lemon trees in the winter months, that has been converted to individual apartments and sits on SRM's property.

It's a nice spot, and we're in elite company. Mario Cippolini lives just a couple doors down, and Bjarne Riis' former residence is at the bottom of the hill. 

On Monday, we're headed north for Giro della Valle d'Aosta. Our plan is to use the race as training, and take it "easy" to keep ourselves from digging a hole for Tour de L'Avenir a week later. Judging by the stage profiles, "easy"is going to be relative. 

In the meantime, I have gotten in a few good rides here in Lucca. As I said before, their are plenty of climbs, and good ones at that. Almost any turn off one of the valley roads leads you up a serpentine path into the mountains. The roads are narrow, and the corners are tight. 

Vehicles typically give the horn a tap before each bend to warn oncoming traffic, as most of the smaller roads are probably only three meters wide. The terrain has been making every ride an adventure, and I wish I had a little more time to train here and explore some more. 

What's Next

It's hard to believe we're already in the latter part of the road season. I was on the bike at 8:30 this morning, and greeted by some chilly pockets of air as I headed towards the mountains. It's refreshing, that feeling of dropping down a hollow and hitting a cold patch - sometimes you even shiver. Fall will be here soon, and with it will come crisp days, crunching leaves, unstructured rides, and of course, cyclocross.

For now though, I'm still focused. Still on the rivet. I've done a lot of the two things I most enjoy in my training recently - big climbs, and motorpacing. The motorpacing, is, in a way, analogous to the work I've put in the last month. My eyes glued to the back wheel of the scooter, save for the occasional eye contact made with the gawking city folk on there way out to Shenandoah for the weekend. It's an intense activity.

I've been cranking out some quality miles recently, like this one from today.

(287 normalized power, and 3,700 kJ's for 4 hours... Ouch! Can you pick out the motorpacing block, two efforts on the climbs, and the hill jams?)

The training is pretty much done now, as for the next couple weeks I'm mostly resting to get ready for this...

That profile is from stage five of Giro della Valle d'Aosta, and yes those three "bumps" towards the end are somewhere around 3,000' of vertical gain a pop. I'm headed over to Italy this weekend to do the race with the national team. After spending a week in Lucca, we'll head north to hit the six stage race. 

I've been doing my research on the stages, and what you see above is pretty much the norm. I'm looking forward to going back to Europe, and doing racing like this that really suits me as a climber. 

After that, I hope to stay over there and get a spot for the big one, Tour de L'Avenir. Stay tuned here for updates as I close out the road season!