Thursday February 19

Today is Thursday for another few minutes. It's also the 52nd annual Trofeo Laigueglia. This is a 190km one day race in Northern Italy. Oddly enough, I thought I had raced this before but that's culpa mia --  I mistook a race I have done before which is named Lugano, not Laigueglia. Lugano is in Switzerland which has a very northern Italian feel to it. Both races are a relatively similar area. Both have a very Italian race flavor to them. Both races take part around a large body of water. Both races start with an L--. Bike racing is bike racing so they're the same in the fact that the guy with the shortest time wins the race. However, upon arrival to Laigueglia last night, I realized my mistake. Lugano is not Laigueglia.So how did the race go, Ted! I know you're all shrieking at your computer screen like a 14 year old at a Justin Bieber concert. I just had to Google how to spell Bieber. Anyway, let's discuss that here in the form of a very rare iamtedking.com race report. Bate your breath, let's roll.The course is flat-to-rolling with four decisive climbs -- each about 7km. Then there's one final 2km wall'ish thing featured at 10km to go, which was conveniently and literally located right our out hotel's back door. Three of us from Girona flew in yesterday in the two-steps-forward-one-step-back method of trans-European travel. Barcelona to Germany to Italy. Taking a page out of a sage New Englander's book, you can't get the'ya from heeya is an accurate way to characterize the travel to Laigueglia. I have some friends on other teams here in Girona traveling to this race and their travel involved two extra days, and a lot of hours in a car. Ours, meanwhile, was a few hours in a car, an hour in an airplane, a leg opening run through the Munich airport, then another few minutes in a plane destined to Genoa, then once again a car. That's a super long way of saying that on the eve of the race, we drove into town, massaged the travel out of our legs, had a mighty fine dinner (side note, Italian race food is generally exquisite. Another side note, French race food: not so much), and then drove the final 10km of the race located right out our hotel's back door for serious recon, and then went to bed.I dabbled in some early attacks but Cannondale-Garmin was targeted and it was clear that no team would let us deftly roll away. There were three or four ProTour teams here and the rest are highly capable division II or III. Certainly everyone is talented here but I'd argue that we have he strongest team on paper so the onus is on us to control the day. So as predictably scripted as bike racing can be, there was a tremendous flurry of attacks in the first 45 minutes of the race, then a group of four goes away. The peloton rolled casually for a long time giving the break a massive lead very quickly. Teammate and former winner, Moreno Moser at this point does some Italian recon among the peloton and we learn that every team has eyes on us to work; as in, no one else will work unless/until we work. I have Paris-Nice on the race schedule shortly and I therefore want to get some hard work in my legs. I start tugging the peloton along for a while and then a Lampre and Katusha join for a bit. The gap drops precipitously from 7 minutes to 6, 5, 4, to 2.5. So we roll easy a bit to let the gap dangle at three minutes and get ready to make fireworks.Going into the final 7km climb the plan was for the mighty Joe Dombrowski to light it up to shred the peloton and have Dan Martin and Moreno Moser as our saved riders. Those two both sprint well and in a small group coming to the finish, they're spot on favorites. However, in order to position Joe and the rest of the guys well, that means that on the third climb we had to pull bottom to top, then rip the top flat section, shred the very gnarly and characteristically Italian descent (i.e. dangerous and cork screw'esque) because that descent segues into a brief 2km flat section and right into the climb.The team slots into place at the head of the peloton and I take the bull by the horns, pull the climb joined by Matej Mohoric, then we rip the top, next the descent, and finally the flat as if it's the final kilometer of a race... which, as planned was the end of my race. From there the team rode like heroes, nuked that climb, and brought a small group into the finale. Turns out, though, that 80km downhill finishing sprints aren't our thing. That's the flip-a-coin nature of bike racing.I think 4+hours at 300+ watts average makes for a nice day of February work. No, we didn't win, but the team is stoked with the overall camaraderie, great teamwork, and overall vibe. It's February -- we'll find our success in the coming months, that's for sure.Few more minutes of Thursday. Just got home in Girona. Zzzzz...