The John Lieswyn Diary 2000Tour of WillametteEugene, Oregon, April 11-16, 2000Very litte prizemoney, few spectators, great competition and superb hilly road racing courses. For those of you who don't know cycling lingo I've tried to explain many terms I use in this lengthly report. If you choose not to read this carefully future much shorter lingo filled reports won't make much sense. Cest le Vie. Excuse me if this report isn't too smooth or correct, I'm typing on my new notebook computer and listening to mp3's like "trance control" after drinking coffee all day. YEEEAAAH. Prologue, April 11Individual 700 - uphill time trial / warm and dry today Glen (us) takes 6th or so, I'm 8th. Jelly Belly goes 1-2 in the stage. Stage 1, April 12Green Hill Road race 100 miles / raining Jelly Belly rides hard tempo most of the stage hoping their top two guys from yesterday will climb the finishing hill strongly. The only major break of the day has Zarate (Mercury) and Gman (us) in it, but it is caught 6 miles to go. 60 guys hit the final 2km climb to the finish together. Glen and I screw up the finish. Scott Moninger (Mercury) literally dances away from everyone to win by 10 seconds and move into the overall lead. Stage 2, April 13Bureau of Land Management Roads road race, narrow winding roads / 85 miles / raining. I'm stoked to be racing in such a beautiful place, on the roads instead of some industrial park criterium, on my bike instead of behind a desk, for one more year! Mercury has 8 pros and 4 amateurs in the race. Their pros go to the front straight away from the start and try to bring the attacks all in. Eric goes down on one of the many gravel sections but isn't hurt. It takes him 10km of chasing to rejoin the peloton. We didn't wear our radios today or else we'd have known and could have sent someone back to help him chase. We thought that with the mountains & rain the reception wouldn't be good, but I think we shoulda used them anyway. 40 of us make it over all the climbs together and in the uphill sprint finish I felt awesome but started too far back around 25th. I pass a zillion guys and end up 7th, same time credited as the stage winner, Saturn's Mark McCormack. Moninger finished 2nd to retain the overall race lead. Stage 3, April 14Kill Hill road race 105 miles / raining The course includes 2 laps of a hilly 20 miles plus loop. There's a 6 km climb, followed by a 1km feed zone climb. Lingo: the feed zone is where our team soigneurs/trainers are with bottles and musette bags (cloth bags to hand off more than one bottle at a time). After riding these two laps we go back towards Eugene and finish up another hill. A breakaway gets away without any team Shaklee representation and stays away most of the race, but because Mercury is controlling the pace and keeping the break under a 3 minute lead, I'm not worried. Going over the feed zone hill 2nd lap a couple overall contenders (incl. Jelly Belly prologue TT winner) attack and I follow, just as I hear the sounds of a crash behind me. I'm not waiting to see who went down, if there is a time to go today it is now. The descent is dry and we sweep through the turns full on. I look back now and see we're away clear. Soon we've caught the sputtering breakaway and now there's 3 Jelly Belly riders together. They rev it up and I'm helping too. No Mercury riders here. They've got to be chasing hard. The rain starts in on us again, oooh soaking the clothes, cold!! Glasses fogged up. Fog, wipe, fog, wipe. Look back, shapes of riders behind us about 40 seconds behind. 10 miles to go. I hear the tssss and thump thump my rear tire is flat. Drift out of the break and put hand skyward, Shimano neutral support van is IN FRONT of break and doesn't see me in the low visibility. Single file, heads hung low, Mercury train hammers by me. A couple of them make snide comments like "serves you right, attacking us when we've crashed". After the stage they apologize after finding out I was only following an attack. Semantics, but important. My team does an awesome job helping me catch back on. After the breakaway and the flat, my gas tank is a bit empty. The break is caught as we start up the final climb to the finish. One by one all the Mercury boys blow up and slow to a crawl, their chase has been hard and fast after several days of leading the field every day all day. Only Scott, Kirk, Will, and Gord are left halfway up the hill. I think I'm not going to make it...seesawing behind the group, I'm giving it 110% to stay on. Over the top, phew I made it. Short descent, left turn, 1km uphill to the line. hang in there, ahhh... I cross the line in the lead bunch of 20 or so with Glen, Graeme and Eric all still with me for my team. Then I hear that while I was trying to hang on for dear life with my eyes locked on the wheel of the guy ahead of me, Scott Moninger danced away from us again and won by over 20 seconds. Wow, he is going awesome. Stage 4, April 15Morning: 10 mile individual time trial, flat, rained at the end I have a good one physically but as the times come in it's apparent that it's not good enough. 1st Steve Hegg (Jelly Belly), 2nd Eric (us), 3rd Moninger, 6th Gman (us), 14th (me). GC after time trial : 1. Moninger 3. Eric 6. me Stage 5, April 15Afternoon: Cottage Grove downtown criterium, 45 minutes, raining New venue this year, raining hard so few spectators. Gman tells me that real lemon juice helps new tires stick to wet pavement. I run 100psi with lotsa lemon and Dave & I blister the start. We take turns on the primes and collect nearly $200 in the first 20 minutes. That's as much $ as 2nd overall. We're not here to make $ because this race is for fitness more than anything. $$ comes 2 weeks from now when the season really cranks up on the East Coast USA. Soon I'm in a 7 man break with Gman, and Mercury's Kirk, Will and Gord. Just a second before I'm planning on an attack, and with 2 1/2 laps to go, Gord attacks. We're on the defensive now. Knowing Gman is the man in a sprint, and our only chance against Gord, I go to the front but I'm not fast enough in the corners and Gord catches the back of the peloton to take a lap. Kirk attacks me next, and gets away. He catches the field 1/2 lap to go, we catch the field in the last turn last lap, Gman goes flat out down the finish straight but Kirk is too far up. Gman 3rd, me 6th. Drubbed by Mercury again. Stage 6, April 16Road race, 105 miles, raining 3 major climbs requiring gears as low as 39x23 and some pros even used 39x25!!!! Not me, unfortunately. GC going in : Mercury 1-2-3, me in 4th, Eric 6th I was 5 seconds down on Mercury Espoir (under 23 yrs age) rider Will Frischkorn, in 4th place overall. Eric wasn't too happy about being leapfrogged by Will and I in the criterium last night, and he was in an early 3 man breakaway with teammate Glen Mitchell and a Nutra-Fig rider. They scooped up the only time bonus intermediate sprint of the day (8 seconds for 1st, 5 seconds for 2nd) so if I were to move into the top 3 overall it would have to be by dropping Mercury's Kirk Willett (2nd overall) and/or Will. Gman (teammate Graeme Miller) got a flat tire and after a 10 minute chase rejoined the peloton about 3km before the first major climb of the day. Because we had riders in the break, our manager Steve Miller drove ahead to follow them and was able to radio back to us that there was a 400 meter stretch of gravel road just prior to the start of the climb. I went straight to the front and led the pack over this, and Steve told us later that race radio was crackling with "Jelly Belly, service...Nutra Fig, service... Mercury, service..." and more!! Shimano neutral support would be really busy today. This climb would be about 5km long. Straight away the peloton blew to bits as we ascended the steepening grade, and a cramping Glen was caught. I knew there was a long way to go so I stayed calm and drifted back to around 20th. As we passed the 1km to go sign I looked ahead and saw Eric being caught: the Nutra Fig guy was still out of sight. Large gaps were forming so I cranked my throttle open to 95% and started passing guys left and right. I had to lean on a few guys who were nearly falling over. By the summit I was back with Moninger at the lead (except for the Nutra Fig guy, who we wouldn't catch until the summit of the third climb 2 hours later!) Frishkorn and Willett (3rd/2nd overall) missed the split and Gragus (Jelly Belly, 1999 US PRO TOUR champ) came up and asked why I wasn't driving it (pushing the pace so the dropped riders couldn't catch up). My impatience agreed with him but it was still too early. The descent was way cool: windy, narrow, moss covered, wet, cold, in a word EPIC. I was riding more reasonable pressure in my tires today (100psi instead of the 140 I tried earlier in the week) and could handle my bike in the wet better because of it. Brendan Vesty (Navigators) opened his usual gaps on the descent... man you don't want to be behind him, not even I am that cautious. Soon we were at the 2nd climb, this one not quite as steep but still long at 4km. We would do this one again for the 3rd climb of the day. Dave Wiens (Volvo/Cannondale MTB pro) set a steady tempo and many more riders who'd caught back up after the first climb were dropped again. I drifted back to Eric who said he was having a rough day. He counseled me to wait until the last climb to attack. 60 riders went over the top of the 2nd climb basically together. This time Frishkorn and Willett were looking comfortable and I was getting worried. 9 Mercury guys still there halfway into the stage. On the false flat leading up to the 3rd climb, Mercury kept control of the front of the pack for Moninger. Other lower category racers were descending the road we were going up, and it was looking pretty hairy at some points. The race organizer, Larry, showed he was a micromanager when he was observed course marshalling at an intersection. He was facing us and trying to keep us in our lane when not 20 feet in front of me he got mowed over from behind by one of the out of control Category 3 racers. Poor guy. (Larry that is, the Cat 3 is used to crashing I'm sure). As we started the ascent I stayed relaxed and calm on the outside but my mind was saying "READY TO ROCK!!!" and I got goose bumps. It isn't often you get a day you feel this good. Wiens set the early pace, faster this time. After 1500 meters I looked back, saw we were already down to about 20 guys, and took over. I didn't attack forcefully, I just clicked into the 19 cog and wound it up staying seated. Moninger was on me straight away and for the next 2.5km all I could hear was my heart pounding. I kept my breathing even and steadied the rocking of my bike, apexing the turns in the road. Near the top we were down to about 7 guys, the last two dangling a few meters off the man ahead of them. Over the summit I went straight to a big gear and wound it out hard, pausing only to yank up my arm warmers and then we were descending. Moninger (a teammate of mine from Coors Light days '92-'94, the only guy who I ever let call me "Johnny") said "easy...easy, Johnny!" and I was pushing it hard into the switchbacks. After 5 minutes I misjudged a decreasing radius turn and knew I wouldn't make it. I stayed calm and nailed the brakes in a straight line, and slowed to a crawl in the gravel before getting back on the road at the tail end of our group. From here I could see who was left: Wiens, Moninger, his teammate Justin Spinelli, the Nutra Fig guy, and I. At the bottom I went to the front and drove it hard, getting some help from the non-Mercury guys (they wouldn't help power a move that was leaving their teammates behind). 25 miles to go. At 20 miles to go on a long highway grade I looked back and could see the chasers splintering. About 8 guys joined us, including Saturn's Mark McCormack & Tony Cruz, Gragus, and Gord Fraser. Gord was bloody from shoulder to ankle and it showed what a tough guy he is in that he could crash on that descent and still get up, get going, and rejoin the lead group. I got 4 out of the group to help me and I gave it everything to open a lead over the chasing Mercury train who were trying to bring Kirk and Will back up. At 4 mi to go I flatted. Raise left hand for front wheel. Stop. Remove wheel. Shimano neutral support motorbike stops just ahead of me. Mechanic gets off with 4 wheels strapped to his back, falls over on back, pretzles a wheel, can't get up right away. Finally gets up. Installs wheel incorrectly. I clip out completely, do it myself. Clip in. By now my team car is there and Sandra (Steve's girl) gets out and gives me a big push as I get going. The greatly shortened vehicle caravan is 400m up the road now, the lead group is attacking each other at 35mph as the race approaches the finish. I'm alreadly tapped out from doing most of the work earlier. Somehow, my legs don't hurt. I know that I'm at the limit, because my breathing is really labored. Steve drives up alongside and makes up for the botched wheel change by extending a coke which we both hold for an extra 5 seconds as he accelerates to 45 mph. He lets go of the bottle and now I'm about where I'd have been without the Shimano guy incident, about a carlength behind the last caravan car. The other team cars are leaving big spaces between each other that I have to close, one by one. Finally I'm back on the tail of the group, to find it split into 3 groups. Grunting with the effort (very unlike me!) I don't hesitate, I hit the wind again and weld 2 of the groups back together. McCormack is away solo. Moninger and Fraser have waited too long to do anything about it, and are pretty happy with having won 3 stages and the overall anyway. We finish and I look at my watch. Kirk and Will come in nearly 4 MINUTES later. I've jumped up to 2nd overall, and I'm pretty STOKED. The rest of the season is going to be GREAT.
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