Blog

First of all, my apologies for a long time in between blog posts. I pulled out of the last day of Tour Med with bronchitis and straight away started antibiotics. After a rest day at home in Palamós I suddenly got really sick, had a fairly bad fever and spent a few days in bed. Since a few days I have been feeling better though and especially the last 2 days I have been able to train normally again. Riding around near my home gave me the inspiration to write about my training area and the reasons why I moved to Spain (oops, sorry, Catalunya).

When I turned professional with the (Spanish) Liberty Seguros – Würth team in 2005 I got some help from Mathieu Hermans to settle in as he’s been with Spanish teams for many years. I enjoyed the Spanish lifestyle and after one year living with my parents in The Netherlands I decided to move to Spain myself and spend my time outside races there as well. Of course I heard about Girona because Lance Armstrong used to live there for many years but Mathieu Hermans told me to definitely move to Palamós as he had been living there for some years as well. Through some of his friends (thanks Koos!), I found a good apartment in the centre of the old fishing town with nice harbor and sea views.

Training here in Catalunya is great. The temperatures are nice all year round; it’s not too cold in the winter and not too hot in the summer. There are lots of nice and quiet roads to ride on, flat, hilly and downright mountainous. No wonder so many professional riders live near the city of Girona, I think there must be at least 60 of us living here now.  That way it’s also easy to get nice training groups with riders that want to do the same type of training that day. Personally I love the Costa Brava ride which takes me along the coast all the way down to Lloret de Mar. My favourite climb also starts on the coast and is called San Grau, I urge everyone to check it out whenever you are anywhere near the Costa Brava, a nice windy road with great views of the sea and the coastline (see picture).

If anyone is interested in some of my training routes please leave a comment on either my guestbook on the website or my Twitter http://www.twitter.com/koendekort  and I’ll see what I can do!

For anyone interested in visiting this area, my friends Saskia and Dave started a great new company, visit their website on: http://www.gironacyclecentre.com
We are actually working on a way for me to do some interesting things for Saskia and Dave's company. That's all I can say for now, more news soon!

I do realize this looks like a tourist office blog post but I’ve just fallen in love with this place, haha!

In the Southern part of France there are several races in a row: GP Marseillaise, Bessèges, Tour Méditerranéen and Haut Var. The staff of the Skil-Shimano team stays here for the whole period of racing but none of the riders do, that would be too much this early in the season. I am the only rider of the team doing the first 3 races which means I got to Aix-en-Provence on January 30^th and will go back home on February 15^th. In between each of the races there is a 2 day recovery period.

On the recovery days we get a good chance of sleeping in, mostly until about 9am. Then a light breakfast followed by a training ride. The training rides are anywhere between 1 and 2 hours of easy riding outside, maybe with a sprint or 3. Director Rudi Kemna has joined me in nearly every recovery ride, only he keeps going to do some extra kilometers. I suppose most directors still love cycling and maybe get frustrated sitting in the car while we race so they take any opportunity to do a good training ride....

After a light lunch we’ve got some time to kill. Some riders like to sleep for a little bit but nearly all of the riders in the team take a laptop to the race to watch movies. Lots of movies get swapped between riders so I always have something new to watch. Maybe I should start writing movie reviews.... Other things to do are: watching TV (if you’re French: French language only), read books, read (cycling) magazines, write blog, etc. All these things get done on the bed though. A very wise man once said: “you win a race resting in bed”. Recovery is just as important as training! To help that recovery a little bit we get a daily massage, even on the rest days. Especially when there is only a 2 day rest between 2 stage races it’s important to have every little bit help.

Usually at about 8pm we have dinner, the day before the race a good meal with pasta or rice and a little bit lighter meal on the other days. On the rest days I don’t want to put the weight back on I lost on the race days! The day before a race it’s important to fill the tank up so it’s got enough fuel for the race the next day. Most important is to fill up on carbohydrates your body can use the next day. After dinner I go back to bed to watch another movie before I go to sleep.

Not a lot happens on rest days but it’s worth having a boring day on the rest day to have good legs again when the race starts.

The last 3 days in the Étoile de Besseges turned out into Mass sprints. The whole bunch stays together and the winner of the day gets decided in a mad dash for the finish line.

My role in Skil-Shimano is usually the one of last man or second last man before the sprinter. We have a few good sprinters in the team but in this race our designated sprinter is Tom Veelers. A bear of a bikerider with lots of power. His specialty is hard (uphill) sprints or sprints with a smaller group after a hard stage. Our other good sprinter here is Roy Curvers, a smart and experienced rider who has been Kenny van Hummel's leadout man for some time now. He's very good as the last man so my role this race is that of second last man before Veelers, Curvers is last man.

All 3 sprints here in Besseges have been completely different sprints. The first stage was a quick and flat last 3km with a dangerous roundabout at 600m before the finish. The second stage was on a hard circuit which made it hard to stay together but the sprint was right after a fairly steep downhill. In the 3rd stage the sprint was decided on top of a climb of about 800m, not very steep but quite difficult, Tom's favourite.

The idea for the sprint is that the 3 of us (Roy, Tom and I) stay closely together and for some of the other 5 riders of the team to keep us out of the wind until the last kilometer. There is a lot of pushing and pulling going on, even at high speeds, and sometimes it gets quite dangerous. The ideal situation is that I start sprinting with about 600 metres to go with Roy on my wheel and then Tom. I'll try to keep going for as long as I can keeping the speed close to 60kmh, stretching out the field and making sure Tom can start sprinting in the best possible position. With about 350 to 400 m to go it's Roy's turn to take over and he'll try to continue my work and bring the speed up over 60kmh. All that's left to do for Tom is make the final sprint over the last 200 m and hopefully get a good result. That's the ideal situation...

I'll take stage 2 and 3 of Besseges as examples what really happens in the sprint. In stage 2 we were all 3 still together in a good spot with just over a km to go. As I'm in front of my 2 teammates I get to chose which side of the peloton to sit on and which lines to ride through the corners. The problem is that there are other teams that work on the same way and there are sprinters without any teammates with them. Sprinters are known to be crazy and I chose the left side for the last left-hand corner just before the steep descent into the last corner. I managed to get through the corner alright but Roy and Tom got pushed into the barriers by other riders and had to brake hard to stay upright. In the descent I noticed Roy wasn't on my wheel anymore and I waited for him to get back to me but of course we lost some spots and valuable meters to the finish. I could only start taking them back to the front 600 m to go and we came too late. Tom finished 10th, I got 16th and Roy 18th. We were clearly well together but small mistakes made a good result impossible.

As I said before stage 3 was a great opportunity for Tom as he loves uphill finishes and the whole team was very motivated to bring him in the right position and the boys were already on the front with 7km to go. It's nice to see our team taking the initiative and going into the last km Roy, Tom and I were still together in the right spot. It was a little bit too far for me to start sprinting 1km out and we let some riders from other teams pass to do the dirty work. I brought Roy and Tom in a good position for the last 400 m and Roy did an awesome job putting Tom in a good spot for the finish. I could still see Tom starting to sprint and he managed to take away the 3rd position on the finish line. It didn't go perfect but it was pretty close, if Roy and I could have put him forward a little further it would have been even better but with these crazy sprinters its already quite a problem staying together, let alone be in the perfect spot together but its still the first stage race of the year and we are already learning quickly. We have confidence for a possible other sprint and maybe get an even better result.

Because for my first race of the season I already found myself behind the first big group in the race after a flat tire, I thought it would be a good idea to tell a bit more about what goes on between the cars and behind them.

After a puncture in the race (or any other mechanical problem for that matter), riders usually scream into their radio to tell the director what the problem is, so the director can get to the rider as soon as possible and the mechanic knows what to take out of the car, a spare front wheel, back wheel or even a complete spare bike. That way things get handled quickly so you can be back on your way in as little time as possible. The rider will almost always be on his way again before the last car that drives behind the peloton has passed the rider with the mechanical problem. This rider can then sit behind a car and more or less gets motorpaced all the way back to the bunch. This is fair as you were already in the bunch when you had the mechanical problem so you get 'helped' back into it. It is a different story when a rider gets dropped from the peloton because he couldn't follow the speed of the group. Riders are then usually not allowed to sit behind the cars to try to get back into the bunch. There are commissaires in cars and on motorbikes that control this.

As you can read in the news section of my website, I had a puncture in the descent of a long climb and that gives a problem.... Usually I would have been allowed between the cars to get back to the bunch but because we just had a climb a good amount of riders got dropped, and I fell back into a group of them when I punctured. All the riders except for me were dropped and the commissaires stopped the cars behind the bunch every time we got close to them, they call that "barrage". When this happens dropped riders can't motorpace back into the bunch and have to try getting back on own strength. The group I fell back into didn't have very strong riders in there anymore as they were dropped already, so there was no chance of me getting back to the bunch anymore. I tried bridging across alone but that isn't easy without any help from cars, against a bunch that is trying to close the gap to a breakaway. That's what I call having a puncture at the wrong moment in the race. I didn't get across and fell back into the group of dropped riders. When the gap between us and the bunch was big enough, all the cars were allowed to pass and we were definitely left behind. At that point a motorbike gets in front of the group to make sure we are still safe from any traffic wanting to get on the course. Race finished...

Let's hope next blogpost I can write about riding in front of the bunch rather than riding behind it....

After training camp had ended I flew from Palma de Mallorca to my parents’ house in The Netherlands. I only had about 24 hours in The Netherlands to pack a lot of my stuff for the long drive to my apartment in Palamós, Spain. I feel like I have only just arrived ‘home’ and I’ll have to leave again tomorrow. I have had time to unload the car, do a few good training rides and catch up with some friends and now I’ve just finished packing my suitcase for the first race of the season.Tomorrow I’ll drive from Palamós to Marseille for the GP Marseillaise and I’ll stay in southern France for another 2 weeks to do the Etoile de Bessèges and the Tour Méditerranéen.

After years of travelling to races I know by now what to take to a race and it usually doesn’t take too long the first race of the season is a bit different though. First of all because it’s been a while since my last race and because all the new team clothing needs some sorting out and I have to make sure I only pack the new clothes!

I always have a standard ‘rainbag’ that I put in the director car that’s behind us in the race. In this bag I’ve got some extra clothes, in my case winter gloves, normal gloves, shoe covers, armwarmers, a vest, a jacket and 2 rainjackets. I always cut off the sleeves of one of my rainjackets because when I ride with the sleeves still on it I tend to overheat. It doesn’t let any bodyheat through so cutting off the sleeves helps me staying warm enough in the rain but not too warm so I overheat. Occasionally it gets really cold in the rain or when we have to do a descent in the rain I still want to wear a rainjacket with the sleeves still on it. Last but not least I have a pair of spare shoes in my rainbag in case something happens to my first pair of shoes; I don’t want to have to abandon a race because a shoe breaks.

In my suitcase I just pack all the standard stuff. Mainly race clothes and some things to keep me occupied while I’m not racing. This means of course my laptop and always at least 10 dvd’s to watch when I’ve had enough of French tv, which is pretty quickly. Apart from that I always have a book or two and some magazines. When we change hotels during a stage race the suitcase gets picked up by one of the soigneurs of the team before the race and when we get to the next hotel it will already be in the new room… we do have some luxury!!

Then finally I take a backpack with me in the mobile home or bus to the start and it contains the clothes I’ll race in, some dry clothes for after the race and also my health book which is very important for the anti-doping control. Every professional rider has a little booklet in which is written down when and where the quarterly health controls have been done and which medication has been used so the doping control officer can write that down on the form. I’ll go a bit further into the whole anti-doping situation in one of my next blogs.

I never have to take a bike to the race because my race and spare bike will be taken by the team in the truck to the race. I only have a training bike at home and that bike can always stay at home. At least is saves from having to constantly travel with a bike!

Just before I left to go to Mallorca for the team training camp I adjusted positions on my roadbike after a biomechanical analysis and changed the position on my TT bike after an aerodynamic test.

The biomechanical analysis was done by Edwin Achterberg ( http://www.fietspositiemeting.nl/) our team doctor and specialist in bike position analysis. For this test I had to ride on the hometrainer on my own bike with markers on my ankle, knee, hip and shoulder. Edwin uses a video camera to record my movement on the bike and analysis this on his computer with some special software. By looking at the angles between the different markers and the horizon we adjusted my position slightly to get the angles as close as possible to the perfect position. I moved my seat up and a bit forward as well as dropping my handlebars and moving it a bit forward by getting a slightly longer stem. No major differences but they should help me make 100% use of my power whilst riding my bike.

To perfect my Time Trial position I did a test on the track in Apeldoorn with Merijn Zeeman (http://www.twitter.com/merijnzeeman). It’s important to be on the track by yourself, moving air from other riders might change the results of the test, so the team hired the track for a few hours that day for Jin Long, Robert Wagner and I. The idea is that you ride with a SRM power meter on the time trial bike and sit complete laps at a few selected speeds. The SRM gets read out and analyzed by special aerodynamics software that takes air pressure, temperature and weight of bike + rider into account. The program then comes up with a figure for aerodynamics. After the initial test I put my handlebar down and the armrests inside and did the test again resulting at a lower (so better) figure for aerodynamics. For my last test I put my seat up and handlebar even lower which gave a great figure for aerodynamics. According to the software I’ve got one of the most aerodynamic positions of the team. This basically means I can go fastest at the same amount of watts, good news! The bad news is that the position is very uncomfortable but because time trials are never long I just have to train on it as much as I can to be able to push out the big watts in that awkward position and that should give me good results in the races.
Let’s hope so!!

One of the only times in the year we’ve got the whole team together is during the training camp. It’s a great way to catch up after the off-season and to get to know the new riders on the team. Of course we’ve had a photo session and a team presentation with the whole team in the last week but these days are so full that a proper chat is nearly impossible.

 

Last Sunday (January 17) we left from airport Weeze, on the German and Dutch border to the German island in Spain: Mallorca. I say German island as especially the area where the hotel is (s’ Arenal) there are more German shops, restaurants and hotels than Spanish ones so we do feel like we are in Germany whenever we are off the bike. The good part about Mallorca is the wide range of possibilities with training and of course the good weather. There are large flat parts on the island but there are hills and even mountains as well, so whatever you want to train, it’s only a maximum of an hour ride away.

My roommate for this week on Mallorca turned out to be Jin Long, one of our Chinese riders. His English has improved significantly since last year so it’s a lot easier to communicate with him so I don’t mind being in one room with him. Nearly all races we can pick our own roommates but at training camp it is usually thought out by the directors for different reasons. An obvious reason is to make sure there are no little groups within the team, if the French riders are always together, the Chinese riders together and the Germans together there is not one big team but several small groups within the team and you want to avoid at all times because we have to race for and with each other during the season. Usually in the training camp there is a lot of ‘half-wheeling’ going on, everyone is excited to nearly start the season and wants to show everyone how well he’s been training by trying to ride a half wheel in front of the rider next to him. This is a little annoying as it brings the speed up a lot because no one wants to ride a half wheel behind. So far this training camp the half-wheeling hasn’t been too bad, but while saying this I’m thinking it might be me half-wheeling my teammates… If that’s true I’ll have to hear that for the rest of the year, bike riders are like elephants, we never forget someone that hurts us…

 

So far we have done 2 training rides, the first day we did a sunny and warm 6 hour ride, mostly on the flat with some sprint and coordination efforts. The sprint efforts are done by sprinting in 2’s and try to push each other to the max to improve as much as possible. I was sprinting against Mitchel Docker and definitely had a hard time beating him; he’s trained well the past months and will do well this season. Good job Dockers!! The coordination efforts are based on cadence, the amount of revs per minute of the legs. We varied between 80 en 110 rpm for a fairly long time.

The second day was a very hard 4 hour ride with some short anaerobic intervals. We started with a good amount of 30 sec sprints uphill and not a lot of rest in between. The sprints are done in 2’s again and this time I had to sprint against Tom Veelers, I think the strongest guy on the team, what an animal! After a few sprints the lactate starts building up quickly in your blood and legs and after about 4 sprints some riders started to be sick off the bike and that made me laugh. These softies can’t handle anything! Another few sprints later I started to feel very sick myself as well, sometimes being a cyclist means hurting yourself a lot… I managed to do all the sprints and when I tried to get off my bike my legs nearly buckled and I felt very dizzy. Apparently cycling is easier than walking! After these sprints we rode for a while to let the body break down the lactate and when we felt up for it again we did another few 1 minute sprints uphill. Funnily enough the 1 minute intervals are easier than the 30 second ones but still pretty darn hard. To finish the day off in style we did a 10 minute race with the team for an imaginary finish line. There were a few attacks, Rooijakkers and Goesinnen first, then Huguet for a little while and after the Aussie connection (Dockers and I) broke away but we also were brought back. Rooijakkers attacked again in the last kilometer and managed to take the win just before director Rudie Kemna (he didn’t do the sprints before so that isn’t fair, still a pretty good effort!). At least Rooijakkers made a great comeback after his horrible crash in the Tour de France last year; he’s ready for the season I think!!

I’ve been back in The Netherlands for nearly a week now and it’s been a very cold week. When I left Melbourne it was nearly 40 degrees Celsius and as I touched down in The Netherlands it was 8 degrees below zero (at 6am) with snow everywhere. A big temperature shock!

 

Of course it is beautiful coming back ‘home’ and seeing this magical winter wonderland but for a cyclist it’s not that great. When training in the cold there are 2 basic and very obvious rules. Stay warm and don’t crash!

 

Rule number 1 means wearing lots of clothes. In the recent years I have found what works for me to keep me warm. When the temperatures drop below zero I usually wear a fairly thick short-sleeve undershirt under a very warm full-body thermo suit and warm socks. Over that I wear an extra pair of long knicks (without shammy, I already have that in my thermo suit), a short sleeve team jersey, a warm thermo jacket, a hat for under my helmet and a shawl to cover my throat, chin and neck. I put tape on the holes in the bottom of my shoes and cover them with very warm shoe covers and I also wear 2 pairs of gloves. I do have to keep in mind what I am planning on training that day because when I do lots of intervals I have to wear a little bit less because I have to keep myself warm but shouldn’t start sweating too much. When you start sweating your clothes get damp and you get extra cold so in that case less is better.

 

Rule number 2 is a little bit complicated. When I leave for my training ride I seriously have to walk out of the street because the street looks like a bobsleigh track of Olympic proportions. Cars have been driving over the snow hardening it more and more. After that the fluctuating temperatures (just above zero some days to 10 below zero some nights) made the snow into a layer of ice. I have seen people in the street falling over while walking so there’s no way I’ll make it out of the street on two narrow tires. All the main roads and even most bicycle paths have been cleared of snow, mostly by putting lots of salt on the road, which is great for your bike but at least saves you from crashing. Training is possible when you stick to the main roads but it’s still a bit tricky when there’s lots of wind because the wind blows the snow from the side of the road onto the road. Sometimes there are some sort of snow dunes on certain parts of the road and you can’t be too cautious so I usually go through them very slowly. The last thing I want to do is crash and throw away all the good training I have done since October.

I can’t wait to go on team training camp to Mallorca next Sunday, the weather should be a lot better there so I can start training normally again.

It’s been a very long time since my last post, especially in English, but I’m going to try to write a whole lot more this year. The plan is to make a blog-like page for my website with some good behind-the-scenes info on racing the pro-circuit and a bit of my personal life. Of course you can also follow me on twitter where I try to keep everyone very up-to-date: http://www.twitter.com/koendekort

 

I’ve only just returned from Australia, I’ve been there for a very long time although it never seems long enough, also because I left my partner Kaitlin behind for another few weeks while I’m busy with training camp and races. At first I had a good holiday in Australia, no riding and enjoying the good weather, spending time with my partner’s family and our friends. We stayed in Melbourne most of the time but we made trips to: Noosa, Toowoomba, Bundaberg, Fraser Island, Lady Musgrave Island, Brisbane, Adelaide, Coffin Bay (Port Lincoln) and Geelong. I started training again from the end of October, first only short rides but by the end of November I was doing big training weeks. Especially the last month, when I was staying in St Kilda, I trained a lot, I even did the famous ‘Hell Ride’ a few times.
I’ll have to explain riding in Melbourne first. Lots of professional cyclists live in and around St Kilda: Matty Lloyd, Baden Cooke, Greg Henderson, Jeremy Hunt, Mitchell Docker, Matty Wilson and Simon Gerrans, to name a few. For me that’s very good because I can train at a very high level with these riders but beside the professionals there are hundreds more cyclists out…. Every day! In the weekend I dare to say there are thousands out on the bike! When I first arrived in St Kilda and rode on ‘Beach Road’ (THE road to ride on in Melbourne) I was dumbstruck to see all these groups ride past. Big groups of up to 50 riders at a time were everywhere, going both directions. What a cycling culture!

The ‘Hell Ride’ is the biggest thing on Beach Road. A big group of over 100 high-level cyclists get together on a Saturday morning to ride from Black Rock along the coast to Mount Eliza and back, and it’s ON! It’s a full-on race through normal traffic (hence the Hell-ride I suppose…) but I have to say we stop for traffic lights and don’t do any dangerous stuff. Everybody knows about the Hell Ride because I’ve heard it’s been crazy and dangerous in the past and there has been some controversy about it in the media. It’s good training for the professionals as it’s a pretty good simulation of a race and everybody wants to win in it.

 

Just before I left Australia I did the Jayco Bay Cycling Classic, 4 criteriums in 4 days near Geelong and Melbourne. The races are done in teams of 5 riders with a total of 90 riders in the race. The crits have teams are made just for that race with their own sponsor, a bit like the 6day races on the track in Europe. Some of the big-name riders in this race were: Robbie McEwen, Graeme Brown, Brett Lancaster, Leigh Howard, Matt Wilson, Greg Henderson, Matthew Hayman, Chris Sutton, Baden Cooke, Jeremy Hunt, Matthew Goss and a whole lot more. I did the crits for the O2 networks team so I wore a jersey with O2 networks on it but the Skil-Shimano knicks, socks, gloves etc.

The crits were very tough, fast racing on very short circuits. The 3^rd crit had the shortest circuit, a 600 meter hot-dog circuit (A 300 meter road up and down) but the 4^th crit was only 850 meter long as well. I felt really good and I was happy that all the hard training from the last months paid out and I was able to place myself top 10 in the bunch sprints the first 2 crits and break away by myself the last, harder, 2 races. Resulting in a 4^th place the 3^rd race and a 10^th place overall.

 

Now I’m back to reality in cold Europe. It was a bit strange going from 40 degrees in Melbourne to 8 degrees below zero when I landed in Amsterdam last Friday. Training with these temperatures isn’t easy but I managed to get a decent amount of hours in. This week is a relative easy training week for me in which I have UCI and team obligations. I’ve already done the photo shoot with the 2010 Skil-Shimano team, UCI blood test and a VO2max test. I still have a bike measurement test, time-trial aerodynamic test and team press day coming up. Next Sunday I’ll leave with the team on training camp to Mallorca. Of course I’ll keep you all updated on Twitter and this website.

 

If you want some more info on riding in Melbourne or on the Jayco bay cycling classic see my friend Wade’s website: http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com .