Saturday - prologue. Today´s course was only a 5km time trial. For those of you who don´t know, each rider goes off one at a time and they time you alone as your go through the course as fast as possible. I was feeling slightly better from my san salvador sickness that turned into a full case of the "madam-maria" with frequent trips to the bathroom. We found out that the hotel was actually just filling up the water cooler with tap water, so we were drinking el salvador tap (chilled nicely!) for a week. HUGH mistake. Anyway, i turned a decent time on the prologue and finished right in the middle of the field. Good enough. The guy who won is the Canadian national time trial champion and he averaged some sick speed of 34mph.. compared to my pedestrian 28 that is pretty fast! Crowds here were hugh and we signed our names on girls teeshirts, body parts and notebooks. I started to just sign Tom Danielson because i figured they would get a kick out of having his autograph more than mine.

Sunday - circuit race. This was probably my best shot to do anything in this whole vuelta because we didn´t have to go up and over a mountain to get to the finish. Circuit/criterium races are very popular in the US and because of this we happen to be the best at racing them. They are typified by a few corners, not much in the way of hills and a short course. They are probably the fastest style of racing and the spectators get to see the racers go round and round so there is lots to see. I went through a wide range of emotions during this day. Up until about half way (first 30 miles) there was a slight drizzle and overcast conditions. The race was "easy" comparative to a top level US circuit race and all you had to do was watch out for the little brown men who can´t turn and go fast at the same time. or go straight and go fast.. or go fast when the road isn´t pointed straight up. I´m amazed at how they can go 22mph on the flat, 22mph downhill and 22mph uphill.. us husky white boys go 30mph on the flat, 15mph uphill and 45 mph downhill which seems more intuitive. Back to the race - about half way through the clouds faded away and the temperature skyrocketed to 100 degrees. My internal clock just started winding down and by the end of the race i was completely dehydrated and barely hanging on. I did manage to finish with the main group which was better than half the field which got lapped at least once. That night I was up all night with a fever, vomiting, shivering and sweating. a classic case of "insulation" as Dr. Julio called it.. or heat stroke to the rest of us.

Monday - I´m feeling about as bad as you could possibly imagine as I´m about to embark on a 90 mile road race in the dead heat of central america. the night before i was able to keep 3 slices of wheat bread down.. which was all the nutrition i got that day. Race started and i was just hangin at the back trying to save as much energy as possible. About 20miles into the race we went up this mountain (10 mile climb, straight up, relentless suffering) and I got dropped about 75% up it. I figured that I would rather just ride the rest of the day at my pace and hope they don´t time cut me. Trying to look at the bright side I began some communication with my lone friend for the day - little brown guy number 1. he was from el salvador, I only knew this because he was on the national team wearing that jersey. He didn´t say much other than, ¨gracias¨when I gave him some granola bar to eat. I figured maybe if i fed him he would help me trade pulls and we could work together. as it turned out, his 22 mph was only useful going up hill. If i ever wanted to get to the finish i had to go faster than that on the flats. so i pulled for the next 20miles or so, dragging this little brown dood around. he would occasionally pull through on the uphill, or when we went through a town and people were cheering.. at one point an old guy just riding his bike came up and gave me a solid 3 minute pull, smiled and peeled off. I though that was nice. About 40 miles into the day I caught up to brown guy number 2 who was from guatamala. He proved much more useful and actually traded pulls from then on. with about 20 miles to go on the day we came down a hill and saw the ¨gruppetto¨or last group on the road which was about 20 riders big. At this point we were completely shot but the el salvador team car came up and motorpaced us right up to the group. Thankfully my teamate hugh was there and we chatted and suffered the rest of the way home together. 3 days down. That night i forced myself to eat some food and managed to keep it inside my belly. I got an IV from the doctor to help with the hydration and fell fast asleep after a hugh effort.

Tuesday - this was an "easy" day comparatively. We had a 30 mile team time trial in the morning, then a short 60 mile race in the afternoon. The team time trial is similar to the time trail format of the first day except you go out as a team and work together to go as fast as possible. basically it´s like group suffering. I rode about 20 of the 30 miles with the team and pulled the plug. I could afford to lose some minutes on the race (i think i was already in the bottom 10 places after monday´s stellar performance) so i was thankful for the added rest as I softpedalled into the finish. i picked up a couple guys from the el salvador team and they were happy to sit of my wheel and get a nice draft in. That afternoon we embarked on a 60 mile race at 3pm. The race went down a blazing fast decent in which we hit speeds surpassing 60mph. clad in lycra, riding a 17lb bike.. safe, right? To make it worse we had tv cameras, trucks, motorcycles, buzzing forward and back through the field as we twisted and turned down this mountain road. At one point I was going full out down a straight section when the promotors truck came flying by me about 4 inches to the left. I briefly reflected on how my life had just nearly ended before putting full attention back to decending. I managed to stay in the front 15 or so guys through the entire downhill which was an nice. A few miles later as we were going 45mph through this town, i felt a little brown guy bounce off my hip and heard a lot of racket behind me as 15 or so guys go down in a spectacular crash. the little brown guy happened to be "little brown guy number 1" from monday! the tv footage that night showed him being carried off in a stretcher which made us all worry. Turns out he was ok, and was riding in his team truck the next day. About half way through the stage we went up this 5 mile climb in which (... don´t let the suspense kill you) i got dropped. I did manage to hang on until the last mile or so. As it turns out I had a companion in little brown guy number 3. Also from guatamala and good friends with little brown guy number 2. He paced me up the rest of the hill and then I took over when it became apparent that he too could not go more than 22mph downhill. As we went downhill I jumped across to the left lane just as a semi was passing and caught some good draft. Then I jumped to the right lane, and back to the left as each car went flying by. This was like a highway, real life version of frogger. About 6 or 7 passes and we were going 60mph, same speed as traffic sitting comfortably behind a big vegitable truck. The road rolled along and then the traffic became thicker. Trying to maintain as much speed as possible we went straight through the middle of the cars ducking into the lane to grab some draft whenever we needed to. After about 10 minutes we came up the race caravan and at this point I knew we would make it back onto the main group. As I came barrelling into the back of the pack where all my teamates were hanging out talking, we all got a big kick out of my comback and clearly things were looking up. The day ended with a 4 mile climb into this little moutnain town. Simmetrics (pro team from canada) though the finish was in the town before the climb and had the field going flat out 40 mph through these cobbled streets and around tight little corners. Little brown guys were getting bounced out the back of the group left and right, crashing everywhere. Then we hit the climb and simmetrics literally blew up in fine fassion. They lost the race lead that day to a mexican who was happy to jump off there wheels and fly up that hill and some rediculous pace. I hit the bottom of the climb and immediately pulled the plug and rode my own pace up into town. All the little guys that crashed on the cobbles.. they came flying past me as we were going uphill, and this was there time to shine! The schoolchildren were lining the road cheering for us and I gave them high fives as I went past. 4 days down.

to be continued....

tom

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