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Vande Velde's View: Where am I?

By Christian Vande Velde, CSC Professional Cycling Team
Published: Sep. 14, 2007

Okay, I admit I have no idea where I am.

I am driving southwest right now to our new hotel. We are entering the region of Murcia, which is somewhat akin to the southwest of the states: Desert, sharp mountains, rocks, sleepy villages, nada. But this is all part of my new tactic of making the race go by faster. I know the date and the stage, but apart from that, I have no idea where I was today or yesterday after the stage ended.

This is quite common during a long stage race in a different land. But given that I have lived here in Spain for the last 10 years and know Spain from its food to its wine to its roads to its customs better than most Spaniards, it’s getting harder to employ this tactic. I can still picture how far we have to go. But as I write this I have no idea where I am. It’s a strange feeling, something like a sheep in a herd, at the mercy of a French bus driver, his GPS and a race organizer.

In the morning I leave the hotel, straight into the bus, drive to some random village for the start race for 170-something kilometers to another random village, get in the bus and then get dropped off at the hotel. This repeats itself for three weeks, sometime we go through big cities but Spain is a big place with a ton of open land and we seem to find all of that land and usually some wind to boot.

In ’98, during my first year professional, Johnny Weltz, our director at the time, would see how clueless we were as to our surroundings and try to educate us a bit as to where the hell we were. Our meetings would go a little like this. "Okay, boys listen for a second. We are here, in the south of Spain. Remember you were here this spring? No? Okay, anyway, there is a lot of wind here and nothing to stop it. You will ride east here for 50k and to your right will be the rock of Gibraltar, it has a lot a f...ing monkeys on that island believe me...” …and on and on. Now I am genius at Trivial Pursuit when it comes to monkeys and geography. Thanks Johnny.

Alright, so my tactic sucks. Half the hotels we go to in Europe there is a good chance that I have already stayed in them. I know where I am for the most part. But I am really trying to let these last three transition stages go by as fast as possible. Knowing that this weekend is gonna be really hard and much more meaningful than these 500k through the desert. But still, it is stressful, given that you can't win the race in these stages but you could definitely loose it.

So, if not knowing where I am, how much longer we have to go and virtually riding on autopilot gets me through the lame stages faster, then let me be. I know that it’s a means to an end, but I will gain motivation, energy and morale for this weekend by not spending any this week. Kinda like your buddy who gets by during the work week just to throttle himself partying on the weekend.

The stages this weekend will be no party, but I am sure that I will have quite the hangover on Monday.