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Michael Barry's Diary: Happy New Year!!
A cyclist operates on an entirely different calendar than do most people.
Two weeks ago, my year began as I started training again. At Christmas, when everyone else is relaxing, raising a glass in front of the tree, enjoying time away from work, we’ll be back on our bikes getting ready for team training camp, which begins only a few weeks into January
I woke up the morning of November 1st to find a training program in my e-mail inbox. That month off my bike had passed a whole lot quicker than the last month of the season in which I raced a very fast Vuelta and a miserably cold Championship of Zürich.
A sure sign training has begun is that George Hincapie no longer answers his phone from his car but from his bike. He now seems to conduct all his business on the road as I would imagine, knowing what his life is like as a Dad, he doesn’t have all that much time to talk when at home with his one-year-old daughter.
My training is now well underway; I rode into the mountains today, snowflakes covering my arms and toes, my mind drifting between the last season and the coming year. A year ago today my wife, Dede and I found out we were expecting a baby and now, he sits fast asleep beside me. The last season was one of highs and lows- I had to stop the Tour of Georgia sick and unable to eat, and a month later I was at the Giro helping Paolo win the maglia rosa. I arrived at the Vuelta with the best fitness of my life and broke a rib, while riding to the prologue, before the race even started. Three weeks of racing with a fracture seemed an eternity in comparison to the seven months of racing I had done prior.
As I climbed up into the dense falling snow, the roads becoming white, behind me only a small line etched by my tires in a blanket of white, I never thought of turning around and heading home, away from the snow. I was alone at 8000 feet, not a car, hiker, or cyclist in sight for hours, my bike crunching on the snow and my breath the only sounds. It is on epic rides that I find the motivation for a season of racing.
The past season I did more racing than in any other year of my career with over 95 race days. The ProTour requires each team to race more and at the end of the season, the staff and the riders were tired and ready to settle in for the winter. Geoff Brown, our team mechanic, spent more days on the road than most of the team as he worked at the Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia at the start of the year, worked at all the Classics, the three Grand Tours and the World Championships. Geoff, a fellow Canadian, was a mechanic with Motorola in the early nineties and has been with the team for all seven of Lance’s rides down the Champs d’Elysees.
I spent nearly the entire month of October off my bike. I rode twice, three times including a small commute to buy pastries for breakfast. And it felt good to rest and visit friends in Toronto, my hometown, and in Milwaukee, Dede’s hometown. Time off the bike makes me really appreciate riding my bike, and after about three weeks of walking around cities I was ready and eager to explore the mountains of Colorado again.
During the winter months, or off-season, we spend a couple of days of the week in the gym working on our core muscles and on muscles that are cycling specific. Going to the gym feels like going to work for me, whereas riding and mountain biking and being outdoors feels more like a good time.
Next year the team has big ambitions with the Classics, the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta being the major goals once again. Despite the fact that Lance is no longer racing with us we will still be able to field one of the most competitive teams at the Tour with several riders that can finish in the top ten or even on the podium. Even though it is only November, it is hard not to start thinking about the season when I know I will have another training schedule in my inbox tomorrow morning.
MichaelBarry, is a member of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling team, husband ofDede Barry and father to young Liam Barry. Michael Barry is also the authorof VeloPress’s “Insidethe Postal Bus”
