Hi All
Thought I’d give you a brief update, we have been in Xining now since 5th.
Xining is the starting town for the tour and is at 2200m altitude. So it’s been quite good as the team has had a good couple of days to acclimatize to the altitude, it’s been nice relaxing training all week, once we arrived here 3 of us went for a quick spin around the city to loosen the legs from all the flying. Well Ramblers cycling members I can tell you right now, the driver in Hawke’s bay are NOTHING compared to these guys. Really we are pretty dam safe and lucky because the drivers of Xining city and the pedestrians for that matter have got to be blind and are so crazy!!! I can honestly say to you I can’t believe how I haven’t seen a crash or someone killed yet, People just walk out across the road not even looking for traffic (and there’s a heck of a lot of it) and the drivers well, road rules just don’t exist here. Red lights who cares just run it, if there is a stream of traffic coming and you want to turn in to that side road then hey no worries just go for it and they’ll swerve or stop or brake or hit you or something but hey who cares. That’s a bit of a super under-exaggeration to be honest and you just have to see it to believe it.
Anyway I have got a few good days training in and seem to have recovered well from my beating in Korea. Generally when my resting heart rate is 34bpm it’s a pretty good sign I’m in good shape. So I’m looking forward to the tour starting now, Tomorrow we have a 3.8k prologue TT. It’ll be good to get racing finally but it’s a bit of a pain so much prep for such a short effort, but that’s cool at least well be racing.
It’s going to be quite an experience to be honest and I think probably the coolest thing for me is that earlier in the year I was watching some old tour de France and tour of Flanders videos and DVDs. And if you told me then that id be lining up against some of the winners of these races at the biggest tour in Asia I would have just laughed at you.
E.g. Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevelia, Fred Rodriguez (Rock Racing, Tour of France and Spain stage winners) Stefan Wiseman (Cyclecollstrop, and ex Tour of Flanders winner) that’s naming just a few there’s plenty more.
Well that’s all for now, will update you after a few stages
Josh
