Liege La Gleize

The last week has flown by and Worlds are rapidly approaching. After arriving in Belgium last Tuesday most of the worlds team raced a hard 3 day stage race in Liege, called Liege La Gleize to prepare for Worlds. There was no pressure on the team other than to get some good training for Worlds and win the team time trial to show our team strength. Stage one was one of the hardest days for me on the bike. I had a small crash after about 15km. No big problem my chain was tangled but the mechanic fixed it quickly and I was back on the bike quickly. My brake was rubbing for a while but I eventually fixed it. I was almost made it back to the peleton after about 5km of chasing but could not close the final gap. I ended up back in the cars absolutely dying wondering if I would ever make it back. The field got slowed up around a roundabout and I finally was back after about a 25km chase, and I was dead. There was no way to move up in this 180 man peleton so I was at the back until Downtown dropped back with 10km to go to bring me up for the sprint. With 1km to go I was sitting about 7^th until a French kid took me off the road and into a gravel driveway causing a huge pile up. I lost about 10 places and ended up 11^th, not what I was hoping for. Next was the team trial. We started hard posting the fastest intermediate time, maybe too hard. We lost 2 riders out on course finishing with Lawson, Boz, and myself in 2^nd 24 seconds behind the French. The next stage was rolling with 3 categorized KOMs. Downtown made the early move and took each KOM. Boz bridged later and finished in the second group 1 minute behind a lead break. I was in the 3^rd group with Lawson and split the field with repeated attacks. Rathe dropped out, he was on antibiotics from a bee sting earlier. Boz was sitting in 4^th overall starting the last day, Nate in the KOM jersey, and Lawson 13 seconds out of white. There were 7 KOMs on this stage making it easily the hardest. I helped Nate secure his jersey for the first half. Then after a crash with the yellow jersey I chased back to help Boz. I spent the last 20km on the front hammering to reduce a gap to a break. The yellow jersey dropped out and Boz ended up 2^nd! Lawson took the white Jersey and Nate won the KOMs, not a bad weekend! No we are in Moscow trying to avoid being murdered or get food poisoning. Each meal has identical food some greasy meat, greasy potatoes, greasy fish, and some great desserts. I wonder what we are eating most of! The road course is super hard with many steep, steep climbs and twisty short descents with banked turns! Should be a great, tough race, I am looking forward to it!