Well folks, it has been awhile.
Not that you would expect anything else from my recent (or not so recent) blogging trends… Getting one per year out of me seems to be about on par. And here is the first – hopefully not the only (I’m not making any promises though) – post for 2011…
I came to Europe in March and began a spring racing campaign that was close to perfect. I was competitive from my first race to my last. In my first stage race here, I surpassed every result I had ever gotten in Europe – combined. And from there, it only got better. My first European podium, followed by more. Each race, I improved on my result from the last. My morale was sky high.
In my final race here, one of Italy’s biggest one day races, the G.P. Palio del Recioto, I practically had the win in my hands. I had ridden the early breakaway, and each lap, our blistering pace shed more and more riders, until there were only three of us left on the final climb. I drove the pace, riding on my limit through the driving rain, and by the top it was only myself and one other rider, who I kept repeatedly dropping. We had a fifty second gap on the next person with only 10 kilometers of descending to the finish line. The win was very likely and the podium near guaranteed. That was, before I came crashing down in a rain-soaked switchback a few kilometers before the finish… My morale went crashing down with me.
All I could think about were the other names who had occupied the podium in the past: Basso, Cancellara, Simoni, Salvodelli, Rebellin, Bertolini, Cunego, Battaglin, Moser, the list goes on and on. To have my name in such elite company… It was heartbreaking. The few hours after the race, my vocabulary contained few words, save for an abundance of expletives. It was rough. But when I sat back and thought about what had just happened, I came to a realization. All I could do was smile.
Last time I posted, I was in the midst of preparing for a semester off of school to make the jump full-time into the world of cycling. I cannot say I knew what to expect, and while I hoped for the best, I had absolutely no clue how it would pan out. It seems that’s how many things in my life are – I plan on something happening, I hope for it to work out, I make something that is a huge uncertainty in reality a minor speedbump in my mind. My mother can’t stand it. I act like everything will work out fine, though I really have no way of knowing whether it will go the way I planned out in my idealistic mind. Based on the way things have seemed to work out over the past few years, I have to say this method, while not quite infallible, has worked out pretty well.
Two years ago, not far from today, I planned this season in my head. I would take a semester off of school – but work it out over a year’s time, settling everything with every party involved, my parents, my school, my roommates, and others. I planned to move to somewhere great to train, with amazing training partners. I envisioned the races I would do, the results I would get, and the teams I would race for. Considering the situation I was in at that time, with no real results, no team locked up for the following season, few connections in the world of cycling, and hardly knowing many people who lived outside of Michigan, to someone in the outside world, my plan might have seemed a bit outlandish. I guess that’s why I never shared it with anyone but myself.
If it isn’t outlandish though, what’s the point of having a vision at all? Aiming for something realistic isn’t really aiming at all.
Shortly after I created this “plan” I went about seeing it through. First off, at the end of my first season with the US U23 National Team, I ended up getting on an amazing team, one that I could only have dreamed of. Step one checked off the list. The next steps came some while later, but it was unbelievable how they just kept checking off the list. I was able to work out getting the semester off of school. Some people were more difficult to convince than others, but most understood just fine.
When it came time to leave school for the semester, my teammate Chris Butler had an open spot in his home in Greenville, SC, and I was able to move in. I could not have asked for better training partners than the guys there – my first ride was with Butler, George Hincapie, and Craig Lewis, the Greenville hit squad as my new roommate liked to refer to it. Shortly after moving there, I headed off to a great training camp in Denia, Spain, and that went as well as I could have asked. After camp and prior to beginning my racing season I was probably one of the most fortunate guys in cycling, as I was able train with George every day for almost a month. That block of training set me up perfectly and I don’t think my season would have gone anywhere near as well as it did were it not for George taking me under his wing. And I have to thank him for putting up with all my stories for hours on end, day after day.
While sitting in the back of the team’s sprinter van after the race that day, I came to this realization. Two years of planning, two years of hard work, two years of unwavering belief, and it was all finally culminating, transforming into results.
I smirked.
But not for long. Yes, I got plenty of results. I did as well as I, or anyone could have asked, and I was psyched about that. The vision I have, however, includes a pro contract by the end.
So, until then,
-Larry
Leading the field at Tryptique Monts Chateau - © Casey B. Gibson 2011
