Tour De Korea 2012 Stage 1!

Tour De Korea is here!....and what a bang to start off the race. The course was one of the shorter courses, just about 50 km flat...but fast. There was no neutral zone, except for about 2 km at the beginning of the race. The morning was WINDY and it was pouring. The president of Korea made an arrival..so getting to the start of the race was complete madness with security, police officers, and media.



We started off the day training in our team movable training center...and we sure got a lot of attention. I don't think I have had so many people taking photos and videos of me in my life! It was fun and everyone was in great spirits. This was a shorter race, maybe an 1:20 minute finish time so nutrition on the bike was just a bottle of heed (electrolyte replacement drink, similar to Gatorade) and hammer gel (similar to GU).

Thomas came from Denmark to race with the A team! 


As the race began, there was a crash within the firsts 25 minutes or less. Unfortunately, our team director who is also on our team went down, along with another member of our team. We later found out he broke his femur and will need to get surgery a few days later. The crash broke up the field as the front group sprinted forward while others who was stuck behind suffered trying to play catch up. This was the scariest race I have ever done! It was so wet, and so windy. I couldn't get my heart rate down. I believe I finished about 10 minutes after the first group...and was thankful the first day was done!

I learned that cycle racing is so much different then racing in triathlons which is what I am used to. There is so much more strategy involved where triathlons, you just race for yourself. Knowing were to be in the pack, how to sprint, when to sprint, when to save energy...all of these things need to be considered...I have lots to learn!

After the race we had to travel a couple hours to lodging facilities closer to the next race site. As we drove down to the site, we had laid our cycling clothes out to dry...here is a picture of one of the teammate drying out his gear!

Holy cow! The place was super nice and none of us were expecting to be staying at such a nice resort. Probably everyone at the resort was there because of the TDK, so there were bikes everywhere! The pro teams were also staying there so I got to check out some of the sweet bikes they were cruising around town on.

Image the $$ of bikes is in this picture alone...

Jelly Belly's bikes have jelly beans all over them! 

Teams nightly meetings to discuss race strategies and how to better position themselves.