Tour of Southland

The tour of southland was a great race and a really great trip. I'll spare you too many racing details because those can get boring, but I'll give you a quick run down: I personally didn't race great, just lack of form, had a bit of a crash as well. The Jackson Plumbing team road amazing however, with all of us supporting Mike on his way to 5th place with Sergio just behind in 7th (I would bet on Serge winning the 1st hilltop finish next year as he flew up it this year after getting caught in a crash near the bottom). Cody also had some good stage results in the sprints.

What really made the race special was the beautiful scenery of New Zealand, and more importantly, the people. The team gelled really well for a composite team, and our staff were amazing. Thanks to Robert, our director, for organizing everything, and to Grame and Julie for their amazing support, and Derek for the masseuse work. And of course to Jackson Plumbing and Plumbing World for making it all happen. I've added some pictures so you can see a little of what made the trip special.


The school kids were out at the race all week supporting the riders. One of my favorite moments of the week was when Gordon McCauley led a couple hundred school kids in chants of "rouley sucks," (referring to rival and eventual race winner Hayden Roulston) and it was shown on National News that night. We even had a few of our own fans, two of which are shown here.


On the 200k double day we were lucky enough to have a hotel room for the few hours in between stages, making things much, much easier. Here's Cody showing some stage race living.


Me in Te Anau, at our hotel for the one night we spent out of Invercargill. It was more beautiful than words or pictures can do justice, and I hope to be back.


Another shot of Te Anau


Top of Crown Range, at the stage 4 finish.

The Blog returns

Hey everyone,
For various reasons the blog has been on hiatus for quite awhile now. Here's my first post on the attempted comeback trail. It's fitting that this post comes from a different hemisphere and a race that blurs the lines of the 2010 and 2011 seasons-yep, that's right, I'm starting a stage tomorrow, the 1st of November. I'm in Invercargill, New Zealand for the Tour of Southland with the Jackson Plumbing composite team, made up of myself, Mike Olheiser, Cody Stevenson, Sergio Hernandez, Kevin Nicol and Lang Reynolds.

The race is 6 days and 9 stages starting with tomorrows TTT and 90k hill-top finish road race. Although the weather is nice at the moment the usual deciding factor of this tour is the wicked winds and rain, sleet or snow that can terrorize the peleton. I'm looking forward to a few of the hillier days and helping Mike for the GC. We've got a variety of international riders and the southern hemisphere's best talent, including a few protour riders like Hayden Roulston, Greg Henderson and Clinton Avery to contend with. More later,
Christian

I finally made a twitter. Follow me and all that stuff. @cparrett89

Bretagne starts tomorrow. Spent the last couple days checking out the time trial bike, it feels fast. Legs feel good so it's time for a week of hard racing.

relaxing on Jersey

First of all, if you're a cyclist in Georgia or the rest of the southeast, you should be at the Macon Cycling Classic on May 1st. It's gonna be an absolute stunner of a course and the race is put on by some great folks. I'm a bit sad to be missing it.

Our week on Jersey before the Tour of Bretagne is going by fast. The past few days have been really relaxing and we've gotten to see the best of the Island. We've been doing a decent bit of training, and although the Island isn't huge there are enough roads that the training is surprisingly nice. It's scenic and the weather is great right now so I couldn't ask for much more. Aside from training, we've been relaxing at our great host house or at Big Maggy's, just enjoying some down time.

I have to say yesterday afternoon was the highlight of the trip so far. Leo Mansell had us over for an awesome barbecue that almost made me feel like I was at home. Leo and his brother Greg are not only top guys, but pro racing car drivers as well. Their father is F1 legend Nigel Mansell, who I was honored to meet. The food was great and we all had an awesome time. We owe thanks to Leo for having us over, and to Greg for some strong work on the grill.

Just a few more days of vacation before we start the tour of bretagne on Sunday, I think we're all well up for it.

oops

Crashed out of the race yesterday early on. No injuries to report, just flipped into a ditch and conked my head a bit. The usual post crash soreness today, but road 4 hours with 2 super hard out of spite. Time to get ready for the Tour of Bretagne, which starts here on Jersey Sunday. Good news is the legs felt great yesterday so hopefully I can roll that into Bretagne and start getting some results.

At the moment I'm hanging out at Big Maggy's, an absolutely awesome coffee/high end bike shop here on Jersey that Magnus is part owner of. Check out BigMaggys.com to buy some of the awesome coffee they serve here.

I'll have more to talk about later I guess, for now check out a few of these pictures from training back in Wales

Hitting the road

After a few days with some nice training and great weather, we're hopping over to France again Friday morning. Saturday I have the UCI 1.1 Tour du Finistere. It's gonna be another hard race with plenty of Protour teams but it's a hilly course and the legs feel ok so maybe I can have a good race. From there we will head to Jersey, a British Island just off the coast of Brittany. We'll be spending the week in Jersey before starting the Tour de Bretagne, a 2.2 weeklong stage race that begins with two days on Jersey, then returns to France's Bretagne region for 5 more days racing. I'm really excited to get back to some racing and do my first proper stage race of the year.

I've been operating without much internet for the last couple weeks, oh the horror. Luckily I should have it plenty now. I'm settling in nicely to wales and the team and things are going pretty well. My first two 1.1 races have gone ok. Nothing spectacular but at least I haven't embarassed myself too much.

First up was Route Adelie Vitre in France. In the field were all the French Protour teams and Conti Pro teams along with a few continental teams like ours. The course was a hard, lumpy circuit with some small roads and wind. FdJeux team attacked up a hill leading to a crosswind section and blew it apart. I actually made the 2nd group of maybe 5 and then road back into the front, and made it through the hard bit by the skin of my teeth. Unfortunately I had a bit of a stomach problem that put me out of the race after the pace had slowed a bit. That was dissapointing, but I was happy that I'd lasted through the ridiculous lap Fdjeux put down that dropped half the field, including plenty of Protour riders.

Yesterday was Grand Prix Pino Cerami in Belgium. Aside from the mountainous races near Liege, racing in Belgium ain't my strong point. I road ok though, and was able to help a few of the guys on the team who are going really well. I spent the first 40ks going all out to make the early break, which ended up never going. After that I was suffering a bit. Then we hit a hilly bit of the course and I felt great and was riding well. Unfortunately after that things got a bit too belgian for me, meaning we hit a cobbled climb and some crosswind sections. I could tell I was bad in the crosswinds and I don't yet have the endurance for 200k races, so I tried to position the guys at the front and shield them from the wind whenever I could, then finally cracked after about 150k. If i'd made it another 10 or 15k in the front I could have been close enough to the finish to ride in, which would have been nice. Only about a third of the field finished and again, we were racing with the biggest teams of the sport like Quickstep, Lotto, Cervel TestTeam, etc.

Next up is Tour of Finistere, another 1.1 on terrain that looks like it might suit me. That is the 17th so I have some time to do some good training and find my form. I think I have the fitness to race these 1.1s I just need to get used to the longer distance and different style. And, after this, the races with smaller pro teams are going to seem easy!

christianparrett.com presented by caffeine

I made it to the UK fairly pain free, and am now battling jet lag with the answer to most of my problems-coffee. Being sponsored by a coffee company is a great fit since most cyclists are caffeine addicts, and I've had the chance to try both the Magnus Maximus blend and new Sprocket Rocket blend that Magnus sells. I know a bit about coffee-I at least won't try to tell you Starbucks is the greatest coffee ever and have run an espresso machine before-but I'm not gonna tell you I'm a real expert, so I won't try to sound fancy. Instead I'll just say that the Sprocket is awesome kick-in-the-crotch coffee that would be awesome as espresso, while the Magnus Maximus is smooth and tasty with a hint of cocoa (but not in a flavoured coffee/'I poured chocolate syrup into my coffee' way) that is still plenty strong.

For now I'm staying with the team manager outside of London in a town called Fleet. I got fixed up with a training bike so I did a good spin yesterday and am heading out for a few hours here soon. Magnus dropped by the house yesterday, it was great to meet him. He's a super nice guy and yes, very tall. He also gave me some team kit so I've started the first of several rounds of the mini-Christmas that is getting new bike gear.

Sunday night I'll head down to Wales and meet all my teammates and get settled in there. Then next weekend I'll start racing at the Tour of the Reservoir, a British Premier Calendar race. All the British pro teams should be there, like us, I think most of them have international rosters and race mostly on the continent, aside from the major races here. So it should be a hard, typical Euro race with tv coverage to boot. I'm excited to get to work.

Last local race for awhile

This weekend was the Perry weekend of racing, about 30 minutes south of Macon. Last year was the only year since I've started racing that I haven't done this race, and it was fun to be back this year. Since I missed the race in Macon last year and will again this year Perry is as 'local' as I've ever gotten to race. I had a good ride in the TT and took the W by a solid margin. Once upon a time time trialing was my bread and butter but the last couple years I just haven't raced very many. Hopefully this year that changes and I can put together some good tts at bigger races.

whoa

So hopefully most people reading this have heard by now, but I'm moving to Wales next week. Pretty crazy.

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this)

The season is shaping up great and I can't wait to be over in Europe and in the races. I'll miss the Southeast, not to mention Chik-fil-a and Mexican food, but it's a great opportunity for me.

happenings

Team Kenda Pro Cycling presented by Geargrinder was in town this past week for their pre-season training camp. I was on this team 2 years ago when they were amateur and it's been exciting to watch them grow into a Pro team. I was lucky enough to be able to ride with them all week and catch up with some people I've known for awhile, and meet some other good guys. Good luck to those guys with their season. Macon cyclists take note, everyone on the team loved the riding around here and had nothing but good things to say about our local training grounds. We are lucky to have some great riding in this area.

Also, after doing this blog thing for awhile, a friend of mine is helping me start up my own website. Soon you'll be able to find this blog and a ton of other stuff over at Christianparrett.com. Check that out mid next week to see the website, not to mention some pretty exciting news.

oh Greenville

The first weekend of the Greenville Training series has come and gone. Hopefully the races served their purpose and give me some fitness and leg speed. Like most 'training' races, everyone was racing full out and occasionally doing stupid things like crashing. Also, as is the norm for training races, most people are out on their brand new team bikes with race wheels. I tried to one up everybody by racing on my trusty 4 year old training bike, but a few people were there on cyclocross bikes, so I'm not sure who wins that competition.

Anyway, race reports from local races are boring, so Saturday I was in a breakaway for a while, got caught, race winning counter went instantly without me. Made some unnecessary hard efforts for training, got out of the way in the sprint for 9th. Sunday I attacked with two guys early on, road away, botched the finale and got 2nd. I'm embarrassed I didn't win, I probably should have. One of the riders in the break is a good friend of mine and we wanted to make sure the third guy who wasn't doing much work didn't win (no hostility, he wasn't being a punk, just couldn't work as hard). So my buddy took a manly win and I still can't sprint, end of that story.

More important things from the weekend:
-I was reminded Monday that you need to plan things to do the day after races otherwise you are bored with post-race depression all day.

-Thanks to my rad hotwire.com skills we stayed in an awesome hotel for $13 bucks a person.

-I lost my World Champion of Foosball title. I'm disappointed in myself and training hard to get it back.

-There was a problem on the interstate on the way home that had traffic at a standstill, but we managed to find a sketchy backroad way around the problem and make awesome time getting home, that was a victory in itself.

Now that racing season is picking up I'll have more to share on this thing and probably update more often.

mother nature is such a tease

Maybe going to the bahamas wasn't that good an idea, after some good weather in Ga and this:



my body was all excited for spring, tanlines, and sunburns. But no, now I'm back to this nonsense:




You'd think Macon is better, but snow is preferable to 5 degrees warmer and pouring rain.....

Bahamas

Tour of the Bahamas went well. With Floyd Landis showing up, the Garmin devo team bringing 6 riders, and some super strong Florida-based riders, the race was much tougher than I was expecting.

Saturday morning was a 42 mile circuit race on a 6 mile lap. A move went pretty early with some garmin development guys and a rider from one of the stronger florida teams. When another group started to go up the road I bridged across to them, then we road across to the riders in front to make a group of 11. That group eventually split, with me making the leading group of 6. I had good legs but Garmin had 3 guys in there so it was never gonna end but one way. They worked me over and got 2 guys up the road. Their third guy got to sit on the last few miles and beat me by half a wheel in the sprint, but I was reasonably happy with 4th.

Riding to the 3 mile tt later in the day I discovered one of the bearings in my pedals was broken and the pedal was frozen badly enough I could barely turn it with my hand. I looked for a quick fix but with so little time I had to race on the damaged pedal. Despite all the extra resistance I put down a good ride and placed 4th again in the TT, just a few seconds out of 2nd but 8 or 9 back from Landis. Would have been nice to know how much faster I could have gone with a pedal that worked. The tt put me in 3rd overall going into the road race.

Sunday was a hard, windy 90 mile road race. All day we were going hard in crosswinds or sprinting to cover attacks. Unfortunately one of my teammates was hurting pretty bad and the other helped out but missed the split a little over halfway through. So this led to me taking it on the head pretty good trying to cover attacks form a couple different teams. I handled it ok but could tell I was cracking towards the finish. I attacked at one point trying to get enough time to get 2nd on GC, but ended up getting caught, counterattacked, and dropped. Lost a couple spots on GC at the end but ended up 5th or 6th I think. Losing a spot on the podium was pretty disappointing, but then I remembered I was in the Bahamas and got over it.

a few more

If you can't tell, I really like snow, here's a few more pictures

Oh yeah, it's 2010. Race season almost here already? Yep, I'm starting at Tour of the Bahamas in a week and a half. Giddyup.

snow and bikes mix better than I thought