Alameda Runners – Get After It!

Tejay van Garderen won the overall general classification of the 2013 Tour of California, and was seemingly in control from the start of the race in SoCal to the finish in Northern California.

The ToC GC win is van Garderen’s first major stage-race win of his young career, and shows his overall long-term potential.

van Garderen was able to capture the individual time trial (ITT) stage win at stage 6, solidifying his lead on the leader’s jersey.  During stage 7 from Livermore to Mt. Diablo, van Garderen was able to defend against all attacks and keep his lead.

Overall, van Garderen won by 1:47 over Saxo-Tinkoff’s Michael Rogers and 3:26 ahead of Jamis-Hagens Berman’s Javier Acevedo in third place.

Professional road cycling in the United States has gone through a recent rough patch, as Lance Armstrong and his former long-time teammates admitted to doping.

Despite the bump in the road for US cycling, it looks like BMC’s van Garderen is ready to become the next big thing in US cycling.  Van Garderen recently won the 2013 Tour of California GC in solid fashion, never truly out of sorts throughout the stage race.

Last year, van Garderen finished 5^th overall in the Tour de France and Paris-Nice, winning the white jersey of the young rider classification chase.

I overheard a conversation at the Tour of California that inspired me to write this blog post.  Two spectators were trying to explain what it meant to ‘bonk’ after one of the color commentators mentioned something.

Learning the proper terminology when it comes to cycling and endurance sports can be difficult, but it’s important to understand certain phrases.

From the official Amgen Tour of California guide:

“Both are bad news for a cyclist.  To ‘bonk’ or to ‘hit the wall’ means a rider has not consumed enough calories to fuel his/her bbody.  Cycling races are usually long and require careful replenishment of calories and electrolytes.  Failure to fuel correctly can lead to a rider falling off the pace of the main group and may even cause them to drop out of a race.”

It’s likely inevitable you will bonk during training – and hopefully not during a race – but there is a lot of work

Alameda Runners: Long Distance Training Supplies
Alameda Runners: Importance of Proper Carb Consumption
Fueling for Cycling (PDF)
TriRadar: How to Avoid Bonking While Cycling
Bicycling.com: Cycling Nutrition: Coca-Cola

I’m sure sports nutrition and avoiding the bonk will be discussed again in the future here on Alameda Runners.

The individual time trial is known as the ‘race of truth’ for a reason, with each rider needing to face his own weaknesses and overcome all challenges without the help of teammates in the peloton.

Some riders seemingly can destroy the ground beneath them while riding a time trial, while other riders can’t generate the watts needed to find success.

The Tour of California’s 19.6-mile individual time trial (ITT) finished with a brutal 1.7-mile, 950’ climb in San Jose, averaging a brutal 10.6 percent.  Driving up Metcalf Road before the riders came through yielded a steep, long intense uphill that each rider would suffer up.

Tejay van Garderen completely blew apart the ITT by winning in 48 minutes, 52 seconds, which was 23 seconds faster than Vacansoleil-DCM’s Lieuwe Westra and 28 seconds faster than Garmin-Sharp’s Rohan Dennis.

van Garderen is the true US cycling talent of the future, as he has all around cycling skills, a great personality with the fans and press, and is the first generation post-Lance fall out.  While most of the well-known US riders have either tested positive – or were strongly implicated in doping – van Garderen can give us hope.