The roads have been thick with TDU teams here in Adelaide over
the last week or so, and all we've had to do is hang around the
tour village in the morning to pick up a team and go on a training ride
with them! They don't seem to mind as long as we stay at the back
and let them rotate in front of us, and can be quite chatty. I guess this
is unusual on the pro circuit, since they wouldn't normally need so many
days of easy training to adjust to the time difference and climate before a
race.
A friend of mine knows Fred Rodrigues well (they ran a youth cycling
development program together in California), so we went out with
Lotto a couple of times, and Jacques once - no problem on the flat, up and
down the coast, spinning at 30-35 km/h, but they dropped me pretty quickly
heading up Norton Summit, rolling easily and chatting away at 25 km/h, the
[censored]! Their team car driver offered me a lift up the hill, holding on
pro style, but I sensibly declined to try it :-)
The Jacques guys were a bit of a worry. They're Belgian, pay no attention
to red lights or traffic which has right of way - one of them was nearly
hit at a roundabout right in front of me - and seem to assume that cyclists
have absolutely right of way at all times. I tried to explain how
roundabouts work here, but they don't speak much English. At least we had
a companionable [censored] at Outer Harbour, where the trees must be in serious
danger of uric acid poisoning!
What you really notice behind these guys is how smoothly and steadily
they ride. Once they've picked a gear they turn it with absolute
regularity, and move in a perfectly straight line. There's none of the
freewheeling and adjustment of pace that are necessary in most groups.
Good fun, and the street stage starts in just a few hours!
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