diary

January

Hello and welcome to my new diary which I will be keeping for the coming season. It is just a small insight into the life of a professional cyclist, maybe it is all a bit different to what you think this life is like, but I hope it makes for some entertaining reading.
To Briefly give you a short history, I am in my 6th season as a professional and have been based in Europe since I was 18 years old, living in France, Italy, Belgium and most European Hotels!!!!!!! I am currently riding for the Irish sponsored An Post/Grant Thorton M.Donnelly cycling team, based in the Brussels suburb of Merchtem.

Well it is early January and as normal this always starts with the pre-season team training camp. This year we were based in Majorca, Port Alcudia, for 1 week at the beginning of January. Any body who has ever been on a training camp, either with a team or organised group, will know that it always entails ridiculous amounts of hours spent on your bike in all types of weather. This camp was no different to any other with every day being the same routine, dragging our tired asses out of bed and stuffing our faces with flavourless muesli and bread early morning and training by 10am. We had the added motivation at this camp to be joined by our team Manager, the Legend Sean Kelly, on every training ride. At 50 years old he was still training with us every day for 5-6hrs, don’t think I will be doing that at 50, and even had the cheek to attack us in the last 30km of every training ride so to make us chase and get a bit of race intensity into our rides. I must note that Sean was normally aided by our following team car during his late attacks, normally so close to the rear bumper of the car that he could of reached through and changed the radio station if he tried! I never really looked forward to this end of ride ‘race’ to catch Sean as it was normally after 170km including 2-3 mountain climbs, but we were getting quality training in every day and think in general everyone was pleased with the camp and got some good training in. It was also a great week to meet and get to know my new team mates, we will be living out of each other suitcases for the next 10months so always good to get aquatinted.

After camp it was a short flight back to our base in Belgium were we spent 3 cold days preparing for our upcoming first race of the season which was in Argentina from the 22nd -27th Jan. We travelled 5 days before the Tour San Luis, which include 3 flights including 1 flight on a small 20 seat propeller airplane, we couldn’t even take any of our luggage onto this plane, this had to be taken via a truck to the hotel (it was a 900km drive for the truck, nice!!!)
Argentina was just as I expected, hot, bit retro, friendly and there cyclists go damn fast. There was 200 in the race and I think I was 1 of 5 other riders not to of crashed out of the entire race, completely crazy bunch of riders who were going to do just about anything to get successes in the countries largest bikes race. It was also quite abnormal weather as it rained most days including heavy thunder and when it rained it flooded everywhere in a 5min time period. Perfect racing conditions! A memory that stands out during the first road stage, was being part of a Duet along with the CSC rider Frank Schleck singing ‘Don’t worry, Be happy’ in the middle of a heavy thunder storm which just hit the pelaton when we still had 140km to the finish.
Our Team completed the race with almost a full team, Mark Cassidy had to abandon after he flattened a tiny Saunier Duval climber on the second last stage when they both got tangled after hitting some speed bumps on the road. I was in the main bunch every day and finished 39th on the big mountain stage and 30th on the last flat day. My only objective was to get some quality racing miles in and come out of the race with better condition than what I went into it with. I was not really concerned just yet with results, that will come enough starting February, and think I completed my objective’s reasonably.
After the race it was back in our tin box of a plane and a return to the winter of Europe, were we start our European campaign at he G.P Marseille on the 3rd February and then Etoile Bessage form the 6th 10th February, after this I will be going home for a well deserved break after 6 weeks on the road living out of a suit case, cant wait.
Will let you know how I get on in my next diary and thanks for reading.
Stay safe on your bike and ‘keep her between the hedges’

Stephen Gallagher