Mal's back on the bike

Ciao all,

Well, since I last wrote, things have certainly been eventful to say the least! I have had my first taste of European racing and visited a lot of different countries in the process. Travelling around Europe is certainly a great experience, and I enjoyed experiencing the different cultures that each country has to offer. Even though many countries in Europe are very close to one another and often relatively small, especially when compared to Australia, the differences in the people, the food, the climate, and even just the general vibe of them are immensely different. You could take a 2 hour plane trip in Australia and when you landed most things would be relatively similar to the place that you took off from. In Europe however, a two hour flight can get you from the beautiful, picturesque, snow capped mountains of Northern Italy to the flat, windy and almost deserted fields of Holland, where the most action that seems to occur is the continuous turning of the many wind turbines that dot the countryside as far as the eye can see.

The European weather is also another thing which was, for the most part, fairly ordinary to say the least. I can remember waking up on more occasions than I care to remember and looking out the window to yet another day of grey skies, wet roads and the rain blowing sideways against the glass. Needless to say, there were many days where this exact same conversation would take place. Usually, at about 9.30am, half an hour before our usual departure time of 10, someone would make the move across the hall to the other boys’ room, to see what they thought.

Pat: “What do you guys think about the weather?”

Mal: “Yeah it’s raining, AGAIN, where is the Brisbane sunshine at?”

Pat: “Yeah, youse gonna go out in it though? We have 5 hours on the program...”

Rohan: “Not sure yet, might wait and see, it might clear up. What’s Bling doing? ”

Pat: “Haha, dunno, he’s still in bed”

Mal: “All I know is that if I spend another minute on the ergo I will probably hang myself!!!”

Anyway, you get the picture. Having said that, we did get quite a few really nice days, where we could leave the thermals in the wardrobe, and get out in knicks and a jersey to work on our tans. Training on the roads around Varese is incredible when the weather is good, with an endless variety of terrain, ranging from flat to mountainous and everything in between. I can remember one day I went out on my own, ended up with 6 hours on the clock by the time I got home and it felt like I had just rolled out of the driveway and hadn’t touched the pedals all day. I felt that good I could just keep riding forever, just turn around and do the whole thing in reverse!! Those are the days that cyclists live for, those of you who ride will know what I’m talking about.

If that was a highlight of my trip to Europe, there was one particular day in Holland, which was a definite low point. Stage two of the Olympia’s Tour saw 150 or so nervous, excited and, in many cases, scared riders racing on narrow, windy and often rough roads, where the slightest mistake by a rider who takes a bad line through a corner, or grabs his breaks a bit too hard can cause everybody behind him to end up in a screeching, crunching, bloodied and broken mess on the road.

One such rider managed to achieve this about 2 km into the 150km stage. I can remember the riders in front of me locking up their brakes, me doing the same thing, and then being taken out from the left by the rider beside me. Unfortunately for the Jayco Skins boys myself, Alex Carver, Michael Hepburn and Aaron Donelly all managed to end up being involved in the chaos. 'Heppy' and 'Don' managed to escape relatively unscathed and rejoined the peloton fairly quickly. Unfortunately for Alex his right wrist was quite obviously broken so his day was over.

I was able to rejoin the peloton after a long chase through the convoy. Once the adrenalin had subsided a little bit I could feel that my left elbow was not in a good way and as the stage progressed the pain got worse and worse. I realised when I couldn’t bend it or move it from its position on the bars that something was wrong. I struggled on through the pain to the finish though and subsequent x-rays taken at the hospital in Meppel revealed that I had fractured the head of my radius, or to put it simply, broken my elbow.

So back to Italy Alex and I went, with our matching blue casts being incredibly amusing to everybody who saw us together, and then onward to Australia two days later.

After having a week off the bike and visiting the doctors and physios and all sorts of orthopaedic specialists I can happily say that, three weeks after breaking my elbow, I am back on the road and back into normal training. This week Alex and I will travel to the AIS in Canberra for a two-man training camp which will definitely be good fun and a welcome change of scenery.

I definitely appreciate now having all of my limbs functioning normally again because doing things with one arm really is not that much fun. It’s just like they say,  'You never appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone'.

So to all the other cyclists out there, be careful and stay safe, there really is no future in breaking bones!!!

Until the next time

Mal