Floyd Landis - Man of Mystery Photo: John Segesta

As the season approaches and teams are conducting training camps, Rock Racing has been surprisingly silent. No press releases of upcoming training camps or even a 2010  team roster. In 2009 Rock rode in a splashy kit proclaiming “Rocks not dead”. For 2010 team owner Michael Ball stated he was taking the team to the next level: pro continental. Rumors swirled around the team. Rock Racing was going to be registered in Mexico, they were going to race in Europe and even earn wild card entries into the Classics and smaller stage races. With a strong core roster of Spanish riders like Oscar Sevilla, Victor Hugo Pena and Francisco Mancebo the team has proven to be a force to be reckoned with domestically, so why not take it to the next step? Hyperbole ramped up to overdrive at Interbike where Ball unveiled a complete line-up of Rock branded cycling apparel as well as full carbon fiber frames and components. For 2010 they strengthened the Rock team by signing Tony Cruz, a rider who has raced successfully on both sides of the Atlantic. However the new marquee rider Ball was rumored to have signed was Floyd Landis. Landis issued a press release in December stating his departure from the OUCH team (now UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team) however leaving out who he was going to be racing for in 2010. This only fueled the fires of speculation of who he was racing for in 2010. But all those Rock Racing dreams of a European campaign, and perhaps even an American campaign, have seemed to have crashed with the denial of pro continental status by the UCI. Sources have told me that Ball still owes money to riders and race promoters which will seriously hamper any chance of competing in any races of importance.  After several days of text messaging with Landis I was able to track him down on the phone to discuss the upcoming season and whether Rock was indeed dead.

With the apocalyptic weather conditions that has been lashing down on Southern California I asked Landis what he has been doing for training. “Oh the usual. Riding around, bowling, just doing stuff.” I pressed him on the status of the Rock team and the rumors that he had signed with the team for 2010. On this subject he was a little more to the point. “I’m racing in the Tour of the Bahamas this weekend in a Rock kit, so yeah, I’m doing that. I told them (Rock Racing) that I wanted to do that race so they sent me a kit.” Landis is lining up for his first race in 2010 in a Rock kit, but what is the status for the rest of the year? “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know even if Ball has thought about the team these last two weeks. I don’t know what is going on. I’m focusing on my training and my bowling. I need to think of my future after cycling and bowling might be it.” After the Tour of the Bahamas his future is not so crystal clear. “I have no clue what’s going on. After the Tour of the Bahamas I’m going back to my shack behind the car wash. Maybe I’ll write a book.”

Cruz enjoys beating the crap out of me on the bike

When I returned from the Tour de Georgia I discovered that I was invited to participate in this year’s Etape du Tour. This is a mass start ride that covers stage 10 of this year’sTour de France. That means 165k which “scales the famed Tourmalet and finishes atop Hautacam. The L’Étape is a no-nonsense ride/race with no rider/sag provided. So arrive in shape and be prepared for a challenge.” So I immediately do what any Type A, Obsessive/Compulsive, insecure person would due after not training for two weeks: I immediately started to train. I subscribe to the Floyd Landis philosophy of training: there is no such thing as over training, just being under prepared. I got off the plane late Tuesday night and was booked to see my pilates trainer the next morning at 8:15AM. She is a no nonsense instructor and dropped the hammer on me. After that I dragged myself home I made two phone calls: one to another Type A, Obsessive/Compulsive rider/friend and the other to Tony Cruz. I figured one of these guys would call me back.

Looking "pro" in our new team kit

Cruz responded first and told me he was riding up the bike path to Whittier (about 25 miles away) and then do several intervals up Turnbull Canyon. I told him I’d ride up to Whittier and then turn back, missing the fun of hill repeats. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid. I latched onto the back of Cruz’s wheel most of the way up and did one hill effort before turning tail and returning home, sore as a dog. The real kicker of the day was the fact that the Garmin Edge 305 unit I’ve been using finally died. It didn’t run out of power, it just stopped working. Not being able to record every nuance of my ride was like having a splinter that I couldn’t get out. It just annoyed me. Now the Garmin is a $400 paper weight on my desk. The next day I was at the ROAD office and I planned with Tim (editor and art director deluxe) to ride up The Old Road, a six mile climb that runs along the 5 freeway up the Grapevine. I pounded up the climb at my AT. Today my legs are worthless as our dollar is overseas, so I cruised down PCH at a steady tempo just to stretch them out. And any time I’m not training I wearing my 2XU compression tights trying to recover. My training isn’t over yet. Tomorrow I’m riding the FoodPark ride , then driving down to San Diego to race the Barrio Logan crit. Sunday I’m riding to the CBR crit and doing as many races as I can and then ride home. Next week is production week at ROAD so my training will go down the crapper and I’ll have the time to recover. Yep, I’m a man with a plan.

So as I write this we are about to send the latest issue of ROAD off to the printers. Obviously this is our Tour issue and it is packed. I spoke to Bobby Julich throughout the Tour and he had great insight into the daily happenings of the race. I told him when he retires that Versus should snap him up. He’s make a great addition in the commentary box. Then early yesterday morning I had a chance to interview Levi. Usually we like to get the interviews done a little earlier than the day before the magazine is due, but c’est la vie. We talked about his time trialing and threw a few hypothetical questions at him as well. While the Tour was being contested, the Tour of Quinghai Lake was taking place in China. Tony Cruz of Discovery Channel knows stories that you won’t find in other magazines, like how Chechu almost got beat-up for entering a mosque. And of course there are the obligatory diarrhea stories that come when you travel to a foreign country. Alex Candelario also raced in China and gave us his view of the race as well.

So that’s all for now and I appreciate everyone checking the blog and I’ll do a better job of keeping it updated.

Tim Johnson absorbing maximum Neil mojo

As I looked back at the past season and reflected I couldn’t help but notice that the pros who rode with me had a successful season. Early last year I rode with Tony Cruz a few times. Last season he rode strongly and notched up an overall win at Tour de Nez and re-signed with Discovery Channel. Then I rode with Floyd Landis at his PowerTap training camp. As we all know he won several stage races and was voted by VeloNews as their North American rider of the year. Then the racing season started in full force and I wasn’t able to train with any pros. But as the season wound down the requests to ride with me started to come in. I can only guess that word had started to spread within the peloton that riding with Neil at ROAD enabled riders to ride stronger. Immediately following the USA Cycling road race in Greenville, South Carolina I drove down to ride with Nathan O’Neill. We trained together for two days in the rolling hills of Georgia. Then just yesterday, O’Neill convincingly won his national time trial championships. In fact his average was 12 watts faster than the previous year. Coincidence? I think not. As the ‘cross season approached I trained with Tim Johnson. Johnson had a strong season and the only reason I can think that the full effect of my magical mojo didn’t completely rub off on him was due to the fact that other journalists rode with us. These other journalists probably bleed off some of my mojo that was intended for Johnson. I heard that the guy from Pez Cycling News had a great ‘cross season following our session with Tim. I think the lesson there is that pros need to ride with me alone for full effect.

Nathan and I in Georgia

I have recently ridden with Tony Cruz again. We tore up PCH doing lung busting, leg searing intervals. He’ll have a good season. At the end of the month I am going to the HealthNet training camp to do a little bit of riding. I believe that other journalists will be there as well, but if team management is smart, they’ll have a “Neil only” ride so riders may absorb maximum Neil mojo. Then in February I fly to Mallorca, Spain to ride with David Millar, Gilberto Simoni and Iban Mayo of Saunier Duval. Needless to say, I think you can look at these riders to have a fantastic season once I’m done with them.

So if you are a pro and you want to step up to the next level drop me a line and I’ll try to schedule some one-on-one time.

Cruz wanted my mojo so bad he moved into my neighborhood

I hung out with Kelli Emmette for two days in Idaho and afterwards she won the Iceman mountain bike race

I’ll be riding with these guys soon. Strong results will follow

These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. Your results may vary.

]]> http://neilbrowne.com/2007/01/why-pros-should-ride-with-me/feed/ 6 http://neilbrowne.com/2006/11/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-interviews/ http://neilbrowne.com/2006/11/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-interviews/#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:03:00 +0000 Neil http://neilbrowne.com/2006/11/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-interviews/

Lance ignoring me at the Discovery Channel team launch

My friends often ask me if I’m nervous when I interview a famous rider. In the beginning I was extremely nervous. I remember my first interview was with Fred Rodriguez and Bobby Julich. I wrote down everything I was going to say to them, even my phone greeting to leave on their voice mail if I needed to! Now it’s not that much of a big deal to talk to these guys as I’ve realized that they are, for the most part, normal people. I think the only person I’d be a little nervous interviewing would be Lance Armstrong. My only interaction with him was the last time he raced at Tour de Georgia. It was at the Brass Town Bald press conference. It concluded and Armstrong was walking out. The press were yelling last minute questions. He walked by me and as he passed I called out, “Lance, it’s Neil from ROAD Magazine.” I’d heard from a connected source that he’d checked out ROAD and liked it. He stopped, turned around and walked back toward me. “You have a cool magazine,” and walked away. That’s all the interaction I’ve had with Lance.

My favorite interviews I’ve done are any with David Zabriskie. That guy is interviewing gold, plus I think he’s a good guy. He is also the only athelete who has tried to kick me. Out of the times I’ve interviewed him, the best was in Las Vegas in Tim and my suite. He was up there with his wife Randi, his agent Doug Katone, teammate Christian VandeVelde, and T.T. world champion Kristin Armstrong doing the photo shoot for the latest issue. It was relaxed and we talked casually about stuff and then did our proper interview. Another good interview was with Floyd Landis. Photographer John Seguesta and myself had arranged to go to Floyd’s house and do the interview as well as a photo shoot. Floyd was easy to work with. He was open to our idea of using his motorcycle in the shoot. I recorded my interview with him with two devices: an electronic recorder that Landis’ brother-in-law held for me and a tape recorder that I had set on the handlebar of his motorcycle that we were using as a prop for the shoot. After the interview I checked my recorders. The tape recorder recorded nothing, which to this day I still don’t understand why. It has 40 minutes of hissing. The digital recorder had about 10 minutes and then stopped, which I think a button had been pressed when I gave it to his brother-in-law and that stopped the recording. I thought, “Oh, I’m screwed!” I told Floyd and he said no problem, let’s go inside and do it again. Floyd’s wife made us snacks, we sucked down a few beers and watched his corgis race around the living room. It turned out to be a pretty good interview. Every once in a while I feel like I should download the audio of the interview to the blog. But the problem with that kind of stuff is that it’s funny to me, but to anyone else listening it just sounds like two guys laughing at dogs. I guess it’s just one of those things you have to be there to appreciate.

Another good interview is Tony Cruz. We live nearby and we’ve gotten to be friends since he has moved into the neighborhood. Tony would give me the honest scoop on what was going on in races and we would talk for almost an hour, which is really unheard of when talking to athletes. Usually you get 15 minutes and they are gone.

Levi is another guy who was really good to talk to. He had no problem with me calling him in Europe and bugging him at random times. He doesn’t have any kind of superstar attitude and would talk to me when we said we’d talk. A couple of years ago at TdG, Levi’s brother helped us out big time with VIP passes so we could drive to the parking lot at Brass Town Bald. If we hadn’t gotten those passes we would have been forced to walk a couple of miles uphill with several pounds of camera equipment.

The crappest interview that got better as time went on was David Millar. He was at the San Diego wind tunnel prepping for his return to professional racing with the Saunier Duval squad. I was there along with a few other magazines. We all stood around and waited a turn to talk to Millar. I was introduced to David and he was asked when he wanted to do interviews. “I’m not doing interviews today.” I had gotten up at the crack of dawn and driven for two hours to talk to the guy and now he can’t talk to me! His people told me to hang out. David was a little stressed because of all the attention and he really wanted to focus on what he was doing at the tunnel. I could understand that, I don’t like to be bugged during production week at the magazine. So I hung out from about 9:00 am till about 5:00 pm or so as they did the wind tunnel testing. David would walk by me occasionally as he left the tunnel and I would say something casually, trying to build up any kind of rapport with him. All the other magazines had left, but I was determined. Finally it was arranged; I’d go out to dinner with the team and would be seated next to him. We sat down next to each other at an Italian restaurant and chowed down. I remember we were both starved from a long day. We talked about random stuff during dinner and when we were both done, he said we should go to the restaurant bar and do the interview. After the interview was said and done I think it was about 11:00 at night and I got home around 1:00 am. Again, I think it turned out good and Millar is a cool guy who I think was a little nervous about talking to the press. I hope to talk to him again real soon at a training camp.

I know I have other interview stories to tell and if I remember them and they are half-way amusing I’ll let you know.

Levi checking out our Tour of California book

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