Baby van Vlaanderen: Tour of Eilat Recap

I'm making a tradition of starting the racing season way over my head with my Israeli team, For Galilee Cycles. Last year I went at the last minute to the Tour of Cameroon. This year I went to Israel to the Tour of Eilat and to train afterwards. They've been racing in Israel for a month already. The legs are already there for some people.

The first stage was a hill climb time trial - 8.2 kilometers almost straight uphill. There were a couple of small descents but it was just a slow slog. I went out way harder than I wanted to and couldn't even help it. After a minute of absurdly high power that I knew I couldn't maintain I settled down into a sustainable pace.Within five minutes I passed my 30 second man. Then less than eight minutes in I passed two people - my 1:30 and 2 minute man. My 2 minute man happened to be my teammate Aaron, on a semester at University of Tel Aviv. We go way back to my Manhattan days.

I kept up the effort throughout the stage. I passed 8 people total and didn't get passed by anyone. That's a good sign in a time trial. I guess I got seeded early because they had no idea who I was. All the heavy hitters who would have passed me started later. I finished 25th, 2:48 down on the leader. I'm pretty happy with the result because I'm not a super-skinny climber.

The criterium was later in the day. We rested in our room and listened to the wind get worse and worse as the day went on. The home stretch of the course was dead into the wind, a brutal fight at 34 kph. The back stretch had a crazy tailwind, pushing us at 60kph. I didn't really test myself and rolled in with the field sprint. Boring of me.

Stage 3 was a 125km road race. The first 50km were flat and straight with a cross-wind, and it rained a little, which is rare for Eilat. It may have been the most nervous and least fun racing I've ever done. People were taking a lot of unnecessary risks. I was just trying to stay off of the pavement. Once we finally turned off the flat road onto the climb, actual real racing started. I got into a group with four teammates on climb, Yuval, Yaniv and Shadi. After the climb ended we chased until we caught the front of the peloton. Once we were back on flatter ground the attacks came quickly. I joined in until I popped and suffered in a small group in the crosswind for the last 45km or so.

It's always great to reconnect with the team. Everyone always treats me like a member of the family even if I see them once a year, if that. Right now I'm training at the team base in Zivon and staying with Ido, the team. Tomorrow I'm planning on climbing Mt. Hermon, the tallest mountain in Israel. It should be a 7 hour day.