Another week, another diary.

    The week has been going quite well for me. I was able to go to the team time trial of the Tour de France on Wednesday. There is nothing quite like the Tour de France! The amount of people out there and the sheer spectacle of this circus that moves to a different place every day is amazing. I looked at the riders and just thought how in three or so years I could be one of those guys. I could be getting ready for a time trial, having photographers and reporters ask for pictures and comments, and fans yelling my name. It's something to really look forward to as an amateur going for the pro ranks.

    To join the pro ranks I still need to develop and train. This sometimes this is a wonderful experience where I get to enjoy the beautiful countryside and nice weather. Other times it is a miserable experience. This Thursday I went on a five hour ride to Cassel, France with five of my other teammates. The last time I went there it was 75 degrees, sunny and a wonderful ride. This time it was "neit so goed" or not so good.

    It's July and we started off in cold and damp conditions with intermediate rain. I would proceed to put on a rain cape to only take it off 15 minutes later after the rain stopped and then have to put it on later as another wave of rain hit. Repeat this for five hours and that was our ride. To top it off fellow Texan, Travis Wilky, had no less than four flats and one small crash during the ride. Not his best ride either. The only good thing to come from the ride was some good team paceline work before a team time trial in France this weekend.

    The racing is just getting better and better. Not only personally for me, but for all of my teammates and the ABC-Aitos team as a whole. I can remember the beginning of the year where we had a plan to go into the race and just hide and survive. We now have the set objectives, work to be done, protected riders to help, and a plan for controlling the race. I enjoy this kind of racing because it achieves results and earns us respect in the peloton.

    This weekend we raced the 181-kilometer Grand Prix De Dourges in France. The list of past winners is full of guys who are now all riding as professionals. It's a big race in the level of the amateur ranks and to top it off it's on Bastille Day. The French riders were going to be riding that extra bit harder.

    We pulled off a very good race from a tactical standpoint, but not the greatest results. After the 30-kilometer mark we had one of our top riders, RJ, in a powerful breakaway of 11 riders. They quickly gained an advantage of more than 1:30 on the field and stayed away until the 20 kilometers to go. Having a rider in the break made our jobs easier in the field as we only had to help contain breakaway attempts with other teams who were represented in the break.

    The main problem of the day for our team was the loss of three riders due to a flat tires. We also ended up getting ridden into the ground by the ABX-Go Pass team and VC-Roubaix who did not make the break. They proceeded to drive the group single file for almost 75 kilometers in some harsh crosswind where one suffers a slow painful death instead of the quick death from an incredibly fast speed. Finally after just under three hours the field dropped me. In the end only 60 or so guys finished from a field of around 180 riders! Good job to Jed and Pete for finishing the race in spite of a crash and a flat respectively.

    Till next week...

    -Gregg Germer-