Ireland

The US Military Cycling team is on twitter here: http://twitter.com/MilitaryCycling

Ireland is beautiful, the people are nice and they all drive on the wrong side of the road.

We travelled here from Boston a few nights ago and spent a day zombied out from jet lag. Today is the 1st real day of existence. The road race course is cool, and has a climb a bit like Jeff cup - which isn't really a climb so I like it. There are 10 countries with eight riders, and a huge range of fitness levels. The Netherlands are probably most like us, different services and military different uniforms. Some countries have guys who don't even have military uniforms and have Olympic Gold Medals or have won stages of the Tour of Italy.

The craziest part of training here is the wrong direction traffic thing. When you come to an intersection, you look left and suddenly a car buzzes you from the right. Or, you cross the street to go left, get to the right side of the road and realize oncoming traffic is heading at you. Worst yet are the round a bouts.

Great thing is, I do not have cell phone coverage and had to wait in line to use this computer. One of the 1st times ever I have completely focused on riding, eating and sleeping. I wonder how my work is doing? OK, I am over it.

Last thing, the Crit at Green Mtn was pretty fast. I sat in and told myself that after 20 to go, I was going to put all of my eggs in one basket and go. At 15 to go, there was a lull after a time bonus sprint and I went. After 2 laps I had the biggest time gap of the day for any break and they rung the bell for a $600+ crowd prime to two places. I knew this would doom my break, so I decided to change plans and burn all of my matches for the prime. Out of the last turn my 30+ second gap was down to 4 seconds and I still had to cover the 200 meters up the hill to the line. I gave everything and the line wasn't coming fast enough. Right at the line I got nipped and the field went flying by. I had nothing left in the tank and could not even get in anywhere and watched the field go by. Turns out, they split the 2 place prime down the middle and I ended up making more money than the GC or stage winning guys!