The Classics are traditionally hard men’s races held over tough courses under miserable spring conditions. This morning, the day after the Amstel Gold Race, we woke up to another day of glorious sunshine, pulled on our shorts and t-shirts and headed down to the hotel lobby breakfast—not the weather we expected and we nearly all had sunburns from the race.

Half of the team from Amstel is staying in Belgium for Fleche and Liege while the others closed the door on their Classics campaign and headed home, as they had been up here since mid-March. Generally teams trade their sprinters and bigger riders for their lighter riders for the second half of the spring Classics as the Ardennes Classics are hillier races won by a different breed of cyclist than those that are racing the cobbled Classics.

Since the beginning of March the weather in Europe has been abnormally warm. The races have been faster, tactically different, and dustier, as a result. Amstel was no different. From the start, in the town center of Maastricht, to the finish in Valkenburg we were under sunshine. Spectators were not out with their umbrellas but in their bikinis and for us, keeping cool and hydrated was an issue.

Amstel is a unique race in that there is a corner every kilometer and there are very few sections of flat road. We dodge streets signs, roundabouts, jump speed bumps, and skid through corners all day in an effort to not only stay up right but also to get to the front of the peloton and stay in the front. The race is intense and relentless. There is little time to sit back for a minute to catch your breath as there is always another imminent climb, a town to negotiate, or decent to plummet down. Amazingly, six hours of racing went by in a flash as I was completely focused the entire 250 km.

The roads in Amstel are so narrow it is hard for the team cars to move up to get bottles to the domestiques coming back to collect them, and hard for the domestiques to maneuver back through the peloton, so, most teams sporadically place staff on the tops of the hills so that the riders can quickly grab a bottle without losing and positions.

There is a point in all the Classics where the speed picks up significantly and it usually happens in the last seventy kilometers. In fact, there is essentially a formula that holds true to most of the Classics and one day races: the first hour of racing is furious until a breakaway of non-threatening riders gets away, then the peloton settles into a rhythm behind with a few teams riding at a steady speed to control the peloton while slowly reeling in the break, and then in the last hour the attacks begin on the final difficulties of the course, the protagonists are near the front, and their teams are making the race hard and selective. The moment the pace increases the field starts to slowly come unglued as riders pop off the back and out of the race in small clumps.

It is the last hour that makes the difference as the race not only gets faster but in the sixth hour you can also see which riders are still ‘fresh’ and have the endurance and power to animate the finale.

We have been racing with our power meters and next to Liege- Bastogne-Liege; Amstel is the race where the most kilojoules, or calories are burned. Yesterday, we burned upwards of 5500 kjs, which is more than almost any Grand Tour stage, even those in the high mountains. The interesting thing is that in Amstel even more energy is burned that is not recorded on the powermeters as we also burned a lot of mental/nervous energy constantly negotiating the course—not surprisingly we were all starving after the race and half of the team was falling asleep at the table as soon as the last plate had been served.

For the team the race went well until the last twenty kilometers. Until then we were constantly at the front, in good position, out of the wind yet close enough to the front to follow attacks, attack, and avoid any gaps in the peloton, or crashes. Yet, in the final we were poorly represented with only one rider, Kim Kirchen. Four of us were just behind and only a frustrating gnat’s whisker off making the group. On a personal level my legs feel better with every race and I feel as if my fitness is moving in the right direction.

We will now relax, ride a little and fuel up for the Fleche on Wednesday. The ambiance is good and the motivation is high.