Anderson traverses Belgium with USA Cycling juniors

Longtime OBRA member Jim Anderson gets to test the cobbles of Belgium first hand as an assistant coach with the USA Cycling Junior National Team pictured here. Photos courtesy of Jim Anderson.

Portland’s Jim Anderson is an assistant coach in the USA Cycling development program and is currently in Belgium with the Junior 17-18 National Team preparing for the spring classics. He sent Cycling Action this report.

By Jim Anderson

IZEGEM, Belgium — Greetings from Izegem and “the house,” as everyone calls it here. Overall it’s been good. I’ve been learning a lot, and I just found out that in May I’m taking another group to the Czech Republic for two weeks. So this is a time for learning and figuring it all out.

Anderson flies the Team Oregon colors on one of Belgium's famous cobbled climbs.

There are a lot of funny things that happen before and after the races here that are sooooooo different from U.S. racing. They have the race sign in at a local bar, for example. In fact, all the race centers are at bars, etc.

The juniors just finished up a four-day stage race on Monday (it was a holiday here) with a great stage finish for fifth place to add to our prologue win. The Ster van Zuid Limburg started with about 200 riders and was whittled to 148 by the start of the last stage. Funny thing is, that’s just the tip of the iceberg here. Last year they had fields of 170 juniors at two simultaneous stage races that were maybe 40km away from each other!

The riders are learning a lot. The second-year juniors (18-year-olds) are really the leaders. There are two of them, and the others really stepped it up on the second road stage. It’s wild racing here as you can imagine. There are 32 team cars, and the entire caravan is about 40 or so, plus about 15 motor bikes.

Day 1: We were car one in the caravan, and it was a super busy day. We went through all the spare wheels, and the mechanic had to change a tube in a wheel in the car! On the next day we had to swap bikes and change a couple flats. On day 3 a rider ripped the hanger off his bike and had to do a bike change on a steep hill! But that’s still a better day than the U23 team had. They broke three bikes and lots of wheels.

These Belgium riders are all pros. For the most part they ride like pros, especially in the caravan; most have been doing it since they were 14! You can see the lack of connection with the U.S. riders in some of these situations. That’s why USA Cycling is focusing more on getting 15-16 juniors here for the experience.

Other than racing, I got to ride a solid five hours the other day with the U23 team, which includes two-time World Pursuit Champion, Taylor Phinney.  The RIDE took us over some of the famous Ronde Van Vlanderen climbs. I also went with the mechanic to drive some of the sketchy sections at the crack of dawn so we knew where we were going on the ride, then I raced back, grabbed my bike and headed back out to the course. What’s crazy about these courses is that the climbs just come out of nowhere. You’re riding on the “big road” then make a quick turn onto a glorified driveway and you’re on the climbs! Cobbles and 18% is tough, by the way.

Today was easy ride up and back on the famous Koppenberg climb with the Juniors. It’s tough, but it’s pretty short

Tomorrow is a recon on the Paris-Roubaix sections that the juniors will be doing this weekend. They do the last 80 km of pro race and a total of 120 km. We will see how it is, should be interesting. My hands are sore just from the three or four km of cobbles we did on the Ronde course the other day.

If you want to see other updates, look for YouTube videos on USA Cycling or be friends with USA Cycling on Facebook. They are putting up a bunch of stuff when they can. Well, it’s bed time here in Europe. I have a roommate tonight. He is the veteran Belgium Souginuer for USA Cycling and Belgium cycling. Alex is his name, but  Tyler Farrar nicknamed him THE BUTCHER when Tyler was a junior and worked with him. He is 60 years old. Wish me luck tonight in this small room. YIKES! Actually he’s a super nice guy and speaks English!

Thursday, April 8
Today was an amazingly sunny and fairly warm day here. This is very odd for Belgium in April. I know Portland is getting some crappy weather. We spent the entire day riding around the last 80 km of Paris-Roubaix. The Juniors race 122 km and hook into the ProTour circuit at about 30 km. We were lucky all signage was up with these super bright arrows.

Fabian Cancellara draws acrowd as he recons the Paris-Roubaix course.

Cobblestones. You may all dream of racing this event and riding on them. It’s really not that great. It’s painful and it hammers your bike, hands, saddle, and butt! You can’t prepare for this. Even the most bumpy cyclocross course in Oregon doesn’t compare to this. It is truly amazing that the pros do like 30 sections of cobbles. Juniors do 16 sectors. Imagine riding in North Plains and suddenly turning into one of the fields for a 2-3 km cobble path. That is what it’s like.

Fortunately, I had only one flat. But we had a bike fall off the car at a roundabout. The fork broke, but it was a spare bike. We also a lot of people on the course today. I think photographers were trying to line up shots for Sunday and scope their spots. We ran across a lot of team buses. But to top it off, we saw Tour of Flanders winner Fabian Cancellara and his team roll by!

We went into the velodrome area, which was also cool. They were getting everything ready, and people were running around like crazy! I had to use the computer in the Velo Center to e-mail our head coach because he was lost and couldn’t find us! Crazy adventures here! Luckily I am not fully in charge.