Fränk Schleck
Trek factory racing
This month’s diary comes to you during a break from assembling some Ikea furniture – that stuff’s a brain teaser. I don’t know how they make it so easy yet so complicated at the same time! How’s that for a peak into life chez Schleck – pretty normal, hey!?
But back to the racing season. It’s now a couple of weeks after the Classics and looking back, I’m really happy with how they went. I was in the first group in the finals of Amstel Gold, La Flèche Wallonne and the race I love the most of all – LiègeBastogne-Liège. The race that day was so strange. It was such a hard race and so fast and yet there was still a big group that came to the bottom of the Côte de Saint Nicolas and that was very surprising. Nobody got dropped but nobody got away either. I think all the big leaders were afraid to attack because the speed was so high.
The only real disappointment for me was the crash with Joaquim Rodríguez and Damiano Cunego in Flèche five kilometres from the end. Yet finishing in the finals mean my legs and head are in the right place and I can look forward to the rest of the season with confidence. Right now the only thing I feel I’m missing is a little sliver of luck that we all need to get the breakthrough.
It’s satisfying to be back at this level after the year off last year. I was a bit afraid going into the Classics that I was overcooked and that my condition was going to fold. After going so well at Paris-Nice and the Critérium International, I didn’t really give my body enough time to recover – I kept up the intervals and scooter training. It was inevitable at some point I was going to pay for it and that happened sooner rather than later, at Pays Basque, in fact. In the end, we agreed I shouldn’t start the last TT so I went home a day early and had a good rest. This worked out well because I was back good and fresh for the Classics.
It’s difficult to pull yourself back when you have really good form because you want to make the most of it. But the art is to rest when you’re at the top of your game. When you’re at the top level you have to time your form for one or two weeks where you need it. It doesn’t get that much easier with experience I don’t think, because the body changes from year to year so you need different training to deal with that.
Still, it all worked out and now I’m looking forward to the Tour. I’m back training and have the Tour de Luxembourg, Tour de Suisse, then recces of the Tour de France pavé and mountains to fill up my schedule. The time between now and the Grand Départ is going to pass in a flash, I just know it.