At Speed: My Life in the Fast Lane Read Free Page A

three guys are up the road, but on borrowed time. That means the shit-fight for positions is about to begin; it’ll no longer be single riders moving up on either side of the road but whole lines, whole teams, creating the conditions for a vortex or “washing-machine effect” that could take me from 4th to 40th wheel in a matter of seconds. It’s paramount that this doesn’t happen, and this is why and where we need Brad. I keep peering over Gee’s shoulder, and Stannard’s, wondering how the hell Brad’s still there, but he keeps drilling—55, 60 kilometers per hour, not only controlling our rivals but hurting them. When I watch the reruns on TV later, the commentator will see Brad swaying left and right across the road, occasionally glancing sideways, and say that he’s suffering and looking for a teammate to come through and take over. In fact, what he’s doing is using the whole width of the road to make it impossible for anyone to dive-bomb us, swooping down on the inside or over on the outside and setting off that vortex, that deadly spiral. Usually, in a long, hard race like the worlds there are a certain number of riders—the thoroughbred finisseurs like Fabian Cancellara or Philippe Gilbert—whocould outride a group over the last 5 or 10 km. With Brad driving, they’re seat-belted into the backseat of the bunch.
    Ten to go. The Dutch rider Johnny Hoogerland gets a couple of hundred meters and joins the breakaway trio, but they’re going nowhere. While it’s fast, savagely fast, our secret all day has been the steadiness of our pace; it can be easier to go at a level 50–60 kph than 52 then 54 and back again.
    Nine km to go and I’m already low on my bike, in my bike, with my hands on the drops. Usually at this point I’d still be on the brake hoods, head high, neck cocked, and eyes peeled, but we’re moving too fast to worry about whom and what I can see. As we catch the breakaway, I’m certain it’s the last we’ll see of Brad on the front, but his legs are still pumping, two pistons stabbing the pedals. Six km from home and he’s still there.
    Five. Four and a half. Still Brad. Fucking incredible.
    Finally, with 4 to go, Brad fades to the right and Ian Stannard is on the front and in the wind. Two seconds later it comes: a bolt of magnesium white, a flash in the far-right corner of my eye. The Aussie cavalry are galloping level and then past us on the right-hand side of the road. I don’t panic. I never panic.
    This is one of the reasons—the main reason, I think—that I have a clear advantage over other sprinters, not just here in Copenhagen but in every race. A sprint isn’t a chaos bomb exploding in your sightline; it’s not bedlam on fast-forward—it’s a multiplication of problems to be solved quickly, usually instantaneously, but at the same time rationally. It’s also a contest of freshness, not brute pace, and I generally have more energy and move faster than anyone else because I’m staying calm and clinical. I would even bet that my heart rate is10 beats per minute slower than that of a lot of my rivals in the closing kilometers, not because I have a more efficient cardiovascular engine—I don’t—but because I’m not getting flustered.
    Part of staying cool is also, of course, staying focused on the process and not the outcome. When I know that I’m going to win, when that voice inside my head is telling me, Cav, you’ve got this, it’s also my subconscious warning to myself not to fuck up. That and a shot of confidence, not complacency—a last splash of the special tonic that quickens and gives high-definition and perspective to the film rolling in front of me.
    Two km out, though, it’s a struggle to stay composed. On the far side of the road, in the shadows, riders of all different nationalities are pouring into the Aussie train’s slipstream. Behind five Australian jerseys come Italians, Russians, Spaniards, Americans, and French—the United Nations of