bicycle.net -- cycling news, product reviews, original essays, podcasts & video :: Tour of California 2009

Written by: Myles McCorry

Next Monday morning, Roger Akien will get up at 6am to be in work by 7.30. Nothing really different about that, he does it most days and so do most of us. What is a bit different that he will have got on the 10.15 Aerlingus flight from Milan to Dublin the previous night. So he will be tired. So what? Not just very tired, but completely destroyed.

Before his flight home, to be back at work, Roger will have ridden the World (and the next word is very crucial) Professional cycling championships. The vast 260 km race in the foothills of the Italian Alps in Varese, Most importantly, among the professional cyclist lining up, there is one cyclist, who isn’t -Roger! Out of the crème of endurance athletes on the planet, one will emerge and wear the colourful rainbow hooped jersey and be the idol of the peloton; one train mechanic is in with a chance.

Akien, from Dromore, in the north of Ireland doesn’t get up at his leisure and train all day like his paid compatriots. He is one of us, cyclists. Cleans his own machine and must somehow juggle family, and career commitments with training and racing. He even looks like one of us, no one would mistake him for a Shleck brother. The instant giveaway is the tan; neither earned, nor applied, Akien’s white, freckled legs will not pass for a month spent touring France in June. And the bike: Ultegra bolted to a 2004 pink Giant TCR! Sure it functions well and comes in at a respectable 17lb, but it is not the steed, which dreams, and these pages are filled with.

No one really expects Roger to be battling it out with is Levi Leipheimer at kilometer 254, but he is very important to cyclist all over the world. Roger is the link for us mortal, amateur cyclists to Cadel Evans. We (plumbers, lawyers, cleaners) race with Roger weekends and then Roger takes on Mark Cavendish twice a year. It is the connection between delivery boy and poster boy. If we believe Roger (admittedly the best of us amateur cyclists) can compete with Carlos Sastre, then somewhere, somewhere on high plateau, in our deepest stage winning fantasies, we too can race the Paris-Nice. Roger bridges the cavernous gap between them and us. Every training spin we fit in after work, or 30 min turbo spin before school or the school run, Roger is there with us. Doing his best.

“I did a turbo session on Monday night, then got up at 5 to ride to work on Tuesday. It shatters you riding the 30 mile home after work but good training and I can now rest up til Sunday”

As his peers are training as their work, Roger is working on trains.

The hot favourite is Paolo Bettini, who earns nearly one million euros a year and is worth it. The Italian soloed to victory in a mountainous stage of the Tour of Spain last week on a course similar to that in Varese. He finished and such was the exhaustion of his effort, he was carried to doping. Roger, doesn’t earn a million, even nearly and spent last Sunday on his own, racking up 100 miles, in the rain. How do you train for a 260km race? He asked while I was interviewing the 27-year-old last week.

“I haven’t been beaten this year in single day races on the domestic circuit, and have won all three races my home club (Banbridge CC) has promoted, So 2008 has been a great season for me. I was delighted with my performance in the Tour of Ireland (22nd), and it has given me the confidence to go to the Worlds and give it my best shot”

Having used all his holidays from work, away racing and training, Aiken will be on unpaid leave for the two days before the race but as he said himself:

“As long as the peloton don’t piano (take it easy) too much for the first 200 km, I wont miss the flight home”.

No one else at Varese is worrying about this, they are working that Sunday.

For More Info On Myles McCorry; CLICK HERE