Chris Davidson’s Diary – Tour of Utah Prologue

Chris is a veteran of the road scene, having wrenched for teams such as Mercury, TMobile, Nurnberger, Navigators and USA Cycling in the past.  2008 and 2009 have found Chris in the service of the UCI Continental squad, Team Type 1. He’ll be providing daily updates to Bike World News and the Cincinnati Cycling Examiner.

The prologue was today, the Tour is officially underway. Winning times for the 2.6 mile course were under 7 minutes. For me it was almost a 12 hour day for 7 minutes of racing.
Prologues are high stakes, high pressure affairs. The winning margins are always small, and the relative impotance of this one will quickly be erased with the multitude of long climbs included in this race. Never the less, the prologue required a full day today to prepare.

Preparation started with the wash, washed the box truck yesterday, but saved the bikes, car and van for today. Start early and keep washing until everything is spotless. Luckily, the air lacks almost any humidity here in Utah and the temperature was warm today, so as soon as you washed something, it was dry and ready to tune/lube/use.

We did some extra detail work today with the box truck, as we were going to take it to the start of the prologue.  Extra polish on the chrome, extra shine on the tires. I am pretty sure we were rolling on the largest rim/tire combo out there. My counterpart, Doug, likes the tires to be shiny. I do, too. It says that you had time to get everything you needed done, and then you took a little extra time to get the aesthetic right. Dialed.

One last photo to share from the prologue. I have a good friend who is the mechanic for the Kelly Benefits team, his name is Eric Jellum. Great guy, but he always sees to have hands that are black as coal from the day’s work. We call him, ‘Dirty Hands Jellum’. Well, just before Philly this year, Kelly’s bike sponosor, Gary Fisher, rolled out the new carbon road frames for the team and the frames are white. White is OK for bike frames, but as a mechanic we try and minimize any more white items going on the bike. They get dirty too easily.  Sure enough ‘Dirty Hands Jellum’ was supplied with white bar tape for his new Fisher bikes. There could not be a worse combination in cycling:  Eric Jellum and white bar tape.

In the start area for the time trial today there was a spare bike from the Kelly team, adorned with white tape. Much to the chagrin of ‘Dirty Hands Jellum’. I could not resist taking a picture of it.

First road stage tomorrow, and the climbing begins. The terrain should rewrite the prologue results. I will have a great view from the caravan car, see you out on the road.

– Chris Davidson

Tags: bike world news, bikes, chris davidson, cycling, Gary Fisher, road frames, Team Type 1, tour of utah, USA Cycling