Tour de Ferizaj (or: the life of a domestique)

While still recovering from the Tour des Stations two weeks ago, I couldn't shirk my duties as a member of the Team Prishtina cycling team, especially as one of the heads of the Kosovo cycling federation specifically said he wanted to see me in his hometown. It's always been a bit a shock here in Kosovo to be known to everyone, unlike the races in the US and Canada where I would be an anonymous rider lost in the pack. Ferizaj promised to be a flat race, which was highly unusual in a country where races are typically nothing but steep mountain climbs, and in fact most of the riders were nervous at the idea of such a profile.

German & US troops on exercises outside Ferizaj

I still find that to be intensely funny. Three years ago I remember watching the Tour of Rotterdam on TV, and thought it was one of the most boring races I'd ever seen. Tabletop flat, the racers all stuck together past ships and industrial areas, until a sprint at the very end. I've also tended to find the flat stages of the Tour de France fairly boring, save for the more recent years when cobbles were inflicted upon the teams. So this race was interesting in that I was about the only rider with experience riding and racing on a flat course, and to hear others say it was extremely difficult always strikes me as odd.

Racing in Kosovo is a lesson in uncertainty. The races are sponsored by local teams, who have to raise money for the event and can rarely get sponsorship - the races aren't televised (the last one to be so was a race out of Pristina- my first- three years ago), and there are inexplicable mounds of red tape even when a sponsor is available and willing. So often we only hear about a race days in advance, and then only know what city it will be in. Ferizaj gave us a week's notice and some idea of the course profile ("flat") which was an unaccustomed luxury.

Ferizaj is a sleepy city of about 40,000 people, not far south of Pristina and nestled up against the eastern edge of the Sharr Mountains. In many ways Ferizaj is a military town, both the location of Camp Bondsteel and most US forces in the country, as well as the location of the Kosovo Security Forces (KSF) academy. Most people in Pristina probably know the city as a location along the road to Skopje, Macedonia.

Rexha and old-school cycling

The Sunday race schedule is often the same. We all bike downtown to the shop of Rexhep Baliu, coach of the team and an icon of Yugoslav racing in the 1970s. Despite slowing down, Rexha is still a tough bird, and rode with us on the unforgiving Kamenica Loop when I first starting cycling in Kosovo three years ago. As with the race in April, Rexha didn't come with us, leaving support to our team soigneur Kushtrim. A strong sprinter, Kushtrim had given up racing to support the team, and even on training rides took on the role, making sure everyone had food and water. The others racing that way were Dorant, a young and new racer, Gjengis, a climbing specialist, and Migjen, a more all-around racer.

So for those not too familiar with bike racing, the roles on a team may need some explanation. A soigneur ("swanny") is a French term for "caretaker"- the person who looks after the riders and tries to anticipate needs. Professional teams have dedicated people for this role, and some of the behind-the-scenes videos by teams like Orica give a sense of how it works (in one spring race in Italy, the Orica swannies brewed hot tea in the water bottles instead of water).

Among the cyclists, riding styles are also described by French terms. A grimpeur is a climbing specialist, usually a tall and slightly built cyclist like Gjengis, who is not held down by gravity when on steep climbs. But like other climbers, grimpeurs often have trouble on flat stages where power is more important than weight ratios. In contrast comes a rouleur, who specializes more in flat and windy terrain- and probably describes our friend Simon Bishop.  A puncheur is a rider who does well on hilly terrain with short, sharp climbs, often seen in one-day classics in Europe. This probably describes me best, as I had to ride in this style during my Madison years. That makes me a fish-out-of-water in Kosovo, and an unlikely cyclist for the Tour des Stations, but riders like myself have to expand a bit. On any given race, teams usually give priority to certain riders according to their abilities, and designate certain cyclists as the leaders, or favorites for the race. Those is a supporting roll are known as domestiques.

For Ferizaj, we were a bit confused. Migjen has often been the leader on the road, but having trained little this summer, either he or Gjengis could do well if protected. Regardless, it was my role to act as domestique, or the rider who protects and works for them until just before the end. On the Tour de France, domestiques are sometimes hidden in plain sight on flat roads, where they tire themselves out on the front of the peloton (the large group), or in mountain stages where they help pace the leader until falling behind from exhaustion. In cycling, drafting behind someone else can reduce wind resistance and power output by 30%, which is a huge benefit over long distances. Well, except for the person doing the work in front. This GCN video explains fairly well.

At the start

We drove to Ferizaj in Rexha's ancient Opel Kaddet, a car that could barely make 80kph and where
the speedometer was broken, requiring using Gjengis's Garmin GPS from his bike to indicate speed. The race started from outside the sadly dilapidated Bill Clinton sportshall, with the race numbers being handed out in the nearby gas station cafe (for all its other problems, Kosovo has the world's poshest gas stations). Some thirty of us lined up in the street, and at 10am we were set off.

Normally bike races over long distances start slowly, allowing cyclists to warm up. But this was a sprint from the first whistle, cyclists surging ahead at full speed. That surprised me, because it really wasn't smart. Cyclists tend to stick together in the peloton to save energy, and repeated sprints over the first few miles only tired everyone out, including and especially those starting and following the sprints. They also tend not to work well. Even a small group of cyclists can maintain a fast pace that easily catches ("reels back") anyone sprinting off the front of the group, unless they are exceptionally strong. I've learned from experience in Kosovo to ignore most breakaway attempts. The riders seems to do them in what I risk stereotyping as a Kosovo style of racing-- meaning that as much as I love Kosovo, it is not a country of strategists, instead being populated by people who act on emotion.

Tête de la Course

Bike racing is a strange sport in that it requires strategy, and these strategies don't necessarily make sense to an outsider. Although there are teams, only individuals win in the end, yet finishing first requires cooperating with other teams and other competitors. The racers in Ferizaj kept attacking perhaps out of instinct, perhaps because without mountain climbs it wasn't clear where they should attack, and the pace of the main group kept fluctuating between 30mph back to 18mph (50-30kph). Only 7km from the start I saw Gjengis at the front, and knew he shouldn't be there- out of frustration I took over, and then upped to a constant pace of 27mph (43kph). That kept anyone from trying to sprint off the front, and was also intended to kick stragglers off the back (though I may have accidentally dropped our teammate Dorant). Being on the front at that pace takes a lot of work (technically, around 300 watts), but I stayed there as long as I could before slowing somewhat.

Predictably, as soon as I slowed, the Ferizaj team kept attacking again, with three riders from the Trepca team helping to catch them when they did. This kept repeating itself time and again-- a black jersey or two would sprint from my left, and within a minute or two we would have caught them again. I kept wondering what the strategy was-- the team coach kept yelling from the chase car-- but I couldn't quite figure it out. In one way, though, it did start to have an effect. In riding the Tour des Stations two weeks earlier, my knee pain had forced my legs to find strength to compensate, and in the past weeks I've had soreness in small leg muscles I had never felt before. By mile 30 (50km) of the Freizaj race, my right groin and thigh began hurting again, forcing me to slow.

Ferizaj roads, with Sharr Mountains in the distance

Eventually we were reduced to a group of 8- three riders from Trepca, the three of us from Prishtina, an acerbic Serbian cyclist, and for a time one other. We had seen two riders from Ferizaj attack and get ahead of us, and then at one point they disappeared. It was never clear what happened to them- Gjengis's guess was they went off course- but for a time I thought we were chasing two riders, and thus competing for third place. As a chase group it was important that we worked together, but Kosovo riders get very little experience riding in group or especially pace lines. It was a mess. The Serb kept yelling in a mix of English, Albanian and Serbian, "It's a pace line! We take turns! How f*cking difficult is that to understand?!" I realized that all the evening group rides in the US and Canada are important training, the sort that gets lost in small, mountainous countries.

Gjengis, Migjen & I

As with all Kosovo races, the road is not really controlled. Police stand at intersections to prevent cross traffic, when possible, but on the road itself the story is a bit more complicated. The lead riders get a police escort, and once there was a breakaway we had a referee's car ahead of us. When going through towns, the car would lay on its horn desperately, forcing other cars off the road in time for us to sweep behind. On the main roads, the police would drive in the left-hand lane, forcing cars off the road in a form of chicken. And most of the roads on this race were quite busy-- in the mountains roads can have sparse traffic, but the flat valley between Ferizaj and Pristina contains two-lane highways, another reason cyclists rarely practice on them. Some people would cheer us on as we raced past, but as I've mentioned before, mostly children. Kids in Kosovo are the biggest cycling fans.

With ten miles to go, my right leg went from painful to restrictive. I simply couldn't maintain the same pace, and signaled for Migjen and Gjengis to finish without me. This is also typical for a domestique to drop off near the end, and as one Trepca rider tried to break away, his two teammates dropped back and stayed with me. The front never got that far away, though- by the end they were perhaps only 400 meters ahead on the road, where in the final sprint Migjen took 2nd place and Gjengis 3rd.

Gjengis receiving his certificate- no podium girls in Kosovo

Each race ends with a formal lunch, and awards are given as certificates, even to the police and paramedics. Kosovo cycling is divided into age groups: Cadet for 15-16 years old, Junior for 17-18, U23 for 19-23, Elite for 24-40, and Masters for old guys like me. I sometimes receive an award for participating, and we joke that it's either for my age (I'm usually the only master's rider), or the fact that I'm the American. It is a bit strange that everyone I race against is 15-30 years younger than me. I thought of the line from Martin Sheen's character in Apocalypse Now, "Airborne?  He was thirty-eight years old.  Why the f*ck would he do that? . . .The next youngest guy in his class was half his age. They must've thought he was some far-out man humping it over the course. I did it when I was nineteen, it damn near wasted me." Funny thing about cycling, though, is that endurance and pain management come with age. If it hadn't been for the muscle pull, I wasn't tired at all by the end. It was gratifying to get thanks for the officials and coaches, who said I was a "train" and never even looked tired. Of course, everyone knows who I am, and likely thinks I'm a bit crazy.

Gjengis (right) and me on a spring training ride

Personally, I had needed to push myself. The Tour in Switzerland wasn't only an accomplishment, it completely threw off my body chemistry, and the satisfied fatigue of a hard bike ride was gone for me-- the bar had been placed too high. I've been frustrated these past two weeks that cycling did nothing for me. The hills seemed too small, the effort too little, and I could rarely push harder on climbs because the muscle soreness still hadn't gone away. So for me, a flat race was perfect. I felt comfortable, could help my teammates, and felt a bit better by the time was returned to Pristina.

I hope that bike racing grows in Kosovo. It's tough, what with few bikes and no spare parts, and little money to support teams. But the riders are enthusiastic, and the terrain is really perfect for cycling, even in such a small country. I keep hoping that all the kids we see on the side of the road, the ones waving and cheering us on, will think bikes are worth trying.