Blog

If you’ve been checking my site and wondering why in the world I haven’t updated since January, hopefully a quick Google search answered those questions for you…. I have managed a couple of Velonews journals (see the link at the top of the page to find those), but haven’t done…

As the years go by, I grow more comfortable with all aspects of life as a racer–especially the part where time at home in the offseason flies by and suddenly I’m back in Europe, like I never left at all. I’ve grown accustomed to that feeling, but the last 3…

Consider yourself warned: this post is neither short nor shallow. Read on only if you like swimming in the deep end. I wholeheartedly believe that no experience in life can realize its full significance until it is placed in context. Even the most powerful events are still somewhat abstract until…

I’ve finally made it to the off-season! It has been a rough year for the peloton in terms of injury and illness–those riders who have managed to stay healthy the whole year find themselves especially battle-weary, struggling to find motivation. Despite some nagging pains from a particularly hard crash at…

In the week between Eneco and Vattenfall, I trained less than I normally would. My legs would have liked to do more, but I underestimated the toll that the crash had taken on my body and how much I needed to let it recover. Midweek, my left side had a…

The original plan was to go to Eneco Tour in support of Tom Dumoulin’s bid for overall victory, but that changed when he was injured in the Tour. Instead, we went with a relatively open game plan. On the first three sprint stages, we’d ride for Nikias. Then after the…

In case you missed it, here’s my camp wrap-up and Clasica San Sebastian for VeloNews: http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/08/news/chad-haga-journal-getting-back-to-work_380326 In the journal, I mentioned the power analysis that I did after the race, and I thought I might as well share since some people like numbers (sorry, Mom, you can skip this bit). The…

Just as with last year’s camp, we’re spending about 2 days per week on our time trial bikes and working on our TTT. The discipline is steadily becoming more and more important as a growing number of races are incorporating them. Even if your team doesn’t have the most horsepower,…

We’ve made it to the last rest day of our training camp. There are only 3 training days left, but the miles won’t be quite as big as we’ve been doing—we all have races coming up next week, so we’ll have some intensity but won’t push too hard. The training…

In my latest blog for velonews, I wrote a bit about how tired I was after getting back from my crazy block of racing. Even now that I’ve bounced back, I can’t believe the extent of my fatigue. I had just returned from a 7-week stint of races averaging over 4000kJ…

I finished the 2014 race season confident in my ability to race at the highest level and told my team directors as much. They called my bluff and sent me to Australia for the Santos Tour Down Under. I suppose there’s no better way to know for sure than to…

Suffice it to say that mine was not a well-traveled road to the ProTour, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. A little over four years ago, I was struggling to stay awake through my afternoon classes. It may have been related to the VO2 intervals I did…