Chad Haga blog: On the eve of the Giro d'Italia

My eyelids are sticky."

"…what?"

"I guess it's from all the sunscreen and sweat, but I feel it every time I blink."

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Those were the first words we'd spoken in half an hour. Twenty kilometers earlier, Tom Dumoulin and I had been at sea level. Now we were pushing past 6,000 feet of elevation, well into the sixth hour of a ride front and back-loaded with intervals, a bit dehydrated and riding more on willpower than carbohydrates. We chugged onward, neither of us willing to surrender the half-wheel battle as we pulled ourselves lower into the headwind, riding that razor's edge of bonking, and unaware of the scenery around us as we climbed through lava fields on Tenerife. The interminable slog to the point at which we could finally coast back to the hotel never seemed to get closer, and we suffered in silence, except for the odd observation about sticky eyelids.

In the course of our training camp on that volcano we would have conversations about how we must trust the process. We have to suffer alone on a volcano, wondering how our bodies will somehow absorb the training and be excellent in just a month's time at the Giro d'Italia. It's dangerous to overthink it and train too hard, too often. Trust the process, do the training, and believe that it will work.

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