Notes From the Bilbao Mahaia (That’s Euskadi for Desk, Y’all)

Hey, guess who is back! No, not me, I mean Egan Bernal! This is a very exciting thing, and I will get to that in a moment.

But first… my usual August apology for stepping away. I’m not actually sorry, and I wouldn’t even go so far as to feel bad for anyone who was deprived of my wisdom since the end of the Tour de France. Really, everyone came out ahead. But anyway, I’ve been suffering a mix of exhaustion (in the having-something-to-say sense), vacation obligations (go to Alaska. Seriously.), and the physical and emotional drainage involved with dropping off a child at college 800 miles away. I probably didn’t cry as much as I should have, but then again my eye doctor says that my tear ducts are too degraded from looking at a computer all day, so that’s probably the explanation.

Egan Again!

OK, to start with good news, it really is true that Egan Bernal is back on his bike, in competition. He started the Denmark Tour last week, although for reasons I don’t fully understand, he was a DNF in the final stage — possibly a result of INEOS burning through guys to set up Magnus Sheffield’s unsuccessful shot at the overall win. The race finished with 5.5 circuits, so I suspect Bernal and several others just climbed off at the finish line with a lap or three to go.

Anyway, he’s right back at it this week riding the Deutschland Tour which is two stages into its four events, and so far Bernal is just going through the motions. But it should get interesting on Friday — tomorrow as I write this — when for the first time in his comeback he is given a legitimate mountain stage to test his legs. Stage 3 to Schauinsland spends nearly all of the last 20km going uphill, including a final maybe 11km climb to the finish atop the Holzschlagermatte. Most of Bernal’s injuries from his horror crash last winter are of the type that, when healed, should not affect his ability to ride, but he also broke his femur, and the recovery from that injury might be the sort of thing that would warrant keeping your expectations in check until next season. Anyway, tomorrow will at least be a chance to see how far along the comeback trail the 2019 Tour de France champion really is.

Photo by Tim de…