The Robbie Report is a weekly feature on MTBracenews.com. Robbie Squire is the 2008 Junior National Champion and the newest member of the US National Team. Just two years ago Squire was racing as a Sport. In '08, his first year and only year as a Junior Expert, Robbie won the Junior National Championship. In '09 his first year in the senior ranks, the Utah resident will be racing with the U.S. National Under-23 Team. Each week Robbie will share his experiences with us. Join in as the 19 year-old Junior National Champion and first year Pro travels across the United States and Europe racing his bike and living out a once in a lifetime opportunity.

This past week’s race marked my first venture into road racing. It was quite the leap going from local hill climbs and crits to a 3-day stage race in Belgium called Triptyque Ardennais. The first day was a rude awakening- it rained the entire time.The course was 130 km and was mostly flat with a lot of short punchy climbs. All of which was not fun in the rain. What was especially fun was riding on roads through cow pastures where “stuff” got flung up onto your face from your wheels. Fortunately everyone was riding very cautiously and despite the rain and the cow pies I was able to finish 4 minutes down in 94th out of 175.


The next day was a bit different. It started out a lot better with blue skies and a newly acquired confidence of sitting in the peloton. At about 60k I got crashed and hit the deck for the first time on a road bike. This guy went down in front of me and the next thing I knew I was on the ground in entangled in a mess of bikes and cyclists. I had never fallen on a road bike before and I’ve never hit the ground so hard I didn’t remember the crash. I got up in a daze and jumped back on my bike but in the time that I spent on the ground the peloton was about a minute in front of me and despite giving my best effort to get back I wasn’t able to. I ended up riding by myself for about 30 minutes before the race director stopped me and I had to log my first DNF(did not finish) of the season. That really stunk but that is the nature of the bike racing and there’s not much you can do about it.


Now that I’m racing road bikes I moved to a new home base in Kautenbach, Luxembourg. I didn’t know that towns could get much smaller than Kirchzarten, Germany but Kautenbach takes the cake. This town consists of a river, church, hotel, and about 10 houses it’s puny the nearest town is 10 k away and not very different. The town sits in a hole and is surrounded on all sides by hills and you have to ride uphill for 8 km to get out. The road house is chaotic with different groups of guys heading in-and-out to a number of different races every week.


I’m going to give road racing another shot this week in France. The race is a 4-stage race in the Pyrennes called Ronde I’Isard. From what I’m told this race should be better than Triptyque because the stages include some cool mountain passes where Triptyque topped out with short rollers. I’m excited to get to ride in the mountains after not seeing any really peaks since I left Utah almost 2 months ago. In addition to nice stages, it will be my first time to France, which is bound to be interesting.

Robbie