Tom Danielson: the interview: part 1

By Daniel McMahon

In part one of our interview, Garmin-Slipstream rider and Connecticut native Tom Danielson talks about his Giro di Lombardia, the importance of training on days you don’t want to, fly-fishing, and why he’s riding better than ever. (Read the introduction to the four-part interview here.)

Daniel McMahon: How are you? What’s new?

Tom Danielson: Good, thanks. I’m back at home just about a week now from Europe. It’s nice to be back in Colorado and back in the U.S. I’m really enjoying my down time.

DM: You did the Giro di Lombardia. How did it go?

TD: It went okay. It’s kind of a difficult race for me. I prefer stage racing, so one-day races are really challenging, mainly because I don’t have very much experience doing them. The years I was on Discovery, I focused primarily or solely on stage racing. It wasn’t until I came to this team, to Garmin, that I started dabbling with one-day races, so I’ve got a lot to learn.

I mean, I’m not quite there yet, but I had good form going into the race but I’m not 100 percent accustomed to one-day racing, so I didn’t really know where to be at the right times. I ended up getting caught behind a split toward the end of the race, and that kind of took me out of the final. But it worked out well. We had Dan [Martin; 8th place] in the breakaway early on.

DM: Was the team ordered to work for him?

TD: Yeah. You know, Dan is a really good one-day racer, and I think he had some good form and was really targeting that race. So we were focusing on a good race for Dan. But obviously you have to have the legs for the good result. And Dan had good legs, in addition to good support from the team.

DM: If that was plan A, I imagine you guys had a plan B and C, just in case.

TD: Well, it’s so late in the year and, like I said, it’s a one-day race, and we really didn’t have a team, like Lampre or Liquigas, you know, 100 percent focused on this race. You have myself, who isn’t in 100 percent form but there for Dan. My goal was to get over the Ghisallo with the front group, then see how the race played out, and, ya know, that’s what I did. But other teams obviously sent a whole team to try to control the race. So we went in there with a relaxed attitude, but at the same time thinking that we have Dan there for the final. He’s got that one-day sort of punch, that big acceleration that you need to go with the Cunego-type guys.

DM: Looking back at another one-day race, say, Liege, where you were working for Ryder Hesjedal, how would you compare that race to Lombardia?

TD: Again, I don’t understand one-day racing 100 percent. I can’t target a one-day race at this point in my career and say, This is something I want to go for. I need more experience, and the best way to get experience is ride for the guys who are good at them and have the right form. It was sort of similar, but I’d probably say that in Liege it’s a different type of race, a more selective race than Lombardia. In Liege you’re constantly going up and down, and I think positioning in a race like Liege is more important than in a race like Lombardia, because you’re constantly going in and out of short, steep climbs, left-right turns, stuff like that. Whereas with Lombardia you really need that good positioning at the very end.

DM: You’ve had busy year or so. You got married—congratulations—and you’ve been involved in a lot of things locally.

TD: Yes, thank you! Got married about a year and a half ago. We moved to Boulder and have a really nice set-up here, and everything is very accessible. Stephanie is an awesome girl. She has a bit of a cycling background. Her dad was a cyclist; he was a super-adventurous person, so she understands the sport and likes to ride a bit and is really supportive.

DM: You’ve been personally involved with the mountain-bike scene out in Boulder.

TD: Yeah. We have Matt Fritzinger, who is president of the NorCal high school mountain-bike league. He has a vision to make this a nationwide movement, this high school MTB league, and try to introduce cycling—more specifically mountain biking—to kids in that sort of teen phase when they’re in school. Obviously, NorCal is a cycling mecca, but clearly Colorado is probably first or second in line there, so the goal was to bring that mountain-bike league to Colorado at some point, and now it looks like it’s on schedule to happen in 2010, and it’s moving along nicely. I’ve always been a big supporter of developing cyclists. When I graduated from college, I started a collegiate scholarship at Fort Lewis College, in Durango, and was a part of the junior development team there, the Durango Devo. And I helped raise money for the NorCal cycling league.

Recently I started a race series and a camp series with Beth Estes and Dave Cho here on the Front Range specifically targeted toward juniors; that’s road, mountain, and cyclocross. So naturally it makes sense for me to be involved with the high school league, and I’m really excited about the possibility down the road. We’re still ironing things out, and we’re still talking about which directions we can go in. But I’ve already talked to them and had the fundraiser on Saturday. It was snowing and 30 degrees! [Laughs.] The ride was supposed to start at 8:30 a.m., and there were 62 people who showed up to ride. Which, if anything, shows the level of support we have here in Boulder. Some drove up from Denver. It was amazing. I myself was, like, Man, there’s nobody that’s going to be on this ride. But everybody came out, so it was a really awesome experience and raised a good amount of money. We had a lunch afterwards, kind of a special Italian lunch prepared by this new chef in Boulder, and it was really successful.

DM: Sounds like it’s off to a good start.

TD: The potential of this program is really unlimited. You can do a lot with a little, and in this community it’ll be amazing to see what we can come up with.

DM: How do you balance it all with your training and the rest?

TD: It’s difficult. Obviously, this time of year it’s the off-season, and the priority is your family, you know, your wife, your parents. Then you look to see how much time you have after you’ve taken care of these things. For me it’s like another passion, another hobby, the organizations and fund raising. For me, it’s part of being a professional athlete; it’s part of the job. You’re really part of the marketing of your sponsors, reaching out to your community and reaching out to the people who are involved in the sport—and it makes your sponsors look good. It’s important to do it, and I do my best to balance that without interfering with my family time too much.

And on top of that, you need to have fun in the off-season. I really enjoy mountain biking, so I’ve been on the mountain bike quite a bit, and I enjoy hiking and running. I’m going to do some fly-fishing, too. You know, the off-season seems to get shorter and shorter every year, too.

DM: Do you do any cyclocross?

TD: I did it back in college a bit. It’s just too much with racing in February and sometimes ending in October. And if you participate in that, you really have no down time at all. I mean, I’m going to ride the cross bike and ride some dirt roads stuff like that, but it’s important to have as much down time as you can this time of year.

DM: Last year you did some winter training in Hawaii. Are you going there again?

TD: No … well … never say never! It really depends on how the weather is here. It’s important to stay home as much as possible, and if I can stay home I’ll try to. If the weather’s super bad here I’ll have to go somewhere warm. My wife’s sister’s husband is in the military, and he was stationed in Oahu, so it worked out well to go train there for a month and spend some time with her sister. But it’s funny: Since then he got relocated to Denver, so they moved nearby and are pretty much our neighbors now.

So maybe Hawaii’s out of the question now. It’s a big trip. If I get away it’ll probably be somewhere like California. We’re going to Florida on vacation next week, in the Naples area, and see what that’s like.

DM: Bringing the bike?

TD: Yeah, the mountain bike. It’s not truly riding or training. And I don’t know what’s going on with the Tour of Georgia, but I really love that area. Maybe if there’s not a half-bad winter, maybe do a trip there. See how that goes.

DM: Is your training this winter going to be the same as last year?

TD: It’ll probably be pretty similar. I’m in a better spot right now than I was last year. I think I’m on a new level in my career, in terms of my fitness and how I was in the Vuelta and Burgos and how I ended the year. I feel I’m on a much higher level than I’ve ever been in my career. I’ll be really paying attention to the finer details and focusing on a few things so I can come out next year and really put together a full season of high-level results, whereas last year I was still coming back from a really bad time in my career. There was a lot of unknowns for me, a lot of ground I had to make up, so I’d say last year’s winter felt more like when I was trying to become a professional rider—you know, it was like, I know I’m capable, I think I’m capable to do this. But you know it’s going to take a lot of work.

I was somewhat stressed, always on top of everything, because I felt like I had to come from behind from so far. Whereas this year I feel like I know what I’m doing; I feel I’ve got my system worked out; I feel much more relaxed and confident and like I know exactly what I have to do exactly at the right time to put together a great season for next year. In a sense I guess I’m much more relaxed and confident.

DM: What exactly are you going to be focusing on?

TD: I need to build on my time trialing and my climbing. You know, I know I’m one of the best climbers in the world, and I really want to be able to do it consistently. And I want to be able to win, to be a lot better than the other people on the climbs. I feel like I’m capable of it—I saw it this year. Obviously I’m not going out in November and pummel myself on mountains and hope come May and July that I’m there.

It’s more, you know, work mentally on being that constantly, sort of waking up in the morning and knowing that no mater how I feel, no matter what’s going on, that I know I’m one of the best climbers in the world and that I can win on any given day, on any given mountain, in any given situation. That that’s going to be my main goal this winter, just constantly being calm and relaxed and confident, no matter what’s thrown in my direction.

There are going to be days when I don’t want to go out and train, and days I can’t wait to go train, and I need to approach those days and those feelings, and when I feel bad don’t allow that … don’t allow myself to feel bad. You know, use my head to overcome that, make it seem that every day is the same. I think that will enable me to consistently outperform people in the race season.

DM: Do you have people from the team working with you on your winter training, or are you seasoned enough now that you know what works for you and what to do?

TD: One of the big successes this year was really aligning myself with good people who motivate me and put me in the right spot. My wife if responsible for a lot of that. She keeps me on track and keeps things structured in terms of my diet and training regime—everything.

Rick Crawford has come into the picture for me; we have a really good relationship. He knows me better than anyone out there. I’m a unique individual; I’m just different than everybody else. You know, traditional diets, traditional training, traditional ways of thinking—they just don’t work for me. I’m not traditional; I’m not normal—not at all, not one bit. [Laughs.] Rick is very good at working with me and figuring out all my different things and allowing me to be the freak that I am and turning that into, you know … allow me to climb hills and time trial better than anybody else in the world. He’s been a big part of that that, the guy who’s gotten me to the level the first time in my career. He’s really responsible for bringing me back up this year.

And JV [Jonathan Vaughters, Garmin-Slipstream's directeur sportif] has been really supportive of me; he’s worked with me on my diet and race scheduling and trying to figure me out, and has definitely invested a lot in me. I really appreciate it. I needed all of this to get the level that I’m at now.

I think that these three people have been responsible for bringing me to the level I’m at. So I’m going to keep with what works really well and dial it in and make sure I have that infrastructure around me constantly and not let it change. I’m different from other people. For me, having a strong infrastructure, having great people around me, and being in a good environment is what it takes to get me to that next level.

Read part 2 of our interview with Danielson here.

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