At just 27 years of age, American Mike Creed of the Rock Racing team finished up his ninth year as a professional with his last road race of the season, the Tour of Missouri back in September. While coming through the ranks, Creed was crowned U.S. national champion 20 times and was a member of the world championship team 6 times.
Creed has had ups and downs in his pro career, facing illnesses with relapses of Epstein-Barr disease and back problems while racing for the Prime Alliance, US Postal and Discovery, TIAA-CREF which became Slipstream teams, and now with Rock Racing.
I sat down with a relaxed Mike Creed, the evening after the time trial at the Tour of Missouri where our conversation meandered starting from this year, to his outlook on suffering, his recommendation to USA Cycling for its endurance track selections and finally his goals.
You’ve had good year so far. You finished sixth at US Pro Time Trial, you were strong at Mt Hood finishing fifth overall. Talk about your year and what’s different this year.
Mike: Personally, it hasn’t been a great year as far as results wise but it hasn’t been a bad year at all. It’s been a really consistent year, obviously this race I’m really tired, the legs don’t feel great but you know I’m a lot more relaxed than I have been for a long, long time and part of that is due to just the way the team operates, in that there’s not any of the old school cycling tradition and that’s very, just very refreshing, it’s taking an approach that you show up and do your job and there’s no questions asked, just do it. Whereas with other teams there’s a bit of… you know you have to do x, y and z, you have to wear your warmups and… there’s just so much that goes into it, it was always hard for me, it was always hard.
So lets talk about Rock Racing. Did it changed the way you train, the way you approach racing?
Mike: It definitely changed the way I approach racing because when you have guys like [Oscar] Sevilla, Tyler [Hamilton], [Victor Hugo] Peña and [Santiago] Botero, these guys, they are the outright leaders and so for me it just made my job really clear. I have to race the first two hours and I can relax two hours and that’s what expected of me. If I can hang out and feel really good, you know they’ll work for me but in general, this is my job, I knew I could do that, I knew I could, even on my worse day, I can be there for two hours and get bottles and chase breaks and do everything so those guys can relax.
