Review: The Hard Road

I watched "The Hard Road" this past weekend. It's a documentary that follows a first-year US pro cycling team through their entire season. The team was composed of two veteran racers and six rookies. We see lots of race coverage, but there's also time spent following the racers off the bike at home or with the other racers.

Highlights - The race coverage is pretty good as they get into the meat of the season. Some of the team meetings are pretty interesting, as are some of the interviews with the racers immediately following a race. What was a little surprising to me was that you see how hard these pro races are for the rookies. In many cases, these guys aren't even finishing the bigger races.

One of the better parts of the film, in my opinion, was an interview with Frankie Andreu (also a Michigan native). He provides some impartial commentary on the team and how hard it is to make it in pro cycling.

Another strong sequence was when we followed one of the veteran racers on a training ride. unfortunately, it was one of the few parts of the movie that discussed training. Regardless, it was interesting to hear him talk about what he was thinking and how he was feeling during this ride. Both of the veteran racers talked a lot about the mental aspect of racing, both in terms of mental toughness and in terms of making good strategic decisions during the race.

There were a few spots, mainly in the interviews with Andreu and the two veterans, where I felt like I should be taking notes.

Lowlights - While I saw some reviews that compared this movie to "On Any Sunday", I don't think it quite gets there. Particularly at the beginning, the film moves through the season way too quickly. I think they wanted us to get a sense of how busy the racers were, but it just ended up feeling rushed.

I was disappointed that we didn't see more training and more discussion of tactics. The training bit may be excusable though, since the bulk of the film takes place during the meat of the race season so they probably really weren't doing a lot of training. I would have liked to get "in the huddle" a little more though and learn more about the team's strategy and tactics. What we tended to hear was "just hang on as long as you can" and "don't quit". That's basically what I do! I don't know, maybe for a bunch of rookies, that's pretty much the best you can hope for.

Anyway, for a bike racing nut, it was a good movie. Probably not so great for anyone else.