The first weekend - team remy meder Haguenau

Well this is my first post of possibly many on my experience of cycling in France.
To bring you up to date on what i have managed to do so far i'll give you a list:

1. Decided it was necessary to go and try my hand at continental racing.
2. Found a team in Rouen through a guy that i met at a race.
3. Tried to organise what i would be able to blag off this team.
4. Realised I wasn't going to get much and started to consider other options
5. At about this time there was a post on trusty www.veloriders.co.uk advertising a team that wanted two British Espoirs for a team in Haguenau in the Alsace region of France.
6. I read what they were offering and decided it was an oportunity not to be missed.
7. I e-mailed their contact addresses several times to try and convince them I could ride a bike.
8. They finally bought it and we began to arrange paperwork, dates, times etc.
9. After many e-mails and scanning of passports our first meeting was to be a team launch on the weekend of the 18th-20th of January.

That just about brings us up to about now. The other British espoir they picked was Tom Walters who has already lived and rode for a team in France in Brittany. He hasn't had much luck over those years, having a serious accident one year and tonselitus the next. But maybe this luck will change, especially as he is on the same team as me.

Anyway, The weekend started with us flying from Manchester to Stuttgart which just about went smoothly apart from a cock-up on the M6. We were picked up by Jacky Ruez, who is the DS of the team. He drove us from Stuttgart to Haguenau, and dropped us off at a hotel.

The real stuff started on the saturday morning. After breakfast we went to the teams "service course" building. This was pretty impressive as it housed alot of the teams cars, the bikes, the kit and the spares. Not something you'd really see for a local club in England. It was at this point he wheeled our bikes out. Brand spanking new Kuota Kebels in red and black. A superb looking piece of kit. He set us up on these with measurements we had sent him earlier and then pulled out some name transfers that he put on the top tube. This was something I've never had before so I was suitabley impressed. Then he started handing out the kit... and it was a while before he stopped. By the time he'd finished we had 3 new kit bags each and enough kit to ride for a week without wearing the same piece of clothing twice. Once this was all done we rode back to the hotel and had some dinner. At 1 we got changed into our new kit and rode back to the service course building where we met up with the rest of the team.

They were all pretty cool guys about the same age or a little older than me, so a very young team. 12 of us altogether on the remy meder team with a few of the junior guys tagging along. It took a while before everyone was ready and changed and then we set off for a training ride...with the team car!! I felt like a proper pro. We planned to do 100km, which seemed reasonable... until we started riding. It was really windy and with it behind us on the way out we rode at 40-45 kph for about the first hour. Then we started going easy through and off with a massive cross-wind, i hoped everyone elses legs were hurting as much as mine, but by the looks of some of them, they weren't.

After what seemed like way more than 100km we got back to base camp and we were to meet later on to sort some more stuff out. Me and Tom and Florian (one of the French heros) On the way back to the hotel (about a 1km ride) we were apprehended by about 6 gendarmerie telling us we needed to pay a 90Euro fine for not stopping or looking (which we did (apparantly)) at a junction. Luckily, Florian told the gendarms that we were English and didn't understand (tom speaks fluent french) and we got off the hook. Why they needed 6 of them to try and fine us is beyond me, they must have been really bored.

We got back and showered and after a little direction (Rouge Rouge!!!) we got changed into our newly recieved red casual team wear. We headed over to the teams headquarters building in Haguenau for a meeting. Apparantly we disscused the races we'd be doing, training our training camp etc. We also signed some contracts which made me feel even more proffesional. Once this was done we headed over to the sponsors (Remy Meder) house. This was some £2mil art deco extravaganza. We went inside and shuck hands with everyone, ate a few snacks, stood up for ages then sat down to eat. They had their own pizza over in their house! They must have made about 20 pizzas between the 15 of us there. So we ate and ate and ate and then went back to the hotel at about midnight when we all shafted.

In the morning after breakfast we went out for another 100km ride with the team. Luckily it was alot more relaxed even with a couple of larger climbs, so it went alot easier. After we showered the team met up at a restaurant and we had a meal for a couple of hours before finally saying goodbyes. Jacky drove us back to Stuttgart and we flew back.

Anyway, that was my first weekend with my new french team and a quality team at that. I'll be going out to stay in Limoux for 2 weeks, next week, then it will be back to meet the team again on the 15th of Feb.

aurevoir.