Limoux and the foothills of the pyrenees

After much deliberation, it was decided I needed to get away from England and it's unique weather in pursuit of a somewhat sunnier climate. So I decided to go to Limoux in the south of France for a couple of weeks training for the obvious purpose of preparing my body for the lifestyle.

I stayed with my team mate, Tom, in the house that is usually used by the New Zealand under 23 outfit in the summer, so it was pretty much fitted for the purpose. He had been there for 2 weeks already and had stayed there a few times before, so knew the ropes and roads. The days sort of went along these lines:

• Get up at whenever - from 9.00 till 10.30 mostly
• Eat breakfast - a bowl frosties, muesli or quaker oats followed by toast and if it was a serious day, a banana. A cup of tea or coffee was also consumed during this important period.
• Get changed into cycling kit
• Ride bike - anywhere between 30 minutes and 9 hours (never more than 9 hours)
• Get back, shower and make lunch (some kind of pasta with some kind of sauce with some kind of meat).
  
• Rest/recover - this consisted of several things: reading a book, messing around on my laptop, watching TV, drinking chocolat chaud (thats hot chocolate for all you none french talkers) in the local cafe, reading a book, playing cards, sleeping, acrobatics (rare), reading a book and reading a book.
• Eat dinner (some kind of pasta or rice with some kind of meat with some kind of sauce)
• Do some more resting/recovering
• Go to bed
• Repeat

Obviously a stenuous lifestyle. Me and Toms conversation usually constisted of arguments about who was better at certain things, most of which I won apart from the bad ones like whos the fatest and who smells the worst. Obviously Tom will argue to the contrary but you know who's right. The rides were great with the average ride time being about 3 hours. The scenery at times was nothing short of amazing, to the south you could see the snow capped pyrenees and on one ride to a place called Lagrasse, the views at one point where so good I just wanted to stop and admire them for a few minutes. We didn't, but only because there was a great descent ahead of us. The weather was chilly but sunny in the first week and then heated up in the second week, I even wore shorts on one ride!

During the 2 weeks I was required to wear a mini ECG machine, as over the past two seasons i've had episodes of heart palpitations where it pumps very very fast (up to 230 bpm) for a short period of time. During the palitations my legs feel very fatigued like they have already done 100 miles, luckily it has only occured twice in races amazingly both of which i finished. Anyway I got it checked out by the doctor and he said it wasn't anything sinister (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome was what I was worried about) but said to find out exactly what it was I had to wear the ECG monitor. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the palpitations rarely happen, so I only was able to record one episode and this wasn't extended. Oh well maybe better luck next time.

Anyway, news from the team came regularly via e-mail from both the DS and the coach guy. During the weekend I had before, we were told that if we doped we'd be thrown out of the team. Obviously this is a very good thing and if all new Espoir teams are doing this, then cycling might have a future afterall. To reinforce this, the whole team are having dope tests before the season starts. I can't afford drugs anyway and wouldn't know where to start if I wanted some.

I am flying out to Stuttgart tomorrow night to be picked up and taken to Haguenau. We will spend a day there and in the early hours of Saturday we will begin the lengthy drive down to the cote d'azur for our 7 day training camp. I am sort of looking forward to this as it will be good training and it will be good to get to know my team mates better and start speaking some french. But I am a lazy person when it comes to training so i'll be glad when its finished and the racing starts. It will also be interesting to see how many of them can hold onto my wheel as I power up the climbs while holding my breath pedaling with one foot and riding no handed. I dropped Tom several times in Limoux using this technique, I'd recomend it to anyone.

Some more pictures of our stay in Limoux can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89343&l=708b2&id=624435000

Bring on some more sun.

until next time, aurevoir.