Racing - French Style

After several weeks of telling you about my weeks roaming around France “training”, the time finally came for me to race. Something I had, (important word) been looking forward to. After driving back from our training camp, we spent the week living in a French Gite. Basically, a small house with all the necessary mod cons, including a washing machine. This, apparently, just soaked your clothes in water and made them smell bad (or in Tom’s case, better). From here we conducted our weeks recovery period but with a distinct lack of internet. Instead we passed the time playing the legendary Microsoft games, now even better on vista. By the end of the week we had mastered Hearts, Mah-jong Titans, FreeCell, regular solitaire and spider solitaire. Obviously I was already a master of minesweeper, but we never managed to get any good at chess. I Digress. The days slowly ticked by as we looked forward to our first race, mostly deciding which victory salutes we would use as they would obviously be necessary.

Race day finally came and everything was pretty much prepared, we arrived at the race in plenty of time and went to sign on. Funnily enough, signing on in France is no different to England; just sign a piece of paper in some conveniently placed sports hall, take your number and go. The whole team was doing it as well as riders from the club including juniors and seniors, so we had a pretty big convoy. We hastily changed into our race kit, pinned on our numbers, went to warm up, took the several necessary toilet (although none were taken in such a facility) breaks and it was race time. Apparently, every rider aged 16-35 within a 200 mile radius had turned out to ride, with teams from Germany and Switzerland. This made the peloton 190 riders, the biggest field I’ve ever ridden in. After the annoying speeches and minutes of waiting for apparently nothing, we started, just 125km to go. The first 20 minutes were spent remembering how to, and deciding whether or not, I had indeed ever raced a bike before. It was in these 20 minutes that the first break went up the road consisting of 15 riders, 2 of which were in my team. The circuit was completely flat but the weather was windy with one road in particularly exposing the field to a strong cross wind. My race was spent eternally moving up and still managing to see a thousand riders ahead of me.

After finally managing to start racing, I made a couple of fruitless attacks that were only made because I had finally reached the front of the peloton and had nowhere else to go. Once I was caught, I was once again overtaken by a thousand riders and so began the endless moving up. Consequently, when with about 50 km to go, another group of 15 went up the road, I wasn’t with them. Luckily 4 of my team mates were and once this had happened I could ride how I liked in the peloton, although I would have much rather been in the move. I ended up finishing 50^th, not exactly a position to write home about (although my mum insists that I do), but I took the fact that I felt good away from the race. Tom managed to get in the move and finished an excellent 7^th with 2 other team mates in the top 15.

On the Monday we finally moved into our apartment, a nice open plan roof space with 2 bedrooms a bathroom and a separate toilet, snazzy. It was nice to finally get set up having lived the past several weeks out of suitcase. Though we soon realised that a lot of the space in the apartment was unusable as the walls slope away from you and as we are both over 6’2”, there are only certain places you can walk. A good example of this is the toilet; here (if you are a male (or an adventurous female)) your head hits the ceiling before you get anywhere near being within range of hitting the bowl, or indeed the seat. Tom maintains that he can, but for reasons I refuse to believe. We did a big shop hoping we wouldn’t have to return to the supermarket for the rest of the week. So obviously we went again a couple of hours later and once more a few more after that to get the things we needed. We rode a few times in the week, but nothing ridiculous to prepare for our next race. This came round soon enough and we were on the road again.

A few photos of our living arangements can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97779&l=ae25e&id=624435000

This time the field was a lot smaller, approximately 70 riders, with the race also being a little shorter at 115km. Just like in the UK I thought, a revision swiftly made once the racing started. Even though the field was smaller, all the riders were strong with us and one other big team riding. I had been told at the start by the DS that, in his words, “the first escape...err....it is good, yes.” I took this to mean ‘get in the first move’, so after 5km I started attacking, one of several decisions I would regret in about 20 minutes time. After about 5km of cat and mouse I put a big effort in on the other side of the road with one other guy coming with me. I rode pretty hard to try and get going but the road started gradually to go up. After about a Km the other guy came round and kept nailing it on the front, by this time the peloton had pulled its way back up to us. For reasons unbeknown to me, I stayed on his wheel as road continued to climb and about 200m from the top I was on my knees desperately breathing as much air as possible into my lungs. At this point more attacks came and I swiftly went backwards. Down the other side, the break went; I couldn’t see this as I was pretty much blind due to my hill climb effort. It stayed hard as well as the bunch drove to try and stop the break so my breathing didn’t slow for the next 10 minutes. At this point I remembered the pasta I had hastily eaten on the journey over. Here’s a tip for any aspiring cyclist: Chew your food before a race!

We then hit the second of 3 climbs, the hardest I’d like to point out. After having gone backwards, I was no longer in a good position if things started getting tough, which they did. The bunch split several times and I had to dig deep to keep them within range and get back on. This hurt a lot and my brain started to work against me, “it’ll be easier if you just stop” it kept telling me. Fortunately it calmed down for the 2^nd lap, while still going hard on the climbs but I was able to recover more sufficiently. Then on the final 3^rd lap, it got really tough on the 2^nd climb and 6 pulled away including Tom. I managed to drag myself across to them with a few others and we rode to the finish. I came in 25^th with Tom a few places ahead in 20^th, our man in the break managed to get 3^rd, although this looked a bit poor in comparison to the other teams result who had taken 1^st 2^nd and 4^th winning the mountains and espoirs prizes.

Next time I plan not to attack until it gets hard rather than making it hard, as my early efforts stopped me from doing anything in the first half of the race. The great thing about being in the team though is not worrying about things like driving to and from the races and pumping up you tyres etc. This makes it a lot more relaxing experience, although you still have to pin your numbers on, the most annoying thing about bike racing.

My racing photos will be uploaded here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97782&l=dac25&id=624435000

Next weekend we have Paris-Troyes, apparently shortened to 170km but with 10 double hard climbs and 11 pro teams. This race should be more for experience than anything, so to warm up we have a 130km race on the Saturday. Obviously if we don’t get in the move we will swiftly be dropping out.

Until next time

Ciao.