Cathederals anyone?

Not much happened in the week last week as we took it easy leading up to another stage race the Tour d’Eure et Loir. But I thought I’d let you know about a game me and Tom play when we go shopping. When we get to the checkout we each have to guess an exact price for the shopping without adding up or anything, closest wins. It’s pretty tense for a few moments as the till lady scans through the last items and we wait nervously for the final total. Sometimes we’re miles out but other times pretty close. I’ve been the closest so far guessing just two cents from the actual price, what an achievement. Anyway, next time there’s two of you doing the shopping why not give it a try. If you’re on your own I wouldn’t as you will just luck weird, anyway on with talking about cycling.

Our journey begins on the noon of the Thursday, as eight of us gathered (six riders, one Director Sportif and one Mechanic) to begin our journey to the department of L’Eure et Loir. Here we were to partake in a three day stage race taking in all the best bits of the department in our Federal Espoirs only race. The journey was long (6 hours) and treacherous (I was awoken by a speed bump) but finally we made it to our loggings for the weekend. After a quick ride around and a hearty meal of pasta with an indistinguishable meat (it tasted something like chicken) we settled ourselves down to look forward to the next day’s upcoming stage. The time soon came for the mornings debrief, but this morning I was determined that my briefs were staying on (If you haven’t seen Garth Marenghis Dark Place, I recommend you do, hilarious). We were told the course was flat with a few little bumps but nothing major to worry about, make sure we were in every move etc etc, the usual spiel. The race was a pretty big occasion and started in what looked like the very nice city of Chartres. I didn’t get to see much of it though and we were soon lining up at the start and rolling out for the neutralised section. The date was Friday 13^th and I got my small dose of bad luck at about now. I was casually taking a sip from my bottle while the people in front suddenly slowed, I didn’t have time to put my bottle away and use my more powerful front brake so I just had to ride into the back of them. How I didn’t come off is a small miracle but I smacked my spokes into the back of some guys’ bike and slightly buckled the wheel.

The stage was 158km as well as the 9km of neutralised and fast. In fact we did about 46km in the first hour and I didn’t even notice it. I moved up to the front when it started to line out and got in the first break of the day. Unfortunately the roads where too fast for it to stay away and after about 10km we were reeled in. I moved up again after some sitting in and the roads started to go up sharply, then down, then up again. It certainly wasn’t flat. Coming into possibly the hardest hill I followed an attack by the favourite, Fabien Taillefer and he wasn’t messing about. We quickly caught a small group that was up the road but it had hurt...then we hit the hill. The pace exploded and I quickly regretted chasing the move, so much so that I decided to go to the back and watch the break of the day ride away...Oh well. Luckily we had two riders in it so we had a nice easy ride to the finish. End of stage one, eat, sleep, recover.

The second day started early as it was to contain two stages, a 90km road stage with a 16.7km time trial. This time the road stage was flat...pan flat. So flat in fact that everyone decided that they would be able to get away and ride everyone off their wheel. Because of this we didn’t go 10 seconds without an attack being made and that is no exaggeration. In fact, I think there was a small let up in pace for 20 seconds and then everyone looked at each other and started attacking again. I followed a few moves but never made one of my own, nothing was sticking, and so bunch sprint it was. This was the first time I was involved in a mass bunch sprint for the win and boy was it hairy. I decided to try and place myself up there and see what I could do but I was pretty hopeless. I always watched the races on Tele where Fassa Bortolo (now Milram) would get on the front and line it out and wondered why riders didn’t move up, surely they were strong enough...but now I know why. CC Nogent put their “train” on the front and trying to move up suddenly became very hard. Moving out into the headwind at 50kmph hurt the legs somewhat so I did it as sparingly as possibly, alas it wasn’t to be. I gave up with 500 metres to go with enough time to watch the winner give his victory salute from 40^th place; Tom managed a great 11^th with his bunch sprinting skills.

Then came the time trial, something I had been looking forward to. The team had leant me a TT bike (I say TT, it was a 10 year old road frame with TT bars) and a disk wheel to use and I was hoping to put in a good effort. What happened though wasn’t how I had foreseen it; in fact the only way to show what happened best is by using a time line:

(My start time: 16:40)
14:10: arrived at the start, pinned on numbers, relaxed.
15:35: changed into kit and went to ride my bike to test everything was in order, which it was.
15:45: relaxed for a little longer.
15:55: put my skinsuit and other additional extras I use for time trialling
16:00: waited for my turn on the turbo to warm up.
16:10: got on the turbo to warm up
16:30: got off the turbo for the mechanic to put the wheel in. (this is when things started to go wrong)
16:31: mechanic notices that my cable outer at the rear derailleur is slightly frayed and declares that it won’t work (even though I’ve just been using it for 20 minutes)
16:32: mechanic starts to panic but finds a new cable outer.
16:34: mechanic proceeds to take the cable out of the outer and tries to replace it only to find the end of the cable is frayed and he cannot thread the cable.
16:36: mechanic goes to find a new cable but then realises it will take too long to change it.
16:37: mechanic takes the disk wheel out of the TT bike and hastily puts it into my road bike...Great.
16:37.30: I leave to get to the start.
16:38.45: I arrive at the start ramp much to the distress of all the officials who shout at me to get ready immediately.
16:39.00: I get on the ramp just as my minute man is leaving.
16:40.00: c’est partie

But this wasn’t it, oh no, as soon as I went down the ramp the following car started using it’s horn to try and encourage me. Usually I wouldn’t mind such capers, but unfortunately I was already so wound up after my bike fiasco I just couldn’t take it. I started to shout as loud as I could even though I knew they couldn’t hear me, I looked around a couple of times to try and make them stop. In the end I turned right around flicked them the V’s and this shut them up, finally. Then my back wheel started to make a screeching noise, like it was rubbing against the frame. I looked down trying to find the route of the problem and even took the quick release off my brake to see if that helped. It got louder and louder and I was certain the tubular was about to explode. It didn’t and I soldiered on, but by this time the damage was done, I couldn’t even remember how slow I’d gone I was too busy concentrating on other things apart from riding. It was only when we received the results when I found this out, I was disappointed to say the least, but by the next morning I was over it. I’m not one to dwell.

The last stage was 153km with 7km of neutralised and once again fast. I sat in for the first 100km until it started to go up and down where I moved towards the front. Bizarrely we were stopped by a train at one point and I was surprised by how many people needed to stop to relieve themselves including me. Coming into the first of a series of sharp hills I followed a hard move by Fabien Taillefer and Pierre Luc-Perichon (If you don’t know these names now, give it a couple of years and I’m sure you will) and when I say hard I mean hard. Only 15 riders were able to follow him including all the favourites and me and Tom. I put in one of those efforts you only make once in a race to stay with them and at one point I was sure I was losing some vision. Fortunately I stayed with them, unfortunately, because it was all the favourites no one wanted to ride... I simply couldn’t... and we were caught after about 15km of being away. We rode to the finish 1 minute 40 behind the break; Taillefer lost the overall possibly due to the stopping by the train as the break weren’t halted.

There we have it, another stage race finish. I was bitterly disappointed by my time trial, it wrecked my race, but happy I was able to go with it when it really got tough on the last stage. Next week, two smaller races and then I am flying back to Blighty to prepare for the National Chumps... I mean Champs.

Until next time,

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