It's back Baby!

2 months it’s been since my last posting, a whole 2 months. Time flies when you’re having fun so I must have been having a whole load of fun. My excuses for not posting are as follows:

1: I got lazy

2: I had no internet

3: I got lazy

As you can see, I’m not much of an excuse person unless of course I did badly in a race, in which case I have a small novel of excuses packed away somewhere at the back of my mind. Each one specific to a certain occasion, bad weather, broken spoke, mal positioning etc etc...

2 months of not saying anything leaves you with a lot to talk about, so, without further ado, let’s find out what I’ve been up to.

The herb growing went very well for several weeks and then one pot of plants suddenly died. We weren’t sure why, we think it was possibly down to overgrowth or maybe malnourishment, or more likely a mix of the two. This left us with a lot of quite dead coriander, but fortunately the pot containing the basil, chives and some other none-discernable plant remains quite alive and well, we even put some in the occasional meal. But doing this feels like destroying several weeks work, even though you are supposed to use them for cooking... On the subject of cooking, a long time ago I said I’d put up a cookbook blog, you probably had forgotten about this, your probably didn’t even know about it in the first place, but, I’m pleased to say, I have finally put it up for you to sample.

Here we are: http://cyclistscookbook.blogspot.com/

If you have any more recipe’s send them over and I’ll put them up, after trying them of course.

Now for something completely different.

Last time I wrote I had just finished a busy week with 2 stage races, since then I’ve had 13 days of racing (provided I post this by Friday night, if not I’ll have had 14) including 1 top 5, 5 top 10’s, 2 DNF’s, a crash and loads of primes. I’ve also had a few races where not much has happened, but these have been few and far between as now I always seem to find a way of making a race worth the effort. One of the first highlights of the past 2 months was a race in a place called Villaine-la-Juhel. It came on the back of a race where I had been strong but in far too many attacks. So I was told, unsurprisingly, to hold back. Something I’m not very use to doing as most of the time I am compelled to attack. On this particular occasion though, I managed it. I sat in for pretty much the whole race until the finishing circuit and was feeling pretty sweet. On the finishing circuit I was up front more often than I wasn’t and in the weird position of being in contention for the win. I even managed to sprint over the line first for 2 primes of which I didn’t know the value, this turned out to be very much worth the trouble.

The exciting bit came with just over a lap to go, as someone lay a big dirty brick on a high powered fan. I followed a very hard move up the drag of a hill which made me begin to lose some vision, but I thought it was all part of the fun and pushed on until there were just 10 of us working well towards the finish. I was quite convinced I could win and knew it would all be down to the last corner, which funnily enough, it was. The fast run into it was dangerous to say the least and it was admirable the way some of the guys dive bombed into it risking all to move up. Unfortunately while I was admiring their foolishness, they were still coming round me and this left me in no position to come back on them. Hence my 8^th, rather than 1^st or even 2^nd or 3^rd.

The next highlight came at a race called Les Boucles Sérantaises, this was pretty similar to the other one but with a bigger field and a harder finishing circuit. Once again I tried to put into place my “sit-in” plan of action, but no sooner than had I implemented it, I found myself off the front in a small group. This grew and grew, before Johan Lebon got across to it and it was doomed, I was quite pleased as I could then re-implement operation sit-in. This worked well until the finishing circuits when things got tough, I moved up quite slowly and even made a short foray off the front which turned out to be quite profitable. With 2 laps to go and a small group up the road, I carried my speed and my heavy legs round the bunch and attacked off the front with 3 others. We bridged across to the front group and it was race on.

I say it was the front group, it wasn’t, there were still 4 guys up the road who weren’t to be caught. After the obligatory last ditch attempts, we were still together with a K and a half to go when I followed a small attack but decided it wasn’t worth going through. This meant we were caught with 300 metres to go and found myself nearly leading out the sprint, I probably should have led it out as a about 5 got past me and I finished 10^th, not too shabby.

Highlight number 3 was at a race called Le route des Légendes, a hard hard circuit with 2 steep hills and a very big false flat cross wind section. It was quite apparent that it would split up early on and stay that way, so I followed the early moves and stayed out front. Much to my pleasure I ended up in the move of the day, but the two steep hills were doing some damage to my legs every time and with 2 laps to go the big attacks came. My reaction was about 5 seconds to slow, mainly due to the rather large gradient, and I was left in the 2^nd group. I must have recovered a little though as by the finish, although I was duped into leading out the uphill sprint, I still held on for 2^nd in the group and 8^th overall, not too shabby.

The last and possibly most exciting highlight came just the other week, a criterium race in a suburb of Rennes. Not a massive field, but there are always quality guys there to make it tough and keep you on your toes. Crits in France aren’t like in England, I think I mentioned this last year possibly, but they tend to be at least 90km with a shed load of primes. Something that has come to interest me this year being more capable of winning sprints. But anyway, the race wasn’t massively eventful for the first 28 of the 35 laps, attacks going here and there, nothing really getting away. Then with 7 to go a group of 5 managed to sneak away, sans moi. This was a little annoying as I’d been mostly alert for the race, but it wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot, I’d built myself up for this race and wanted a result. So coming into four laps to go, I attacked into a corner got a gap and the chase was on. I don’t know how far ahead they were, all I know is it was ard, well ard. But after a lap and a bit of chasing, I made contact with the lead group, quite possibly my finest moment in cycling, I was very pleased, but it wasn’t over yet. I made myself look as tired as possible and sat on for as long as I could, but eventually they got annoyed and I tapped through steadily. This carried on nicely until about ¾ of a lap to go when one of them decided to spoil the party and attacked. I wasn’t in a position to follow and no one else did, which left me in a sticky situation. Attack and pull the others across or risk it and wait. The result was something in between, one tried to pull him back half heartedly and I went once he had finished but it was too late. Two dived inside me before the last corner and that’s how it stayed, me in 4^th. Darn, so close, I was disappointed, very.

So those are all the highlights between my last blog and now. Fortunately after much decision making and decisive action, we now have internet installed. We needed to set up a French bank account to pay for France telecom to have a line installed before we could then go to service provider SFR to have a box sent over, which we then needed to set-up and wait for the service to start. And we only found out we had to do these things in reverse order, it was a right game.

In other news, why does everything wear out and break so much easier when you have to pay for it? It’s rather annoying. During one race, a front tubular blew out on the way down a nice fast sweeping corner, leaving me to carry straight on into the curb and momentarily later, a wall. Luckily I didn’t do myself too much damage, but later to my dismay found that my pride and joy front zipp had a big old crack in it from the impact. I wasn’t best pleased. I have also broken spokes in 3 others wheels and don’t actually think I own a wheel which is completely true. It’s the same for the other guys Matt and Nathan, we haven’t had a lot of luck in the wheel department.

Matt has now had his cast off and is nearly ready to start racing again, although we had a minor scare last Tuesday when after one of his first rides we were forced back to the hospital after he decided he had broken it again. Fortunately he hadn’t and he’s now easing back into the riding a lot slower, so hopefully he’ll be pinning numbers on soon enough!

Until next time,