Sunday Raceday

I awoke to a wet and cold Sunday morning today. Luckily there was an Elite Open Cyclocross race in Montauban. I say luckily because if it weren’t for a Cyclocross race I wouldn’t have ridden in this weather. It’s strange to see it wet after a few weeks of really nice weather.

So I loaded the CX bike into the car, drove down to Gaillac to pick up my friend Stephane (and ex-tri-athlete) who wanted to come and watch and headed for Montauban.

It was nice to see one of the FFC (French Cycling Federation) officials there who I know. He interviewed us at a race last year and has been looking out for Evolution Cycling and has been really friendly ever since. It was lucky because I had forgotten my Foreign Permission Letter that allows me to race in France, so technically I wasn’t allowed to race. He smoothed things over for me and I headed off to warm up on the trainer.

The race hard. There were some big name there, and some Cyclocross specialists. The guy who won is aiming to be selected for the World Championships, and has finished in the top 20 of all of this year’s National Cup races. Then there were some other names like Azmaker, Estadieu, the usual local ex-pros/big guns.

Seeing as I have had this bad back for the past week, I found that I had asthma warming up and couldn’t get rid of it. I was also on the last line of the starting grid because I haven’t done many of the rounds in the series. As usual they shot off really fast from the gun. The course is boring and mainly all flat. This kind of course really kills me, I catch people up on the technical stuff, but then I suffer on the flats.

Still it was nice to get out there and race. I really felt it in my legs afterwards though. There was another reason other than my back, Asthma and bad start position for me not doing too well (sounds like I am listing off excuses doesn’t it?!) I crossed the line (having sprinted it out with another guy) with a totally flat rear tire.

It’s all good. I need to do a load more CX races to get myself back into shape and force my body to work hard. Sadly there aren’t too many left this year…