The races...

The races:
Due to a little finacial difficulty I was unable to race Sat’s Abos-Iraty Grand Prix de la Palombe race in this Pyrenees. So I took over as DS once more as John had the race of a lifetime.

We drove 3hours to the start a little past Pau in the Pyrenees. John had a good race and rode near the front all day. The pace was high and they covered over 40k in the fist 2 hours of racing over some rather “hilly” terrain!
I was in radio contact with John from the caravan. I gave him general info about the distance left etc, but listening to his responses I could tell he was riding well and feeling pretty happy about how the race was going. Then things got ugly! The race is a mountain top finish as it finishes atop the Col de Bagagi in the Basque country. This is the climb that the Tour went over in 2003 when Hamilton won the stage. It’s a very very steep climb. Hamilton used a conpact chainring for that climb. As soon as we hit the slopes of the Bagargi riders started popping off the back, and very soon the mountain was covered in riders. John was far from being first to drop. In fact he never really dropped as everyone was all over the mountain side. It took me a while to get up to John in the car. The commisaires kept us behind John’s group for a while as they considered that the main field. Eventually as things were getting really really strung out I was able to get alongside John and give him water, talk to him and see how he felt. I follow John all the way up the climb and kept talking to him either out the window or over the radio. The climb was absolutely brutal!!! He did most of the climb with the Basque National Champion, and he finished the race in the top 60… not bad for an all-rounder on a true climbers course. This is one I think John will remember for a long time. There aren’t very many true mountain top finish races around, and this is one of the hardest.

Sunday we were supposed to do the Pyrenean Regional TT Championships. We got up early and drove over to the race venue, only to find that for some reason they had not received our entries. As it was a TT there was no way they could take us on the day. So we sat in the car and had a very VERY disgruntled drive back home. I was really pissed as I was looking forward to that TT, and even more pissed because it means I didn’t race at all this weekend.

Still… Tim and Beth arrived on their Honeymoon Monday, so that livened things up a bit.