Quick Update

Just a quick update.

Life here is getting hectic. It is exam time again and I am feeling very stressed.
Last week I did the Tour de Correze with the team. A BIG event that was really good fun. It was a hell of a weekend. 2 stages of 160k. Torrential rain and small ridiculously bad roads on Sat... our team car broke down half way through the race... just a long story. But it was also great. Nothing but pain and suffering.

Here is our team at the Team presentation.












That all really. Not riding much at all right now. Exams etc, Saturday I'm going to spend the day working for Bikestyle getting ready for the Giro, but apart from that, cycling is being put on the back burner for 2 weeks. Kind of sucks as I am feeling fairly good on the bike, and 2 weeks of less riding (even if I don't stop riding totally) will put me back a step.

Next update will probably be in 3 weeks when I get back from Italy.
Later y'all.

Alphonce is Midi-Pyrenees Champion!!!

Alphonce wins Championship

Click on images for a larger view

Yesterday was the Midi-Pyrenees MTB championship. I was sadly not selected for the Tour Du Lot et Garonne, so I went up to watch Alphonce race, I took my MTB that I hadn't touched in way over a year, and did the race myself.

AB (Alphonce) has been training for this championship for 6 months. Early last week he pulled a Sim, and messed up his back. He had it put back by the doctor etc... but when I spoke to him Sat evening he wasn't in high spirits. But come the day he was feeling a little bit better, and once the race had started and the blood was flowing his back muscles loosened up and relieved that pain a bit.

AB was 3rd on the starting grid, I was way back in 30th. The start was blisteringly fast, and mainly on the road. 3 guys got a good gap on the road section, I fought my way through the field and started to bridge up to the 3 (where AB was setting the pace) but I didn't quite make it up to them before we hit some downhill, rocky singletrack. I'm fairly fit at the moment, so my legs felt OK on this race, but my technical skills have pretty much totally disappeared. I was sitting in 5th place when I passed AB standing on the side of the track. His spare tube had fallen and got stuck in his chain (what are the odds). He dealt with that and came back stronger than ever, passing me and working his way back up to 1st place all within the first lap. So by the end of the day AB won by a tire's width in the sprint finish with one other guy (they did the whole race together and "off the front") and now has a nice Regional Championship jersey he gets to wear for 1 year, he also assured himself a selection for the National Championships in mid May.

Congratulations AB!!! You da man!

As for me I plodded on, finished top 10 somewhere I think, then came home and went out for a little road spin. Not a bad training day overall. I enjoyed the MTB race, but was frustrated with my riding. I need to ride the MTB more than once a year if I want to enjoy myself more. :-) But above all I was happy to see AB get a well deserved and hard worked for win. I'm happy I was there to see it, but in a way I wish I hadn't raced so that I could have watched him and taken photos of what will always remain a big day for him.

Next up: National Championships!

Bad news for AB.

I had something of an easier week this week. Well, I guess easy

is all relative. That big race Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all day in school. Actually I did something TOTALLY wild Tuesaday.. wait for it.. y'all ready.. I went OUT. I know.. crazy. After class a couple of us went out and had dinner etc. It was fun. I got home late: ie: way past my 9pm bedtime. :-)

Thursday I had a good 3or so hour ride. I felt pretty good, great views and a fair bit of sunshine. Friday was an easier day. I went into town, met someone for lunch etc. Then felt really lazy all afternoon. today I did 3.5 hours and tomorrow I think I will do an MTB race as I don't have any race obligations with the team. I have developed something of a cyst from the team shorts that are a little too small for me. So lets just say the seams are not really in the right place. So a couple of days off the bike this week have been much appreciated.

I am only doing the MTB race tomorrow because it is the Championship race, and Alphonce has been training for this one for the past 6 months. He really wants that jersey. I spoke to him today and sadly he's messed up his back and is it a lot of pain. He went to have 2 vertebrae put back into place yesterday, but it isn't looking goof for tomorrow. SUCKS!!! It reminded me that I haven't had any real problems with my back for a little while now, so fingers crossed things will be ok for a while still. I feel bad for Alphonce though, I knew exactly how he feels and how much pain he is in!!!

So..... yeah.. there you go.

Apart form that summer is on it's way for sure here. Not much else going on. Exams are fast approaching and we are organizing a class Bar B Q for next wednesday.. so that should be fun. Then it is exams until Friday 19th and Italy here I come!!!!

school soon done!

LAst week I had got a good bit of riding in. Then JP's parents arrived in town on Friday. It was a great to meet them. Really nice people! They came to our race on Monday. It was the highest ranked race before getting into UCI Continental Tour stuff. I actually had a pretty good race for once. Considering the level I wasn't planning on finishing. So I attacked from the gun. I ended up finishing 25th, which in a race of that level made me feel pretty good about myself to say the least. That morning there had been a women's French Cup race on the same course. Sadly we didn't get to see that.

I don't even know if I will be racing this weekend yet. I wasn't supposed to. But after my race on monday, they might kick someone else of the team for the Tour du Lot et Garonne and put me in. These bigger races limit the amount of riders you can enter, so that everyone has to show up with a 9 man team or something like that. So we'll see. In a way I would be pretty happy not to race. I kind of need to know what I am doing in advance and prepare myself mentally during the week. It is also the regional MTB champs on sunday, and I would really like to go and watch Alphonce race. He has been planning his season around this, and he hope to win it. It will also be part of the final selection for the National Championships for him.

Apart from that things are getting hectic here with school work. Exams finish on May 19th at 12:30... I fly out of Toulouse at 15:15 for Milan. The exams are just around the corner, so the work load is really pilling up.

Well there you go, that's pretty much it for now. Not much else to say except that it is really nice and sunny out there. Summer is on it's way for sure.

A quick thank you goes out to Scott who has been really supportive of me, has always had a kind word to help in racing and school etc... and who obviously always brings in a very interesting political comment regardless of the subject.

Thanks mate!

PS: JP has returned to the US for 2 weeks. His flight over was a mess. He might do the Ephrata stage race in PA. So if anyone sees him out there, give hhim a yell and a shout!

racing(ish)

Well yo y'all I ain't been updating this much have I?! What a slacker... pffff.
So.. here's a race report I rote for good old Scotty's RacingUnion website (www.racingunion.com)... including Scotty's little editor's note that made me laugh pretty hard.. point is.. he's right, that's what it is, but it hadn't occured to me that people might not know it. :-)


race report from the Classique Nord Charente The day before Paris Roubaix, is a "mini Paris Roubaix" in north western France.




Thursday 7th April, I get an e-mail from my DS who has just returned from the tour of Majorca saying that I am racing both Saturday and Sunday. But Saturday is not just any race.

Friday 8th, I load up my car and drive up to Castelsarrasin to the team house where I sill spend the weekend. John is at the house (of course, he lives there) and so is another team mate who is from central France in Poitier and had to spend most of the week down south for some tests being run in Toulouse. A number of other people are also at the house this weekend as Saturday morning will be an early start. We are supposed to have a team meeting Friday evening to discuss our racing schedule for the rest of the season... but in typical French style, the meeting is first put off for about an hour, and eventually put off all together. Fearing that the team meal that night might be a big plate of simple pasta with no sauce etc, John and I sneaked out to get some food, and I also needed a new cassette and some brake pads. So we hit the bike shop which was miraculously still open. I got what I needed and we headed towards the shops. Realizing that if we got some food, everyone would eat it thinking it was team food, we decided against getting actual food and sneaked into the local McDonalds for some rather inappropriate fare. Making ourselves feel better about our sinful act by recounting the story of Chris Horner's fight to get a burger and fries during last years Tour de France, we munched our food quickly and headed back to the house. The guys were waiting for us to go and eat... so we all piled into the team cars and went out to a cafeteria for dinner, paid for by the team. So John and I got in 2 meals that evening. Americans. puh. (** - see editor's note below)


Saturday, the big day. The team loaded the vehicles and got everything ready for the long drive up to northern France for the Classic Nord Atlantique. 2 cars and a mini-bus, 3 drivers and more wheels than you can shake a stick at accompanied the 11 rider team for this mini Paris Roubaix. After about 2 hours of driving, we stopped for lunch. John and I looked at each other and people started to pull out Tupperware full of food, we had prepared nothing. A moment of panic went through us until we found out that 4 or 5 of the other guys also had nothing. So the team paid for our cafeteria lunch. The choice was limited, and we needed some kind of carbs. So I went for fries and sausage, far from ideal. Back into the vehicles we piled for more driving. Eventually we get there. The team helpers get all the bikes out, get everything sorted, fill the water bottles, get our race numbers etc etc. I had put on my new chain, so I got changed and went off to shake the legs out after that long drive. 5 meters out of the parking area and of course the chain is slipping all over the old cassette. So I go hunting in the back of the van, all we have in 9 speed is a cosmic carbon with a TT cassette, so I put the cassette on my wheel and off we go to race 130km of dirt on a 11-19 cassette that isn't shifting very well anyway.



The race gets underway with a 10km neutral start, after about 20km is the first dirt section. There are 15 in total, each one named and with a big sign at the entrance with the name and distance up for all to see. The first hour of racing was at 44km average, and there was no hiding in the field, it was strung out all the way. I really didn't feel well at first, and not long into the race, that greasy sausage and fries started to come up. I threw up 3 times and got dropped twice. I sat in the cars for a while and waited until Marion pulled up in our team car. For some reason I was really thirsty and had gotten through a whole water bottle in only 30k. She told me that there was a little group of riders behind me with Thibault Marc (one of our guys) in there, so I could wait for them... she was a little surprised when I asked her for a water bottle this early into the race. In fact you are not allowed to be fed within the first 50km of the race, but I'm guessing no one saw because we didn't get a fine. Then I worked my way through the caravan and got back into the race. Sadly a little later the food came up again to say hello, and I was off the back, this time with Couscous (Christophe Cousinie, one of the area heroes who is on our team this year), he's not in great form at the moment as he was sick over the winter. I sat in and let the other guys who were with us do a little work, but seeing it wasn't doing much I took control of things. I worked my way through the caravan and got back into the race once again. I think Couscous followed me but the other guys dropped. About half way into the race, a break had got away early and we didn't have anyone in it. As we headed up a little hill John attacked at the perfect moment, it strung us all out and I wanted to kill him because here came the food again. Sadly for John it came to nothing. So we put 3 guys on the front to try and close the gap to the group off the front, the 3 were Beaudet, Parks and Trouche, then we had 3 other guys sitting in the field. As we hit another dirt section everyone flatted, there were guys all over the place. Seemed like all but 2 or 3 of us from our team flatted. A few meters later John got a flat too. This race was absolute carnage back in the team cars. Cars were stopping all over the place, they were running out of wheels, there was dust everywhere.




Seeing as we no longer had our 3 guys up front I got myself up to the front and tried to control the attacks. But by the 2nd section of dirt near the front I started to drop back as people let gaps open. Frankly from this point on I don't know what happened. There were cars all over the place, riders in ones and twos, guys crashing in the middle of the "road", motorbikes going through farmers' fields. I do remember being amazed at the amount of spectators out watching the dirt sections. We would come crashing over the dirt, through a field out in the middle of nowhere, and there were all these people just standing in the middle of a field in the north of France cheering a bike race. Well the rest of the race is a blur of dust and confusion. All I know is that less than half of the field finished. Only 2 of us from our team finished. I was quite happy to be one of them even if that northern style of riding with lots of accelerations isn't what I'm best at. I actually didn't flat. Although a lot of it is luck, I think that my years of mountain biking really helped me to choose the right gear and adopt a pedal style that minimized the risk of flatting. I was quite amazed actually because before the race I pulled out a big chunk of glass that left a big deep hole in my rear tire.

I'm pretty bummed for John who flatted, and then (maybe stupidly) waited for a team mate who also got a flat. John was riding a very smart race. Now he wouldn't have been able to do anything about the group that was off the front and stayed off the front, but I feel pretty sure John was on a good day and could have got himself a top 20 finish... which in that race would have been more than respectable.

I may not have got any flats, but I did crack my rim. I'm pretty annoyed as I now don't have a rear wheel. That was my race wheel, and I only have a really heavy and crappy shimano rear wheel now. Sucks. I also tore my saddle. After the race, it was back in the cars for the long drive home. We got in at 11pm, and it was off to do it all over again early the next morning for 150km of racing with a slightly different team consisting of 5 riders who had done the Classic Nord Charente. John and myself were there, but that's a different story. Another slightly modified team race on Monday as well. I wasn't part of it, John was the only one to do all 3 days. He didn't have to, but he chose to go monday anyway, and was totally toasted.

Classic Nord Charente (Paris Roubaix) in a few words and numbers:

130km
15 dirt sections1
st hour at 44kph
41kph average for the whole race.

website: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.baudouin/velo.htm

France 3 coverage: http://www.racingunion.org/ct.ashx?id=bad5a8f3-2b8b-492b-91d2-5496b08759eb&url=http%3a%2f%2fjt.france3.fr%2fand click on 19/20 Poitou-Charentes and then click on Dimanche 09 avril.around 7minutes in Results: 1- LEBRUN Charles Henri (CC Marmande) 2- Limoges V. (Blois CAC 41) 3- Mainguenaud (Deux-Sèvres C) 22- Pozza S. (CC Castelsarrasin) 36- Siméon G. (CC Castelsarrasin)

(** editor's note - - - there is no real literal translation for what sim is giving you here: "Americans. puh." the french have a stunning array of dismissive gestures and phrases. the gestures tend to be small. you are generally not deemed worthy of any sort of vocalization or arm waving unless you run over their citroen with tractor or you're caught stealing their heating oil or groceries. as a result, the most common thing you're likely to encounter is this "puh". it's very amusing as i knew immediately what sim was talking about. to make this work, you puff out your cheeks ever so slightly, form your lips like you're going to say the letter "p" or the beginning of the word "pug" and then push the air out your lips. the rest of your face is motionless. to add emphasis, you can supplement this with an almost indiscernable shrug or a barely detectable flick of your hand. try to look off slightly from the object of your disgust. these small gestures speak volumes. oh yah, and i'll try to get some pictures up fairly soon from the race.)

Tiaa Cref and Darren

Lill south African climber Darren might finish the season with US Pro team Tiaa Cref. Jonathan Vaughters may add Darren to his team if all goes well.

The real key for both parties is the future as Darren is still young and can still develop as a rider, and Cref will be entering the Continental Pro (Ex Division 2) ranks next year with an aim to enter the Pro tour in 2009.

It's been a lot of hard work to find Darren a team, a lot of talking, contacting negotiating etc etc, but if this works out it will all have been well worth it.

Working with J.Vaughters should be a good experience for Darren, as JV is a very knowlegable and scientific guy with a good support structure, good equipment and many invites to some great races... and of course a long term plan aimed at a solid future.

ermm.. no idea for a title.

This week was a fairly easy one for me. Lots of school work. Monday was a recovery day and then I helped Tom and Denise move house all afternoon, tue and wed was school all day. Thursday I did 3.5 hours and that's pretty much it. I leave tonight to go to the Team house. WE have a meeting tonight, then tomorrow we race up north somewhere, 120k of a mini Paris Roubaix with drit roads and all kinds of crazy shit. Then sunday is a 150k race somwhere, I don't even know where. Shoudl be fun. I'll be tired as that is a lot of hard and long racing for me who still hasn't been doing much real training, and still haven't started any intervals or anything.

Looks like we have a bunch of good raceing from now on. I'll have to take a break for exams and then I head straight out to Italy, but the racing before and after that looks good.

Villeneuve something race

Last weekend was a good race for me. We had no real leader so I was able to sit in and see where my form actually is. I was pretty happy with my performance.

Tim G won AGAIN... blah blah blah, race started with bad rain, all the usual boring race stuff, we pedaled etc etc etc

Tim G won on Sunday

Albi's New Zealander Tim G the REAL JetLag.



Sunday's race winner was New Zealander Tim Gudsell (riding for AG2R feeder team Albi Velo Sport) who had just got off the plane from Commonwealth games. Talk about JETLAG. Still I guess he must have been working pretty hard and trianing well. When you are on form you are on form. He was dropped on the last hills of the day, but found his way back to the group and is a pretty good sprinter, so he won the race in the sprint.



He did get a Bronze medal in the team persuit at the Commonwealth Games, so... good for him! A great race on little sleep. This is his first European win I believe, so I'm sure he will have gotten through a fair bit of Champaign this month.









Here is Tim on the front on his was to a Bronze medal in the Team Persuit at the recent Commonwealth Games.

the week, Hail yeah.

So sunday was nice, monday was sunny too, but I had classes etc. Tuesday was a national strike, so no classes... but it was raining on and off all day. I went out for a morning spin as someone was coming ove rin the afternoon to do some school work. I headed out for a spin, befor eI knew it it was raining on me heavilly, then I ran into one of the older guys from Cadalen who rides, and just then it started hailling.. hard too!!! My face was really hurting and I was drentched!!!! UGh

So I got home and the sun came out.. but not for long.
What a day.

Race PS

Oh yeah, our main man Julien got into the front group, attacked and was off for a solo win but was caught 10 meters from the line... he finished 7th a little dissapointed to say the least!!!

Race

Well, Sunday's race was pretty fun. I was to cover the first part of the day.. so I followed some breaks etc, just made sure we had someone in every move. I even attacked once. Not sure why, with my training (or lack there of) it was probably a bit silly, but I was an opotunity on a bit of a climb... got the field a bit strung out but it really didn't go anywhere.
Apart from the John and I were the only two to really do anything. We pulled our leader up out of the wind, then closed the gap to the main break so that he could jump across the gap at the base of a climb. It was a bit annoying because the rest of the team just sat around folloing wheels and did their own race, racing just for themselves and no one else. Luckily John and I somehow managed to finish ahead of most of them. Our aim was the get our man up front, and that's what we did. I mainly kept him out of the wind, then when we closed down the gap to the break, John but in a massive and impressive turn on the front, strung out the entire field and got everything perfectly set up for Julien (our leader) to jump across the gap without taking anyone with him.

We then formed a bit of a group of about 40 riders and rode in to the finish. I tried to controle the group so that there weren't attacks left right and center. No point "racing" at that stage, if you are so far back you need to race in a groupetto and help eachother out.

With 1k to go I was going to lead John out for our little group sprint. I hit the front, rounded a corner with about 500 meters to go and found there was a steep rise hidden behind the corner. I hit a wall and slowed down a lot. But still I think mayb 2 guys came around us, one guy took John a bit by suprise and came around him. In our group we finished 3rd and 4th I think, I'm not sure if I was 3rd or if John was... not that it really matters, the race was over by then.. but it was kind of fun.

It was a nice sunny day, so that was sweet.

Jeff Cup Mitch

PS: Mitch, I expect a full report on Jeff Cup.. well actually no, not a FULL pedal stroke by pedal stroke report, that'll get boring, but I expect to know what happened!!!!!!!! So get off your Dilbert Cubed butt and type me a report. :-)

Good luck out there mate. And to anyone else out there racing this weekend!

lots of.. stuff

What a busy week. School work is piling up... Last week I got in a nice 15hours of training (which beats the previous week's 3 hours total) and did race that new Ferrus bike. It felt pretty good. Not much to talk about race wise yet. Last weekend one of our main guys flatted, so I waited for him and helped him get back in. Sadly my race was pretty much over then and I did the rest of the race alone in a 4 or 5o man group. But I had done my job, so that's what matters. I finished in 104th place (out of 150), the rest of the team (the leaders) didn't do as well as expected, but we had a 2 or 3 guys in the top 20. Once again it was a windy race.

This week the weather has been fairly good, so despite the ever growing school work and the country wide strikes and marches against a new government law they are trying to bring in, I got in 13 odd hours of training. I'm still just mainly doing miles. I'll start doing intervals later in the year. If I hope to keep racing into November, December, January in Australia, I don't want to be fit any time soon.

JP came down and spent a few days here. He got he new team bike a couple days ago, so he built that up and we did a bit of riding.






Local frame builder Andouard leads JP (on his new bike) with Alphonce in full preparation for the MTB National Championships




















The View of Albi as we head down the hills that serround the Cathar city


Apart from that not much to say except to watch out for Scott Gibbons telling people to wear their helmets on their way to the toilet at races (Scott has joined the dark side of cycling by becoming a USCF official.) Now remember Scott.... I've put you up in my house ENDLESS times, so.. next time I'm over there, I don't care where I finish, YOU have to declair me the winner!!! Got it?!? :-)

And a final message goes out to Mitch (the only perseon who ever reads this I'm sure) who has been so hard at work he hasn't been able to surf the web. Work work work.. that's all very well, but those mountains aren't going to climb themselves Mitch (that said neither is the corporate ladder).









Mitch climbs the corporate Tourmalet

New OLD bike.

A couple of little problems have manifested themselves on my bike. So I've canibalized my TT bike and mixed a bunch of shit for this weekend. I've actually ended up with a bike that is pretty cool. The only issue is that the fork steerer tube is too short, but that's OK, I've found a solution.

Anyway I built this yesterday and will race it sunday (hmmmm.....) so I rode it a bit yesterday. Felt pretty good actually. I kind of like it. It's fairly light, nice and stiff (though it thus isn't as good in corners, that TI bike just rails it). Here's a pic.

8 days a gonna

Wow, I didn't realize it had been 8 days since my last post. Oups.

So last weekend was my first race of the season. I have mixed feelings. As I'm sure I mentioned in my previsoue posts I hadn't been feeling good on the bike for about a week. I still haven't felt good on teh bike since. So the race started OK. They moved the start forward, so I didn't get a warmup at all. Oh well. One of the big desciders of this race is a fair sized climb (a few k long) just 10k into the 100k (60 miles) race. Usually if you make it over the climb OK you'll finish in the top half. So with this being my first race I was rather nervouse and was also fairly sure I would get "dropped" (or rather not make the 1st split) on that climb. Up until the climb I did as I had been told and covered a few breaks at the front. We were to have a rider in every single break. Come the hill I felt a lot lot better than expected, so that was nice. But then repetivness of the hills and the strong cross winds took their toll. I got dropped going over the top of a hill, sat in the caravan for a while and got annoyed with one of the car that kept letting gaps open in the caravan, eventualy, after much chasing and yoyoing through the cars I got back into the race. But after a little more time I once again dropped and figured that was it for me. I quite simply am missing intervals. So I rode alone for about 30-45mins before the first chase group caught me... we rode into the finish together, did a joke sprint at the finish (joke because the race had been won 3 hours earlier) to finish in the top 50 or so. I had a case of toilet rush durring the race. It really hit about half way through. I had spent most of the morning getting intamate with the toilet and things weren't looking much better by the evening. I found out later that Francois Chulda (one of my team mates) also had some "shit" problems.

Well that's the race. I had riden a total of 3 hours all that week before the race because I had a fair bit of school work. My training is still inconsistent. The previous week I had done about 11hrs, and this week I have got in 13hrs. My training yoyos all the time. I also actually put on some weight which is a bit strange and worrying.
so monday after the race one of my classes was cancelled, so I got in 3 hours, a nice little bonus ride Tuesday (I'm usually in school all day) for a 1.5 hour sunny ride. Wed was all day of classes, thursday I got in 4 hours of riding and also got to ride with Alphonce who I hadn't seen for a while.. (I felt like shit all day, all week in fact), firday I did 2 rides and got in 2.5 hrs I think, or maybe it was 3... so I'm feeling pretty happy I got in some riding this week. Even if it doesn't show this weekend (which it won't) it's good long term.

Apart from that Darren finished 4th overall in the Giro del Capo after a "bad" time trial as he says (I thought it was rather good) where he "only" finished 6th. He also finished 4th overall int he points and took out the King of the Mountains jersey... so that was pretty sweet to follow! Good on him for that.

I haven't seen John for a while. The team asked him to stay at home as a young rider was spending the night at the team house. They've also put in a washing machine for him, which is really fucking nice of them. That's a little bit of their budget and there is a laundramat just up the street, so that'll be really sweet for him. The team is also getting him a team bike afterall, so... sweet.

I STILL haven't had my TT bars returned, so out a TT bike and I'm missing it bit time!

Ok well, that'll do for now. I have a pretty heavy school week ahead of me, so... great.

Oh yeah, one last thing... (Mitch.. GET BACK TO WORK!!!)

DArren kicks it into high gear

Cape Town South Africa.

After finishing 9th in stage1, Darren Lill kicked it into high gear over the mountainous and very VERY windy course of stage 2. Darren finished in a leading group of 5 which included 3 previouse winners of the Giro Del Capo along with 2 Tour de Langkawi winners. Darren was beaten in the uphill sprint and finished 2nd. His teammate and team leader David George (ex Barloworld, USPostal, CCCPolsat etc) finished 5th.

Darren now leads the overall Mountains Classification and is currently 2nd overall in the Giro del Capo. He will still be riding in support of David George however, so it's going to be hard for him to really prove his worth (once again). Poor Darren has seemingly spent his whole friggin' career riding for others. He so rarely gets to ride for himself that a lot of people don't realize how good he is and how much potential this joung rider has.

He'll be team leader for the Tour of China, so lets hope he can get used to the Altitude and show everyone who he really is over there. But in the meantime, who knows, there might still be the odd opotunity to ride high and well.

Darren sounded pretty pissed off about not winning stage 2. Understandable; even though finishing 2nd is pretty friggin' good. I told him he has the KoM jersey, so that's somthing to be happy about to aim for.

As I type about sunny South Africa it is bloody raining here, rained ALL dey yesterday and has been a really shitty and wet week... Hmmmm.. I can't wait until next year to be in Australia for this time of year! :-)

Giro del Capo (South Africa)

The sunny and beautifull parts of the world are giving some pretty sweet races these days. After the Australian races (Tour Down Under, Herald Sun, Geelong), and the Asian races (Tour of Taiwan, Tour de Langkawi) it is the turn of South Africa to give it's roads over to the multisolored pro peloton.

South Africa's biggest race, the UCI 2.2 Giro del Capo started yesterday. Darren Lill finished 9th in stage 1. He won this stage a few years ago and kept the leader's jersey to the end. This year however, he is riding in support of David George. Bit of a shame for Darren as he once AGAIN gives his services to another rider. When will he get to truely race for himself? Well actually fairly soon. The SA National team is putting together a team for the Tour of China, and Darren will be team leader... FINALLY!

Until then the Giro del Capo should bring us some great racing with a good international field, some stunning scenary and howfully some good results for our Lill South African Climber (or at least for his team).

boringgggg.....

Nothing much going on here. I've been in school, it's been raining.. uargh, I hate that. I can't really complain, JP had to race in that shit, and he had to do it with northern team who relish those conditions. Well there, you go. That pretty much sums the week up.

hmmmm.....

I'm back!!!

I've spent most of the week up in Castelsarrasin above Montauban at the team house, trying to help JP get settled in, and also doing some training. I've felt like shit all week though. Oh well.

I came home yesterday afternoon. I got in a nice 4 hour ride today, but still felt like shit. REally heavy. I just checked the weather and they are calling for snow tomorrow... so that's "top draw old chap".

Back to school monday, my racing season starts next sunday.
I'm tired!

bar code what?

So I started to check out Scotty G's (sounds like a rap singer.. "Scotty G") website on bar code entries and stuff... good lord. Only in France can you get a car that runs on red wine, well only in the US can you get bar-code registration. What is wrong with those ameircan's? Why do they have to keep coming up with nice easy ways of doing thing that increase efficiency? What's wrong with the good old French system on mailling in some scrap of paper that the organiser may or may not get in time...? Pfff.... actually in France the team enters you, but you know what I mean.

I'm going to have to sit down and read that interview properly some time. But first... Pizza and movie night!

And PS: a big thought goes out to G who's mom has just moved to New Mexican and she's feeling a little down.

shit intervals and red wine fuel

Pheww... had my doctor's appointment, finally! So now that my back has been seen to I feel like I've been beaten up. I'm scared to move in case it pops back out again. Oh well. So I have another appointment Friday anyway.

So I went out for a spin to see how I felt, did some hill intervals. I thought I was feeling OK until I hit the intervals... then I found out I was riding like shit today. JP was feeling pretty good, so that didn't help. :-)

Anyway, tonight is a Pizza and movie night at Jay's (Jean Yves, for those of you who know the film buff no introduction is needed; for those of you who have been over, well.. Jay is a film buff.) :-)

Here's something some of you might like, especially the Americans. One of my teammates apparently drive a total piece of shite Volkswagen Polo... that runs off... get this... RED WINE!!!!!! I haven't seen this thing yet, but I gotta check that out! It's Mathieu Lamonte's (the Credit Agricole dude), so... I'll even try and get some pics. Apparently if you sit behind it it actually smells like red wine.. great.. only in France!

Tomorrow I finally get my back checked out. I can't wait.. I'll finally be able to ride fully again. Fewww... great time, some back cracking action.

Montastruc (Monte se Truc)

Grand Prix de Montastruc. A pretty big early season race near Toulouse. A fairly warm day graced the race as a good field prepared for the 2006 edition of the race. Race distance: 140k or something, fairly standard.

Click on pics for a larger view.





Russian Pro Team Omnibike get ready



French Pro Team Jean Floc'h showed up with a dimished team, but managed a good showing


JP learns the importance of good positioning the hard way.




Navigators Pro Russian Oleg Grishkine graced the race with a far from impressive performance.


But it beats going round in circles at some US NRC Crit!

But who knows, maybe he got off the plane last night... or maybe there could be a spot for Darren over there sooner than we think.

Here Oleg wears the Russian National jersey.

John Parks and ex Credit Agricole rider Mathieu Lamote suffered the pace today.

While Julien Shick does a good race but sadly finishes in the field as he is caught

Swedish Aubervillier Pro John Nilson chases to get back on. This is the same team good old Patty Jonker raced for. Not sure Pat would recognize it... doubt he cares either... doesn't care about much does old Pat.. except sleeping "eyy".



CACastelssarasin Bouygues lead the chase group

Pro team Aubervillier (once known as Big Mat) lead the chase

CACastelssarasin cover the crash

AG2R Pro Stephane Pouilles rode a great race but was caught on the line and lost his 4th spot. Stephane joined AG2R at the end of last year, and will be splitting his time between the AG2R Develpment team (Albi Velo Sport) and the French National Team until August when he will join AG2R full time.

Stephane put in a great performance racing agresively and spending a lot of the day in the break, not bad for a sprinter!

At the end of the day the unbelievably strong Russian Omnibike team take the win with 19 year old ???? Kalashnikov. The team was all over the race today (as per usual). They covered every move, every group on the road, and got multiple riders in every break. Here the distroyed the main break to form a 3 man group in the final 10k of the race. With 2 Russians in the leading 3 man group they took the win "easily". The team has adepth, with youth such as today's winer ? Kolashnikov (what a name), Olympian Ivan Terrenin and many others who's names all sound pretty much the same. You can check their not so interesting website out on www.omnibike.ru Good luck.

More pictures might follow if I can be arsed to put them up. It gets a bit boring posting so many pics. :-)

Montastruc Training

Great. So my back is messed up again. I don't know what I did to it, but I'm totally blocked. It's so painful I wasn't able to sleep last night. Arghh... I hate this shit. I got an appointment with the doctor, but it's on Monday.

So yesterday (Thursda) I didn't have class, so JP and I went and joined some of the rest of the team to pre ride sunday's Grand Prix George Pinel course over in Montastruc. 7 of us hit the road with a follow car once again. It was rather cloudy, but it didn't rain on us. The course is mainly flat, and you ride along hill ridges for HOURS... it's a really hard Belgian style race. Lots of wind, open corners, narrow roads etc etc. There's only a couple hills, but they'll 1) be really hard as the race will hammer up them, 2) will be hard because of the change in rythem from 60k an hour on the flat to hitting a hill, and 3) the wind will play into it too. After a rather boring big loop you end up back in the start town for some small finishing loops that include a friggin WALL!!! This thing is steep and nasty.

The Montastruc wall.

Come sunday the wall will be covered in spectators 3 rows deep.

So... until monday I think I'll end up spending the days on my back with pain killers... great.

Today JP and I will probably nip into town and take care of some stuff. JP need to return something to a store in Albi; he's also got damaged threads on this crank arm, so we'll have to go to some bike shops and see if anyone has some kind of cheap crankset.

Anyway... I'm going back to South Park.

oh yeah.. how about that tour of cali.. huh.. heh.. great stuff. That's gonna be a great race. I hope cycling.tv gets coverage of it soon...

Nice... great.. yep.. uh huh

So JP got back last night. Turns out he actually had a couple pretty good races. Yesterday's stage 2 was cut short due to bad weather having brought down a tree or something... the race was even on national news because of the bad conditions. HE go in a couple a breaks etc.
Marion (our DS) sent me an e-mail and she seemed pretty happy with John, so, all is good.
There's plenty to tell, but JP will put up a post today probably on his own diary with more details.

Right now it is time for morning coffee and shit shooting....

... then some work and school.

Thursday some of the team are going to check out the Montastruc course. I won't be racing that event but I might joing them on recon as I think I'm free of classes that day. Should be sweet!

Rainshine

Today Alphonce called at some unearthly time in the morning to tell me he and Andouard (the custom frame manufacturer) were going on a ride and they'd come by and pic me up. By the time I had realized that annoying ringing was the phone, it was too late. So I got up in a daze, called him back and found out I had to eat and get my ass in gear pretty quickly to be ready in time.

So 5 of us rolled out for an EARLY ride. After about 20 mins it started raining on us big time. We were totally soacked. To make things worse I felt like crap on the bike. I could hardly pedal. After about 1 hour I loosen up and started to feel pretty good. I left the group in Albi and headed hom alone pushing pretty hard to get in a good workout. Not only was I now feeling pretty good, but the heavens seemed to copy me.. it turned from miserable rain to blinding sunshine. In fact the whole day has been that way. Rain, sun, rain ,sun, rain.

Hopefully JP didn't get any rain on the races down in the Basque country today. He just called to say they were on their way home. He should be back around 10 or 11pm.

I asked how the races had gone, he said "not too bad, erm.. interesting.. I mean, whatever, I'll tell you about it when I get back...". So there you have it. About as vague as it can be.

I'm tired.. hungry too. Ugh, tomorrow is school again. Pfff.... hey, at least the weather is slowly getting better these day. Woohoo, won't be long before we'll be riding in the sunshine and getting skin cancer. Sweet.

There's a big party/night out/ thing on thursday for all the English majors... I don't know if I'll go. PRobably not, it'll mean getting home later, not being able to drink cos I'll be driving.. ugh. It would be cool to let everything go for once though. I know if I go I'll get plastered, spend the night god knows where, then regret it because I can't ride as well the next day. Riding is much more fun than drinking.. yeah, I'll go riding, screw the night out!

Steph', training for his operation


As for me.. I felt pretty dead for some reason today. Shame because it was a nice day out there. Stephane came over and we went out for a little spin. That suited us fine, I was tired and needed some recovery, and Steph' is getting operated on in a few days for a Hernia, so he wanted to take it easy.

Maybe my doctor's visit and "spinal trauma" yesterday combined with the riding tired me out...

Apart from that I ate shit loads of chocolate today.. hmmm.. .nice!






Sim takes one of his cutomary frequent pee stops.

News from racin' JP

I just spoke to JP. Today was his first BIG race with the Pros. He said things couldn't have gone worse. At the drop of the flag, there was a crash, he was cought behind it and spent the whole race playing catch up. The race ended with 5 finishing loops in town, he did 1 loop and dropped out. There are 200 riders on the start line of these races, and once you get dropped it is VERY hard to get back on. Even though the race caravan is VERY long in these races, with not only all the team cars, but sponsor cars, press cars, commisairs, VIPs etc etc, which all make it easier to get back on, it is still very hard. Trust me, I know, I was dropped quite a few times in those races a couple years ago, and bouncing through the caravan and getting back on is VERY hard. Even when you de get back on you have usually felt SO much energy on the road that you are pretty much doomed anyway.

They have luckily changed the format a bit from when I did those races, so now you can still race Sunday if you don't finish Saturday. That means that John can still race tomorrow's 2 stage. They were off to get some food, before a good nights sleep in preparation for day 2 of the Essor Basque tourture fest 2006! :-)

Pro teams present

My day ended with a trip to the Osteopath Doctor... this guy used to work with the National rowing team. He's strange, he always seems really grumpy, but he does a great job. He messed around the my back and pelvis, hopefully that will take care of my knee. I'll make sure I keep stretching it.

I just got of the phone to JP. They are still in the car (it is 8pm) driving from the Mediterranean to the Basque country. He seems OK, maybe a little apprehensive about these races. Just finishing these races is no mean feat. There will be 3 full blown UCI Pro teams: the French Jean Floc'h team, the Russian Dynamo team (With Olypian Ivan Terrenin and some guys who's name I can't remember who won Gold on the track in Athens) and the Belgian Flanders Team. Also there will be a who's who of top level amateur teams. The amateur teams are equivalent to US Divition 3 Pro teams... only with a bigger budget and usually better riders. You can check it out at http://www.essorbasque.com/ and you can find results on http://www.velomania.net/

There are usually also some Spanish team there, like Serbitzu and Euskadi, but it doesn't look like they will be there this time. In the past FDJ, AG2R and RAGT have also done it, but they must all be somewhere else... Tour of Portugal on Tour du Haut Var I guess.

Ok, I gotta go eat and stretch..
later y'all.

The Fench Jean Floc'h Team

Belgians Flanders

Russian team Omnibike Moscow

Miles apart.

As I've been sitting in Class all week, John Parks and the rest of the team have been pilling on the miles. The team did 160k on Monday including a Time Trial race in Spain... they did 170k on Tuesday, a 90k road race in Spain followed by 70k ride home to the hotel on Wednesday... I sat on my ass all 3 days! John seems to be getting on fine. I've spoken to him a few times, and also have been constant contact with Marion our Directeur Sportif. She's worried he will end up feeling left out because he doesn't speak the language... but I think JP knew that coming in. Other than that she says he's getting on fine. Some of the younger guys are getting tired, but it sounds like JP is still going strong. This weekend will be his first BIG race. And when I say big it is BIG.. there are some Pro teams there etc. So we'll see how that goes.

YEsterday rainned all day here, so I did intervals indoors. Today I met my buddy Alphonce for a ride. Alphonce (AB) is looking pretty good. He's seriouse about getting selected for the National MTB championships. One of the first selection races was this past weekend. AB won the race. It was his first victory at that level, and he isn't even on top form yet. Hopefully he'll get selected for Nationals, and he might even pull off a good ride there. Rumour has it that he will even get a brand new fully custom, hand built bike in time for Nationals.. SWEET!
Quite a few of you who've come over here know AB; he's a really cool guy and I would love to see him pull something special off!


The long road to fitness.



So I met AB for a ride, we got in 3 hours. At first I didn't feel great, but after a while I felt pretty solid. We did a loop with a bunch of short steep hills... I then left him in Albi and headed home via the hills of Carlus... these are a series of 4 hills that are at 9%. As soon as I got home I jumped on my TT bike and went out for a Time Trial test/interval. I did pretty well considering I already had 3 hours of riding under my belt. I averaged 288Watts.. I wanted to average 300Watts, but that's Ok. So I got in about 4 hours today.. not a bad day.

The Time Trial controle pannel: I like to get as much info durring myTT tests.


It was pretty windy out there today. I have noticed over the past couple years that I am unable to put out much wattage in a head wind. IF there is no wind or a tail wind I can put out big wattage, but not as a head wind. I've tried changing position, cadence etc.. but it chances nothing. Hmmm...

Tomorrow should be a long one.. but they are calling for rain, so we'll see.

I'm gonna go call JP and have a chat to him about tomorrow's race. These races really are big and pretty scary. They are like the biggest Pro races in the US. So I'll chat to him about a few things and see how he's feeling about tomorrow.

France is still a country of tradition: Sheepdogs are still common in these parts.

Life goes on.

Some days are like that.. there's something about life that just gets you down. Anyway, I had classes this morning, then came home and headed out for the usual ride. My knee was hurting a bit today. I got in a nice little 80k (50miles) under blue skies and sunshine. The first day in I don't know long that I was able to go out without having a wear a big winter hat.
It was good to get out, get some air, and try to change my thoughts a little. I felt like I was being followed all day, like I was in someone's shadow... I don't know, I can't explain it.

I called JP this evening to see how he's getting on. The team rode over to the Time Trial today, did the time trial, then rode home. Apparently it was a little longer than they had planned. John says they rode about 170k today.

The TT went OK, nothing special... the ride was good and he says he's settling in and getting on with people. It sounded like he was feeling a little better about everything, was finding his feet and getting to know the team, so that's good. Tomorrow they will be doing another fairly long ride, then race on Wednesday... I'll be sitting in school getting no faster at all!

Recovery... + JP head south.

After 2 pretty hard days of riding, today was a nice little recovery day. So JP and I spent the morning drinking coffee and watching TV. After that we went out for a nice little spin down by the Tarn river and around the lake at Ambialet, where John tried to improve his bike handling skills at a BMX park.





He still needs improvement!!!!






The good thing about recovery days is that you get to come home and sit on your butt with a big plate of steeming hot food. We threw together some rice and Omlets and headed back to the TV for some more relaxing. It's a hard life...

John packed his stuff up and we headed into Gaillac for a while to take care of a few tings, then met up with Christophe Cousinie who picked JP up to drive him down to the Border town of Amelie les Bains where the team training camp is. Again I'm not going because of school... Arghhhh!

As John drove off to spend 3 hours sitting in a car with someone he wasn't going to be able to say one word do seeing as he speaks no french, and Christophe (Couscous) speaks no english, I think John was actually pretty nervous. He's got a pretty heavy week ahead of him. Not only will he meet his teammates and have to try and fight the language barrier, but he will also be piling on the miles in the Pyrenees on the training camp, as well as doing his first races for his new team. Monday he races in Spain, Wednesday he races in Spain again, then he might race in the Basque country next weekend, not sure yet, they'll see how he does in Spain and go from there.

JP heads off to Spain with teammate Couscous.

ERhmmm.. riding.

Over the weekend JP and I have been hitting the roads. Nothing unusual about that for JP who's been piling on the miles all winter, but it's done me the world of good. Friday we headed out for 3 hours of hard riding, a lot of hills and some wind over towards the Cordes and Penne valley area. Then in the evening we had a totally wild night out!!! Oh yeah, we went out for a night on the town... we went out to BINGO!!!! hmmmm... it was good for John as it helped him learn his numbers, so now when the team yell over the radio some race numbers to follow, or KM markers John will know what's going on. We got it so totally late from our night in the city, in twas like midnight.. straight up.. for real.. midnight. Good lord we are SO wild down here in southern France. And that's not the best, the totaly hip and happening thing is that we STILL went out training the next day! Are we wild or what?!!!

So today (Saturday) we got up, had coffee, you know.. the tough life. Then we rode into Albi and joined a group ride. We got in a little over 3 hours, cam home, then went straight out for another easy spin, like 45 mins or so. I took my TT bike.

You heard of Dirt Crits? Know about CycloCross?

well check out the new rage in France: CycloDirt TT!

All in all a good day, some 4 + hours of training.

Tomorrow John goes down to the team training camp in the Pyrenees. He'll race a TT in Spain monday, a road race in Spain Wednesday, then team training... then I will most likely do some BIG races the next weekend in the Basque country before coming back, either here or to the team house.

As for me, well I'll pack my big butt on a seat in class and do that thing... hmm.. :-(
If all goes well John has the opotunity to get selected by the team for the Tour of Majorca, a tour on one of the sunny spanish islands.. major cool race!!!! I'm SO jealouse!!!

The eagle has landed...

John Parks arrived a couple days ago. I've spent the last few days in class.
Today we went to Albi and got a bunch of stuff done. We had to get some medical tests done for John's license, get a few things taken care of. It took the whole day.

In the evening just before sun down we got out for a little spin, that was kind of good.

Sitting bike, but chairs mainly.

A week of mainly sitting on my ass listening to some dude drone on about something dreadfully dull, interrupted only by the odd class of something fun and actually interesting. As per everything in my life, it appears that even university is a world of extremes, either extremely dull, or extremely interesting. We only got one result back so far from that interminable spell of exams a little while ago, and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t disastrous, and it is in a subject that really isn’t my strong point… I think my French spelling let me down some, anyway…

So Thursday I got out on the bike finally to do some Simeon Green style training… if you don’t know what that is, it is a form of training dubbed “catch up training”. I always feel like I am behind everyone else who races, and I feel that every time I go out, it isn’t just to train, but to try and catch up. That’s a little unfair to myself and I think I need to get that thought out of my head. I’m generally doing a lot less riding than in the past, but I’m doing longer rides for this time of year and in the winter weather. Actually my asthma has improved over the past couple months, so I’m able to train better. I hope it lasts. So I got the new road bike out for only it’s second ride. In 4 degree weather I headed over to the beautiful town of Cordes that all of you who have been over know well (that’s the town with the cobbled climb). From there I rode on over Vaour


In the Aveyron valley, and headed back via the hills. A great ride with a fair bit of climbing, some great views enhanced by the snow still sitting by the site of the road on the more shaded sections.

After 3.5 hours I got home, took the TT bike out for a very short spin to check my position that I have been playing with (not happy, not more alterations) and then hit the weight bench. I somehow managed to smack my knee on the stem of the bike during a little sprint today, it hurt a bit… and then while lifting weights my knee made a rather scary noise a bit like material ripping. My legs really hurt on Friday. France's very own Stonehenge on the road to Vaour

Friday I did a little easy ride, spent some time working on my TT bike position, making sure everything was UCI legal etc.





Measuring up: fitting the bike into the UCI limits












Then I did some school work and finished off with a nice little trip to the movies.
Today (Saturday) I feel pretty rough. My back has been playing up again and my knee still hurts a bit. I’ll be heading out in the cold and wet weather for a 4 hour ride with a group in Albi today. I’ll start and see how my various body parts feel and take it from there.