Build up to the Tour de France

As the Pro peleton gets ready for the Tour de France by racing National Champs, I'm getting ready for the Tour by lying in bed and drinking coffee. I've had a fairly good batch of racing recently, and I must admit I'm feeling really really worn out.

A few weeks ago I was very happy to ride off the front on the final climb to claim the Pyrenees Championships. After that I got wear my new jersey as Champion in a stage race near Lourdes. This was a pretty cool stage race with some mean stages. The Time Trial stage was rolling for the most part, but finished up the first KM of Hautacam. I was happy with 7th place in the TT stage. Another stage went up over the Col du Soulor and then finished up the climb to Cauteret. I was well placed up the Soulor in the 6 man lead group after bridging up to them about half way up the climb. Then I lost it on the very wet descent with dodgy crabon rim breaking and never got back on. I also cracked on the final climb to the finish in Cauteret. But I was still 11th overall so that wasn't too bad. As a recovery ride the day after the tour I rode up Hautacam to see what all the fuss was about. Hmm.... recovery hey?!?

Then last week I did a stage race near Bezier. On paper it wasn't a hard stage race and I had planned to focus on he the Time Trial stage and hoped to go for the King of the Moutains jersey. The TT stage I managed, but the Mountains jersey... well.. I never even saw it. The first stage was actually very hard. There was a small group off the front when I went off on a short steep climb in the final 6 or 7 km and took one other person with me. So I was 8th on that stage. The Time Trial stage went well as I rode to 3rd place on my beloved TT bike. The Mountain stage went a bit wrong and we really screwed it up as a team. Spend the day chasing. I eventually cracked on the last climb of the day. I just about managed to hang on and took the group sprint for the line. It was a long uphill drag to the finish. I don't actually know where I or we as a team finished on the final stage or in the overall. I'll post that when I find out. But overall it was a fairly good showing.

Yep, there are fat guys in France too...

So now I am trying to recover a little. Before the Tour near Bezier I was exhausted and spent the week feeling terrible. I did well in the Tour but I think the fatigue has accumulated and I want to make sure I am well rested for the Tour trip with Bikestyle. The trips are actually very demanding. The riding, although usually fairly slow, is long hours on the bike. The start times are early and the nights are usually late. OK fine, so they are late because you hang out at the Bar drinking beer with everyone... yeah yeah.. tough life. :-)

Weather has been shit here. So I'm going to wait for the sunny parts of the day and go for some medium length easy rides. Ohhh... time for more coffee.

Lonnnnggg time

Good lord. It's been over a year, and so much has happened since then. Well, on the request on Mr Sagan and Mr Sonnenburg, I've opened the blogger and am dusting off the screen.

Chances are that all the interesting things I could have to write about have actually already happenend this year and there won't be much more to write about.

Racing has been going rather well. I'm very happy with this year so far and I hope it keeps going this way. Even if things don't keep going I have already had a good year, so I have nothing to loose.

I've been really busy recently. The Tour de France is fast aproaching and I this year I am more involved than ever with Bikestyletours.com. So I'll be heading off in a little over a week for the Tour. That means no more racing for me for over a month. I'll do a lot of long miles but they will be pretty slow, so racing in August is going to be touch and go. We'll see what my fitness is like when it comes to it.

Well that'll do for today. I'll try and update this daily... hmmm.. yeah right, lets say every 2 or 3 days then.

I might be doing a Bikestyletours blog durring the tour, so watch this space to find out more about that. Don't watch this space too much though because you might find yourself watching it for a whole year with nothing changing. I am SUCH a slacker.

Just in case anyone actually reads this. Hi to Mitch you was a regular (rather THE regular), and also hi to Craig who will be giving me shit for a month durring our Tour trip. For those of you who don't know Craig, he is a regular on the Bikestyle Tour trips and is coming back this year for his 3rd or 4th trip. I can't keep count. Every year I rip the piss out of him more and more, and yet he keeps coming back. It's a bit like a science experiment... see how far you can go before something cracks. ;-)

Craig has been going on and on and on at me asking for race reports... well, here you go Craig, I'm still holding out on you on the race reports, but in the mean time you can read race reports from year gone by when I did nothing, won nothing and pretty much sucked all year long.

And as I know most people like photos on these sorts of things... here's a pic for pic's sake.

In fact if you can guess what it is a picture of and where it was taken, there just might be an autographed peice of scrap paper for the lucky winner.. so get your answer in quick. Not sure who it will be autogaphed by yet.. that you'll just have to hope you win to find out. :-)

Actually that's not a bad idea. Maybe I'll do some kind of game like this durring the Tour. Win a Bikestyle had if you can guess what the picture is.. hmm....