Roo Hunting

This afternoon I decided to go Kangaroo hunting. I got on the bike for a recovery ride, took the camera with me and went off in search of the ultimate Australian symbol. I thought things were looking good when I saw the signs along the road warning of Kangaroos, but alas it was not to be. I was hoping to at least see some exotic wildlife… colourful birds, or big snakes or something, but it will have to be for another time.

I did however find some interesting “bush” and views… lots of dried up trees in swamps and what have you.

No crocs here (luckily)... but Crocodile Dundee could pop around the corner any mintue
Photos available at http://webphotos.aol.fr/galleries/green.simeon@neuf.fr

Hill repeats and coffee

Last night just before going to bed for an early night (as I felt so really bad) I had the best Pineapple I have ever tasted in my life! It was an Aussie pineapple, and it was so sweet and tasty I couldn’t get over it. Still can’t get over it in fact. Come to think of it… I might have to sneak into the fridge and have some now!

A good night’s sleep was just I needed, but I still awoke feeling pretty rough. My very kind host Shep dragged me out on the bike for some big gear hill intervals on a bloody steep hill just outside of town going inland. By the time we had finished those painful hill-reps, I was starting to come around and feel a little better.

The Aussies love to finish off ever ride with a stop at the coffee shop (or café to sound a little less yank) and today was no exception. You won’t hear me complaining about the coffee stop habit as it’s a great and peaceful way to finish off the morning. What’s more I was starting to feel pretty good on the bike by the time we hit the Mooloolaba Coffee Club, and that relaxing coffee overlooking the beach was just what I needed to make me feel ship-shape again.

The Aussies love to finish off a ride with a stop at the coffee house.

This afternoon I will try and go “roo hunting”. Apparently Kangaroos come out into a little field by the road just behind the housing estate here, and I would really love to see some, and get a few good pics of Skippy! Fingers crossed!

Long ride in the hills

This morning I turned off the alarm and stayed in bed. I felt really really tired for some reason. I was supposed to meet a group up in town to go riding while Craig went for a run. I really didn't feel like it though. And as I was lying there in bed, I heard this tremendous downpour outside, and felt a lot less justified in missing the early morning ride.

So instead I went riding this afternoon. I went out for a nice 3 hour ride. I sometimes put directions on a piece of sticky paper and stick it to my stem or my handlebars... but not always. Needless to say I got a little lost, but it all worked out. I ended up going up the mountains and riding along the ridge. The road was actually a pain in the ass as it is full of really really short steep hills. Anyway the view from up there was stunning. On one side I could see all the way to the ocean, and on the other side I could the mountains disappear off into the distance.

About half way through the ride I started feeling dizzy and got a little worried. So after a really fast (but straight, no fun and interesting corners) descent I stopped off at a little shop for a chocolate bar and some water.

I then rode home via some roads that were a little bigger than I had hoped. I good part of the ride home was on Steve Erwin road (Steve Erwin was "the Crocodile mane", that crazy guy who did all those TV shows about dangerous animals. His zoo is just up the road from here. I'll have to go that one day!

It was a good little ride. And one I really needed to get out of the way. My first longish ride here, my first ride alone, and the start of my training for the 2008 season.

Now that I am home however I must admit that I am totally exhausted. My neck and back are killing me. I have a terrible headache. It's a horrible feeling. I don't know what has brought this on though. I had plenty of food, I thought I had had enough to drink. Anyway...

First time to the beach.

What another perfect day!!!! Christ what a life!!! Out for a nice ride in the hills and "rain forests" of Queensland. Some nice long hills with really great views of the valleys. Came home and went straight off to the golden sandy beach in Mooloolaba for sun, sea and sand. All that before lunch. There's still time for some relaxing and another ride this afternoon.

Craig came through with the goods again today. On our ride we saw a snake, and a couple of bright blue birds. Obviously I didn't have my camera on the ride, so.... sadly no pics of the "critters". I'll get them before I leave in 4 months time though!

After all that I did also get out for another short ride in the afternoon. And then a few of us went for a lovely little pub meal no a terrace over looking the port.

"Oz mate, it's GREAT!"

What a GREAT day!

(Click on pic for larger image)

We were planning to go for a longish 3 hour ride in the hills of the "hinterlands" as they call it here. But with the threat of storms all day and some very grey skies when we woke up this morning... it took very little to convince us that today might be a nice day to go have coffee in a cafe on the beach and do nothing all day. After our coffee in Mooloolaba we went to shopping mall and had a look around. After that Craig decided it might be a good idea to show me some of the roads we were planning to ride on today.

We ended up having a stunning drive though the hills of Queensland. These are some great roads, and I can't wait to get out there on the bike. We stopped off at a lovely little town with buildings that reminded me of New-Orleans. The whole town was in bloom with beautiful flowers.

From there we went on to a park where we went for a short walk to a little waterfall in the rain forest.

We saw loads of birds, flowers, little lakes with waterlilies... Stunning... need I say more?

So in the past 2 days Craig has managed to show me Sharks, Dolphins (which we saw yesterday evening), Coucousomething-or-others (birds), Geckos and Ibises. He tells me Kangaroos are pretty easy to come across, and Koala bears aren't too hard to find either... The pressure is on him to keep finding exotic new creatures to show me over the next 4 months. :-)

We finished this little "safari" off with another relaxed coffee on the beach-front cafes of Mooloolaba. What a perfect day! And all that by 3pm............

I took a million photos. A good number of which are on:
http://webphotos.aol.fr/galleries/green.simeon@neuf.fr

"Oz mate, it's GREAT!"

Life in Mooloolaba

After going up to Noosa last night, I got dropped off at Craig Shepherd's place in Mooloolaba where I will probably spend a fair bit of time. Craig has very generously opened up his house to me. We got up this morning at 4am and were on the bikes at 5am. We rode down the coast a little bit and were back in Mooloolaba for coffee in a cafe overlooking the beach. I could stay sitting there all day... it's really peacefull, the ocean is right in front of you, and everybody here is into fitness and triathlon, so there are people running past every 5 minutes, surfers wondering down to the beach, and people sitting down watching the world go by from nice little cafes.

It's a beautiful place over here. Nice and hot. Must be in the high 20s or 30s today. Ahhhh... what a tough life!

Day 2

Yesterday was a nice day, we went up to Noosa to see Fred. The guys doing the training camp are being lodged in a someone's house. This guy who's house it is has been on a couple of our trips in Europe. The house was absolutely amazing. Worth a few million apparently. Massive place that sleeps 15, situated right on a little private beach, with a view over the sea to a little island/jetty of land. After chatting about the house with a few of the guys there, one of them told me that this place was only the guy's holiday/weekend home. He has another million+ dollar place in Brisbane.

I'm a little tired, so it might take me a while to recover and be able to describe things a little better over here...

First day in Oz

Yesterday's ride was nice. We went up one side of the river in Brisbane, then crossed over and came back up the otherside, through the Center of Brisbane, through the national Botanical Gardens, past the National Library and Museum. On our way back we stop in at a bike shop to say hi to a mechanic I know. He didn't know I was coming over and it took him a minute to realize it was me.

On the way home we got a call from Jack Stevens, (someone who came on this year's Tour de France trip, and who had also come on the 2005 Tour de France trip.) So I was invited to dinner with a couple guys from this year's trip including Russell Poole who was in town from Melbourne. I wasn't sure I would get to see him, as Melbourne is a long way from here, so it was great to find out he was in Brisbane.

By the time we had finished dinner and were back home, I was starting to feel pretty tired. And seeing as there's a ride planned for 5:30am tomorrow morning, It's off to bed for a well deserved sleep, at 9:00pm.

So It's now 4am Wednesday morning (7pm Tuesday evening over in Europe), I had a good little sleep, and I'm about to have breakfast before our tide. I might get in another ride this afternoon up in Noosa with Fred Morini (the Italian guy who works for us) as he's running a training camp up there and we are going to go and see him.

I’m off to see the Wizard…

The eagle has landed…
Here I am. After 26 hours of flying, I’m in OZ!!! The flight really wasn’t that bad. It actually seemed a lot shorter than the 6 hours to Cameroon for some reason.

Everything went smoothly and despite a little delay on the first of my 3 legs (from Toulouse to Frankfurt) mean I only had 30-40 mins to get off the one plane, get across the airport and onto the next plane, my luggage and bikes actually made it across and arrived earlier this morning in Brisbane on the same flight as me.

The weather here is hot. Not too hot but it is hot. Beautiful and sunny!!!
I’m putting my bike together as I’m about to go for a ride with Terry Peters (a Bikestyletours guide who also lives in Brisbane).

Tomorrow I might go up to the town of Noosa and see Fred (an Italian Ex-Pro who also works for us and happens to be over here as well. He’s going home to ITA on Sunday).

Right.. I need to finish my bike.

In the meantime here’s a pic I took of a bird. I have no idea what kind of bird it is… but it is a bird.

And yes, that is just a flower… but just to say it ain’t winter here! :-)

Pack it in!

Only 3 days now until I fly out for a fun loving 30 hours of flying.

I have spend a LOT of time over the past few days calling airlines etc and trying to get some solid and reliable information on luggage allowance. I've ended up hiding 2 bikes instead of 1 in my bike bag. So I've protected my road and TT bike as much as possible and put them both in 1 bag. Looks good to go. I hope they don't get damaged or crushed, but what can you do... wait and see.

I haven't ridden again for 3 days. I wanted to take 2 days off after the so called CX race. Then yesterday it rained all day and I was running around doing errands before I go. So hopefully I'll got out today on one of my spare bikes.

Oh yeah, and interestingly I got an e-mail from Larry yesterday... in his e-mail he mentioned something to the effect that he and a few people in warrenton actually still read "Sim's Daily Dribble" of a blog... I thought only Craig and occasionally Mitch scanned through this junk. So, here's a test to see if I get any comments from people. :-)

Larry has recently opened a new bike shop in conjunction with the one and only, the legendary "Drunk" Timmy D (who's like a brother to me), in my beloved town of Warrenton. Hopefully I'll get over there to see or it soon. Anyway the shop is called the Warrenton Cycling Center, so if you are ever in the Warrenton area, pop in and say hi (and spend lots of money! :-) )

Who the hell is Larry?:

For those of you who don't know Larry, Larry is a guy I met while I was living in the US. Larry came in to the shop one day and slipped right into the banter and enthusiasm of the little cycling community we had there. We soon found out why; Larry was used to it. He'd been a bike racer full time in his younger years and spent a year or 2 racing in Belgium. At the time Larry was getting back into riding and was full-on "old school", steel frames, 700X25 tires, it was great.

Larry has since gotten back into riding and has also spent a fair bit of his time organizing races and helping out rider. He helped John PArks out as much as he could last year was John was in France, and has helped me out a fair bit with getting back over to the US for a few races such as the Tour of Virginia back in.. erm.. 2005 I think it was.

Sick and Cross

I'm only here another week, and for some reason I seem to want to get in at least of couple of Cyclocross races this year before I head over to the hot and sunny Australian winter/summer. So despite my cold, I packed up my cross bike and a stack of handkerchiefs, pumped myself full of the medicines the doc gave me and headed towards Toulouse for some cold and crazy Cycloccross action.

It was sort of fun. Probably not the best idea I have ever had. I felt pretty bad after the "race" (race is in inverted commas, because I'm not sure you can call what I did "racing") and pretty much collapsed for a couple hours as soon as I got home.

Again I haven't seen the results, but needless to say it won't be one of my proudest moments. Alphonce had a good ride, and is looking fit for the rest of the winter season.

Long ride and Cross pics

CycloCross pics (click on pics for larger images)

I spoke to my buddy Alphonce today. He lives in Carcassonne and I rare get to see him anymore. It looks like the CX race tomorrow might be the only real chance I get to see him before I leave. He also told me he had seen pics of last weekend's Cross race that I did. So with his guidance I went hunting and found them. Seeing as I have little else to write about these days... apart from being sick and leaving for Aus next Sunday... I thought I may as well share some of the CX pics.

Sim's chain slipped off 4 times, leaving his teammate Sylvain to ride away from him for 11th place

While Villemur/Mapei team mates Laurent Marty and ex-US Postal stagiaire and ex-French National Champ Julien Almensa rode away for 4th and 1st respectfully

Long ride 2day
I went to the Doc's yesterday and found out that the reason I've been feeling a bit shit, is quite simply because I'm sick. I thought it was just the change in the weather and what have you, but no. So I am taking a whole bunch of medicines. Great. Part of the reason I was so keen on going to Australia for the winter was to avoid the cold here and avoid getting sick. Oh well. That's life.

I hesitated to go out on the bike today. I didn't touch the bike yesterday as I felt terrible. Really tired and ill. It was a little sunny out today so I hauled my ass out the door and went into Albi to join a group I sometimes ride with in the winter. As it turned out I didn't feel too bad on the bike, and I got in a nice 3.5 hours with 4 intervals. I felt OK and wouldn't have minded extending the ride a little, but I didn't think it was wise. Especially as I'm planning to do a CycloCross race tomorrow.

Fat Boy: Sim puts on weight

WOWWWWWWWW... shock to the system.

The past few weeks have been off the bike, having lots of aperitifs with beer and chips, Pringles etc, and then to cap it all off we had Racklette at some friend's the other day... Racklette for those who don't know is melted cheese and meat. Result: 4 kilos overweight!!! How's that! I hardly ever put on or loose weight. Maybe a kilo or a kilo and a half max between winter and my fittest point of the season. I wasn't very happy as you can imagine. So as you can guess, (despite another Racklette at some friends' place last night which has probably put me back up!) I had to take control of things. So a couple days with little to eat in the morning, no lunch and a return to the office (the bike) for some 2-3 hour rides and I was back down to an acceptable and usual winter weight. Thank goodness... now I just have to keep on top of things, and keep piling on the miles.

C.C.C. (Cold Cyclo Cross)

Cyclocross season is upon us

Yep oh yeah, it's that time of year again. The leaves are falling, the mornings are misty and the temperature has dropped like a led balloon, yep, the CycloCross season is back!

After very little riding these past few weeks due to a much needed rest, I embarked Sunday on some winter cycling craziness. Seeing as it is only a week until I leave for Australia, I wanted to get in a couple Cyclocross races before leaving. Not because I need the racing... in fact that's about the last thing I need. I need to train before I can start racing. I wanted to get in a couple Cross races because this is the only chance I'll get this season.

I knew it was be very hard an painful, and that it would take a good few weeks of specific CX training before I even started to feel OK on the CX bike, but what the heck, a bit of fun playing around in the mud couldn't do any harm.

The race was fun, I felt like I did miserably, and although my placing was far far from anything to write home about (15th), I was actually surprised and how easily and comfortably my HeartRate went up and dealt with the race.

I need to do a little work on my CX bike because I ended up with big blisters on my hands. I never used to get blisters back when I raced CX properly, so I feel pretty sure it is a set-up issue.

Next Sunday I will do another CX race at "Le Fousseret" with my buddy Alphonce who I haven't seen for a while, and the Sunday after that.... it's Oz here I come!

New Cameroon Photos.

There are some new photos from Cameroon on http://webphotos.aol.fr/galleries/jetlagsports@neuf.fr/

Including some of the views and area, as well as some more of the race.

Ou DS (Alex) stayed on in Cameroon for a little over a week after we all came home. He went to see the Douala (a city in Cameroon) training center and did a little traveling around. He has shared some of his really great pics with us.

Apparently the Douala Training center is pretty well equipped. It is owned and run by a Frenchman, and the riders on their Elite squad get a salary. Not bad for Cameroon. Hopefully we will see more and hear more from the guys soon!

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James, Scott and Sim after stage 2 in Yaounde after 170km of sunshine and rain.

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Past couple days (back in cold and wintery France)

Yesterday I got out for a brisk couple hours on the bike. It was only 6 degrees out there, though I thought it was a bit more... at least I didn't get rained on. I had a nice spin and took a couple pics on the way. 2 days ago I went out on the Cyclocross bike. I am probably going to race it tomorrow and thought I should at least see if it is all working well enough since I rebuilt it recently. I haven't felt great the last couple rides, but thanks to the trusty Power Tap I know where I stand.