Pyrenees training week and recent race

A WEEK IN THE PYRENEES TRAINING:
It's summer and bloody hot here. I've only raced once in the past month, (due to work with the Tour de France) but have been doing a lot of climbing and long steady efforts. So now it's time to hit a few intervals and start preparing for some TTs.

So I'm off to the somewhat cooler hights of the Pyrenees for a week of camping, walking and short explosive intervals. I'll be riding the TT bike a fair bit as well... hmmm, TT bikes in the mountains are something of a paradox.

AUGUST 15th RACE:

On the 15th I raced the Grand Prix CastelsomethingOrOther. It was one of the hottest days of the year with temps up in the 40s!!! (That's about 9000inches, half a bucket and 12 pints Farenheit for you imperial measurement users). I could tell I was lacking short sharp efforts but managed to form the main 4 man break with one other guy on the first climb of the day. A little later 5 other guys bridged the gap up to us and I had 2 teammates with me at this stage. After the second climb of the day things started splitting up and a group of 4 went up the road with my 2 teammates in it. so I sat back with 3 other guys and did nothing. After a while the other guys wanted to wait for another group of 3 or 4 who were not too far behind us. I wasn't so kean on that but with 2 guys up the road I wasn't really going to do much.

The next 30 or so km wwe chased and chased the 4 man lead group, and with 20-25k to go they were in our sights. As we apraoched the last climb of the day which pretty much took us to the finish line, one of my teammates from the lead group had popped and we caught him. With about 3k to go, I attacked up the final climb and caught one other guy from the lead break. At the end of the day my teammate up front finished 2nd, and I was 3rd. Not too bad for a first race back after about a month and half away from racing.