Back home... and racin'

The flight back home to France via Germany was pretty painless for once. Although I’ll miss a lot of people, and although it is sad the “adventure” has come to a close, it’s nice to be back home. Nice to be able to drive down a narrow road at 80 mph. Nice to not have a slow person in a big powerfull Chevy stop on the side of the road because you are driving on the same stretch of extremely wide road. Nice to find all my beloved cheeses again, Nice to find my collection of wheels and endless bike crap… best of all, nice to get back to racing!

I Left the US Tuesday evening, (Where Greg announced over airtraffic controle to everyone that he was wishing me good luck for my upcoming races) arrived back in the south of France on a wonderfully warm and sunny Wednesday. Then raced the Team Time Trial Championships Thursday.
I left for the race Thursday on my own as the event wasn’t too far from my house and I was meeting the team there. I got off late… then realized I had forgotten my cycling shoes… so turned back around to get them.
Then as I got off the motorway I got all disorientated and took a wrong turn, effectively going back the way I had just come. Anyway, I eventually got there nice and late… but as it turned out our start time wasn’t for a couple hours anyway.

The race was fun. We had a really good group of 4 (3 had to finish) and we rode better than we have ever ridden before. Technically for a TTT we couldn’t have done much better…Ironically however, we didn’t do as well as in the past or as expected. Although we rode better and although our time was better than the previous 2 years, we only finished 4th. A pretty crappy place to finish. I’d almost rather be 6th and clearly out of it. The last 2 years we finished 3rd and 2nd… and this year, no medal. :-(

Oh well.
Next will be the Boucles du Tarn, then off to ride from one end of the Pyrenees to the other with Thomson bike Tours for 8days, then it’ll be time for the International Tour of the Pryenees.. Hmm… I might need to get in some climbing before then, The flatlands of the US won’t be helping me much up the Aspin and company.

Thanks to everyone everywhere. The Shep for putting us up in AUS, to Greg for the hospitality in the US, to Todd for the hospitality and the use of a car! The Rick for “everything” to Tim for all the obvious stuff, to Lisa for keeping me somewhat sane, to Jim for the beers… to Chris Hayes for giving me endless SHIT, to JP for making the racing fun and to Haymarket and NCVC for having me guest ride with them.

Now, it’s 5am, I’m awake for some reason (Jetlag I’m guessing) and it’s time for a coffee watching the sun come up over the hills behind my house.