New Photos from TTT (from last month)

These photos have just come in of the Team Time Trial Champs I did the day after getting back here from the US. (I know it's been like a month, but we are in France afterall, with the exception of racing we do everything at a different pace over here!)
Just thought I'd share them.

Disclaimer for all US people: One picture shows a rider not wearing a helmet, F'in' deal with it!

Castelsarrasin/Bouygues Telecom warming up for our TTT run

We worked well as a group

The course, being French, included the usual hills...

The Final lunge for the line after was painfull

G.S.Blagnac beat us

As did Madiran with the current ITT champ

Tour International Des Hautes Pyrenees.

Not a bad race. I wasn’t sure how fit I was going into this. Having done a BIG week in the mountains as training a little under a week before this stage race, and having caught a bit of a cold during that big training period… also not sure if I had any real “punch” in the legs of just good endurance.

Training on the Specialized sporting the Cycling Center shorts in the Pyrenees. Over 900km of mountains in 1 week. Is that enough to get ready for the Tour International des Pyrenees?

Stage1: 98km

The stage started off fairly flat and it wasn’t long before I was thinking that maybe I would quit the sport. Cycling is a hard sport and I really wasn’t feeling too good. I wondered why I was bothering with all this and was feeling like I would last too long in this race. Then we started to hit some hills and I was seemingly able to hold my own. The finale saw us climb a pretty long climb about 20k from the finish. Come the top of that climb I was feeling a little better. There was a group off the front, but at the top of the hill I attacked the group and got some pretty good king of the mountain points. Then we had a good downhill followed by a steep 5km climb to the finish line. With a couple km to go we could actually see the breakaway a little ahead of us. So with 1k to go, I attacked and tried to catch the breakaway group on the line. I caught a couple of the guys, but there was a Spanish rider 2mins up the road already. So I finished 5^th and got a few more Mountain points.

Stage 2:

The Yellow Jersey group up the Aspin

Day 2 had us doing 165km. The first part of stage 2 was around the valleys, then we hit the Col d’Aspin where things got interesting. I found myself in the yellow jersey group up starting the Aspin with a few guys from the early breakaway up the road. The attacks came thick and fast. The yellow jersey group got wittled down to 4 or 5 of us. The attacks kept coming and I eventually had to let 3 guys ride away from me. I caught one of them pretty quickly, but 2 french guys and the Spanish yellow jersey stayed up away. By the top I had caught all but one or two of the early breakaway riders and crested the summit of the Col d’Aspin in 6^th place alone. I hit the descent pretty hard and had 25km of valley road before a 3km uphill finish. According to my director in the team car, I rode most of the valley road at 70kph, and after a long, hard and lonely chase, I caught a 3 man group ahead of me. The yellow jersey was further up t road. Come the finish I we sprinted it out and I got yet another 5^th place on the stage. Moving me up to 4^th overall on the General Classification, and 6^th in the Mountains Classification.

Stage 3 was 97km back out of the big mountains towards the foothills of the Pyrenees. We had done some calculations and found that even if I took all the remaining Mountain points I could not take the jersey. So I totally gave up on that idea and focused on keeping my place on GC.

The stage was pretty nervous. I hated it. Small roads, wet and damp roads, lots of ups and down but no “real” hills. We had a guy in the break all day until a short climb 5km from the finish. The guy in 5^th overall attacked the yellow jersey on this climb but it didn’t go anywhere, so I countered in the hope of getting a little time to consolidate my 4^th spot overall. Over the top we all looked at eachother too much and the the group came back together. We almost caught the remains of the early breakaway on the line. Sadly for us we didn’t quite catch them as our sprint took the field sprint for 5^th only a couple wheels lengths behind the breakaway group. I finished not too far behind him and kept my 4^th place overall.

So overall not a bad International Tour of the Pyrenees. 4^th place overall and… actually I’m not sure where I ended up in the mountains classification.

New Time Trial Bike

Time trials. I’m not THAT good at them but I do like them. I have pulled off a few good TT results here and there. I might not be the fastest guy out there, but I can usually hold my own.

Wheels: ever important, at Castelsarrasin/Bouygues we have a wide choice of Mavic Cosmic Carbons, Hed 3s, team disc wheels (by Corima I think) and Spinergy front wheels, take your pic according to the conditions.

Although there is no TT in the tour of the Pyrenees, and not every stage race has a TT in it, training on the TT bike regularly I believe is a must if you want to perform somewhat reasonably.

So with that in mind, I recently got my grubby little hands on a nice new Jamis TT bike. Now apparently this bugger has the best wind tunnel test results without a rider. The Jamis also have a patented supers fast fork and hidden front break. The rest is pretty standard for TT bikes these days. Aero frame, internal cable routing, hidden breaks…

The Patented design hides the breaks out of the way of the wind... though frankly I think more training would make a bigger difference to my TT times, but whatever...

Break the wind... hmmm, maybe I should refrase that: "Slice through the wind."!

The Aero Vision brake levers are extemely thin, and hurt the hands a little bit. They actually use shifter cables rather than standard break cables for a more aero fit win the brake lever... again, I think more training would make a bigger difference, but whatever...

Internal cable routing... extremely aero, and more to the point, and extreme pain in the butt to work on, but it's all worth it for that 0.0001 time gain... or maybe I should train more... hmmm...

Tour of the High Pyrenees equipment check...

With the International Tour of the High Pyrenees fast approaching, and with last weeks big mileage, I’ve been mainly recovering and checking over and getting my bike ready for one of the hilliest races of the season. As far as I know, the biggest climb on the Tour is the Aspin. The Aspin is a climb I know really well and is also a climb that is somewhat special to me. As a kid we used to go and camp during the summer holidays in a campsite at the base of the Aspin. I rode my first climb there and saw my first big pro race there as well.

The Aspin isn’t a particularly hard climb. We will be climbing it from the hardest side, and the last 3km are the hardest. But overall it is a pretty steady and regular climb. Just as I like them. The other riders will make the climb hard, not the climb itself. So with that in mind I am going to be sticking with standard crankset, and opting for a 12-25 casette. Hopefully that will be ok. It’s not uncommon to spend a few hours totally spun out in the valleys during some stages, so I’m hoping the 53x12 will be big enough. I stupidly forgot my 11 somewhere in the US. A 39x 25 should be ample to climb most of the climbs on the Tour, including the Aspin at race pace.

A 12-25 should do the trick in the mountains.

I’m a little nervous about the carbon wheels on the descents and in the chance of rain. I’ve had scary moments in the mountains in the rain with carbon wheels in the past. However if the weather holds up, the descent from the Aspin is relatively technical, but it isn’t very long, and if it really rains hard, we’ll be switching to standard Alu wheels.

Corima Carbon specific break pads should insure good breaking on the mountain descents.

The black and white front end is pretty standard.

I wonder who prived the seat? Not sure what brand this is....

This clever little thing will keep the race number out of the way.

Trans Pyrenees.

So, the day after riding 185km in the Boucles du Tarn Elite race, I jumped in the car at 5am and drove down to a little town just south or Barcelona. From here started the Trans Pyrenees Challenge, and I was a guide with Thomson Bike Tours.

We spent a good part of the trip on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

The idea is to ride your bike from one end of the mountain range to the other in just 6 days. Personally I was pretty buggered and it took me a good 4 or 5 days to recover from Saturday’s race and start to get some feeling back in my legs. So the first few days were pretty hard for me. Of course ever single day included multiple climbs, and not just hills, real climbs!

So here’s the breakdown of my week:

Sat: 185k

Sun:50k

Mon: 152k

Tue: 140k

Wed: 160k

Thu: 128k

Friday: 106k (“Only”)

Sat: 140k

So that’s over 900km for one week. The list of climbs we did it not even worth including, if it’s in the Pyrenees, we did it! Over 21000 Cal!

But what a GREAT trip. Very good training, a great group of people, a perfect and smooth organization. Only downside was one day of rain on which I managed to catch a cold… :-)

We were up pretty high for most of the week.