GP Peymeinade

Ok, I have been away from an internet connection for over a week and so now everything gets posted. I ended my stay in the Nice area on the 15^th of February, when I travelled to the Azureva Village in Frejus to meet my new team, Creusot Cyclisme, and do a training camp with them. This training camp included some races for the team as well as a very large volume of training. Anyway, to get to the point of this post, I did my first race of the season on the 17^th, an Elite National event, the Grand Prix de Peymeinade Souvenir Gerard Baschiera. There was also a race on Saturday of the same calibre, but with a less difficult course. I only raced on Sunday while many on the team did both. The GP Peymeinade was my first Elite National race, but I knew a fair amount of the course based on its proximity to Plascassier. In any case, I did not expect the level of the race to be as high as it was. As we approached the parking lot near the Start/Finish in Peymeinade, the first thing I see is a Tinkoff team car. The next is a Saunier Duval team car. The list of notable teams in the race is as follows: Auber 93 (French Continental Pro team), Tinkoff’s espoir team, Saunier Duval’s espoir team, Luxembourg’s National Espoir team, VC La Pomme Marseille, Aqua & Sapone (a few pros) as well as other DN1 level teams and some lower level teams. As we lined up to start, I wondered exactly what was in store for me. There were 180 starters and other notable starters were Julien Absalon (who is the current and I think 4 time world mountain bike champion and 2004 Olympic Champion) and Miguel Martinez (former mountain bike world champion and 2000 Olympic Champion as well as a rider for the Italian Continental Pro team Amore & Vita and the brother of one of my teammates. So, the race started and I felt good. It was a little sketchy, but nowhere near as bad as a junior world cup, so I moved up to the front with relative ease. I saw a few good riders go up the road about 5 min into the race and I decided to go with them. The break lasted for a few kilometres and then we were back in the pack. The race progressed and I stayed near the front, occasionally testing my legs with an effort on or just off the front. Fairly early on, a breakaway of 26 riders established a good lead. We had one rider in it, Emilien Broe. After we passed through Dragiugnon, we started the first GPM (grand prix of the mountains) climb. It was longer than 10 km; the exact distance I am not sure of. I felt decent until we came within 1 or 2 km of the summit. Here, the breakaway was within 10-15 seconds and a well planned attack could have caught them and won the points for the GPM. The road also gets steeper here and so with all of these factors, the pace increased and the climb hurt more than substantially. I spent the descent trying to recover from a rib-cage cramp while holding on in the strung-out pack. Things slowed down a bit more as we approached the second and last GPM, this one about 7 km. I felt much better on this climb and rode right at the front, passing riders on the way up. Another break formed on this climb, however, and at the top the entire peloton was riders trying to find a wheel in front of them. There was a small descent and then we climbed through a cliff-side town. This is where I first started experiencing some painful and limiting leg cramps. This slowed me in closing some gaps right in front of me, but I did eventually and soon the pack formed to face the last major section about 10-15 km from the finish. This part kind of surprised me at first, but it made more sense when I thought about it. Usually, you would think that the last climb summiting about 3 or 4 km from the downhill finish would be a launch pad for attacks. The pack took it easy though. At the bottom of the climb a rider surged ahead a bit and others started making fun of him in French, asking how badly he wants to finish 27^th. It was not as if we were miles behind the leaders though. They were between 30 seconds and a minute ahead of us from what I was told. I also think there were between 15 and 20 of them, but that is just speculation. I don’t have access to the internet writing this, so I can’t be sure. I recovered quite well on that climb though and met another Anglophone living in France, Alex Howes. He is from Colorado and is racing his second year of espoir for VC La Pomme Marseille, the best amateur team in France. We finished in the pack with the field slowed down on approach to the line. I don’t think anyone in the peloton sprinted. It was for the most part a training race for many people. Our team has been told that in any race we do during this training camp, the result is not important. They are to be treated as training. I now see why. It is now Thursday, the 21^st, and in the past two days I have done over 330 km. Every day we do large amounts of climbing and with the whole team riding, wherever we go and no matter how long, it is at pretty much race pace. I was riding close to my max yesterday, just trying to hold on to the pace along the rolling coastal road between Cannes and Frejus. Surprisingly, I have felt better and better this week though and hope to race this weekend in Marseille. It is another Elite National level race, the Souvenir Jean Masse, and the course I have heard is very difficult. I look forward to it and hope to be one of the 10 Creusotins to race.

Welcomed Rain

So, my time in Nice is quickly coming to a close as I prepare to join Le Creusot Cyclisme. Things haven’t changed too much here since my last post. I have continued training a great deal and have found ways to keep from boredom when off the bike. It has rained here for the last two days which is not really anything special, but it does change things up a bit. Riding four hours in the rain is something you would usually not enjoy, but I found it pleasant, at least for a while, as I was over-dressed for the temperature. That has been a big pain here. The temperature fluctuates a great deal from Plascassier to Sea level or the mountains and also at different times in the day. I have tried to figure it out, but when I start my rides I will almost always be pretty cold and by the time I get going a certain direction, I will almost always be too warm. So, the rain was pleasant yesterday until I got close to Plascassier. A dog started following me and would not turn around. After a few kilometers, I realised he would follow me home. I couldn’t really get rid of him either because it was uphill on a long straight road and I was tired from the ride. I turned around when I realised it would be hard for him to find his way home. Naturally he followed me back to the area he first started running with me. Don’t get me wrong, he was a very friendly dog. So I dropped him off where I thought he lived and then did an effort on a curvy downhill section of road to lose him. Then I had to take an alternate route home. All in all, it added an extra half-hour in the increasingly colder wet weather to my ride. Today it was raining hard. Apparently just a little higher up, maybe 15 minutes on bike, it snowed 5 cm today. Tomorrow looks promising though.