Mars 1: Route Bretonne Elite Classic
Mars 8: Manche Atlantique Elite Classic
Mars 14: Louison Bobet Elite Classic
Mars 15: Circuit du Morbihan Elite Classic
Mars 22: Flèche de Locminé Elite Classic
Mars 28: Gilbert Bousquet Elite Classic
Mars 29: Boucles Guégon Elite Classic
Avril 1: Super U Elite Classic
Avril 4/5: Tour du Pays du Lesneven 1/2/3 (3 étapes)
Avril 11: GP Armorique Elite Classic
Avril 12: Redon-Redon Elite Classic
Selection for Tour of Brittany UCI 2.2 25thApril-1st May will depend on form in the above races.
26 Feb 2009
24 Feb 2009
The Plage Vendeenes 2009 for me started with a 6.30am wake up followed by a 3hr drive down the west coast of france. This would probably usually have dragged on but i was quite buzzing as it was the 1st days racing of the season!
Thursday 19th... fairly flat race with 3 big circuits followed by 5 smaller circuits or something along those lines. We rocked up with one van, one van/wagon thing, and 2 pimping green team cars ready to rock! First thing to get sorted tho was handing out the new kit! Gud times! Once suited and booted, we mounted our steeds and rolled out to the start. 135k's with 160odd starters was on the menu and we didnt hang about in getting going! The orders for today we
re to make 2 big efforts during the race but in general just to get in the flow or racing again as the series is known for being very sketchy with everyone starting their seasons being nervous and taking chances, resulting in a fair few crashes on the day! ( o and the stage before we arrived a local lad crashed and hit an electricity pylon causing seven breaks/fractures... including 2 broken wrists! ouch poor fella.) we rode well as a team bringing back a couple of moves that we missed and each of us was off the front at least once but in the end it was all brought back for a bunch sprint. normally i wouldn't get in the mix in a sprint like this but i squeezed through a hole in the lead out trains and found myself cheelily on the wheel of the belgian, at 250m to go, who'd already won a bunch sprint there the week before, all was looking good until BANG... some knob head put their front wheel into the spokes of my back wheel, ripping half of them out and so i grinded to a halt! i dont think that many people understood the expletives i used but they certainly heard me! so stage 1 for me ended up being finished on foot! Not a happy bunny! still didnt crash tho and the team were impressed that i got up there... o yea the belgian who i was on won the stage... damn it!
re to make 2 big efforts during the race but in general just to get in the flow or racing again as the series is known for being very sketchy with everyone starting their seasons being nervous and taking chances, resulting in a fair few crashes on the day! ( o and the stage before we arrived a local lad crashed and hit an electricity pylon causing seven breaks/fractures... including 2 broken wrists! ouch poor fella.) we rode well as a team bringing back a couple of moves that we missed and each of us was off the front at least once but in the end it was all brought back for a bunch sprint. normally i wouldn't get in the mix in a sprint like this but i squeezed through a hole in the lead out trains and found myself cheelily on the wheel of the belgian, at 250m to go, who'd already won a bunch sprint there the week before, all was looking good until BANG... some knob head put their front wheel into the spokes of my back wheel, ripping half of them out and so i grinded to a halt! i dont think that many people understood the expletives i used but they certainly heard me! so stage 1 for me ended up being finished on foot! Not a happy bunny! still didnt crash tho and the team were impressed that i got up there... o yea the belgian who i was on won the stage... damn it!
the next day was a rest day so we rolled out for an easy 2h and ended up passing the harbour where the finish of the Vendee Globe boat race was going on. I dont no anything about boat races but apparently its one of the biggest around.
Saturday 21st was Chantonnay, the hardest stage of the series, with 3 big laps on rolling/hilly roads followed by 6 small laps which included a climb of 16% for about a 500m. Todays plan was to watch any early breaks and make sure we were represented in anything with over 6 riders that looked dangerous, if not bring it back. as it turned out an early break of about 8 got away and yep .. we missed it. we werent too worried as a couple of the big teams werent represented and 140k's of hilly racing would soon take its toll on those out front, so we set a steady chase tempo and pegged them back gradually. we were then passed by Nogent who are one of the biggest amateur teams in france who proceeded to set a blistering pace and bring back the break coming onto the smaller finish laps. they did good but they all nailed themselves in the process and were left with only one or 2 riders in the front group after the 1st time up the wall. I was climbing well but was badly positioned at the start of the climb so i had to dig deep to get past a lot of riders going backwards very quickly. i got on the back of the front group over the top which was about 50/60 riders but people were getting shelled on each climb. we had 4 riders in this front group but we were all pretty cooked and missed the 3riders who clipped off on the last lap. i finished 24th, in the front group 20secs behind 2 off the front. a good day but very tired after! the winner Yann Guyot from the french national team won the race the year before and was super impressive being away with 2guys from the same team but dropping one then wrapping up the sprint from a long way out!
Sunday 22nd started with an early wake up call from "the vampires"! we had been chosen as one of the teams for random dope control and had to get up and go and have blood samples taken! first for me! interesting tho seeing some of the teams going out training at 7am... dodgey or what! turns out riding hard before the blood test lowers your haematocrit levels... its a sad sport! the final stage was a 145k pan flat windy ride with a good lot of echelons (this is when there is a cross wind and you get no respite from sitting behind a rider so u hav to sit to the side but the road is only so wide so you get groups of riders all over the place trying to keep up with the pace being set!) unfortunately we had our first crash of the week today, with Matthieu Jeannes coming down with a couple fo others and proceeding to abandon. Not a nice way to end the week. a front group formed and most of us were still there so we followed the attacks and had some good digs ourselves too but nothing was sticking. but at about 10-15k to go i got across to 2 riders just off the front and a couple more came across too forming a group of about 12 with all the big teams represented. this looked good and we soom pulled out to 30secs after a couple of k's drilling it but then everyone stopped riding and jsut attacked each other; game over! it all came back for another bunch sprint and i was pretty nailed after my late break so i eased off in the last couple of k's... luckily too as there was a late crash on a roundabout bringing down a fair few riders. I ended up finishing about 45th for the day, 2nd from the team.
i got the feeling from the way the DS was talking that he was impressed with how i got on and the way i'd fitting straight into the team. just have to keep up the good work now though the elite classics in march, kicking off with route bretonne on sunday! however im sitting here in bed writing this with what is turning out to be a pretty nasty cold... man flu! i was having cold sweats all night feel like poo on a stick today so not sure how my weeks preparation with go :-(
hopefully ill be feeling better tomorrow after an easy rest day today.
ok, think i've babbled on enough now, time to go try and eat something. something i normally dont have a problem with at all! 
tom
17 Feb 2009
Tour of California for motivation!
don't know if you've caught any of the tour of california coverage but i was watching stage 2 last night and man they got it bad over there!! Torrential downpours as well as cold and wind is making for some interesting riding, but it still gives me the hunger to get smashing on the pedals in anger again! i've been following it on http://tracker.amgentourofcalifornia.com/ pretty neat coverage appart from stage 1 was dodgey as they coundn't recieve much signal due to the weather conditions. the racing though hasnt been hampered by the elements... the prologue was won by a typical ride from world tt champ Cancellara (suffering from flu and pulled out of the race the following day but still managed to maintain apparently near 600watts for the 4min 32 effort!) that guy is amazing! then the first road stage was won by another comeback king Mancebo who took off on his own nearly from the gun, got caught by 2 others midway through the stage, dropped them, got caught by 2 more at the end of the stage but still managed to beat them at the finish! another eye opening ride! then yesterday Leipheimer pulled his finger out and jus road away on the final climb of the day, bridging a 3minute gap to the break and then towing Peterson from Slipstream to the finish for his easiest pro win ever! has been good watching so far put it that way!
my training has still all been going to plan and the legs are feeling good going into the start of racing. i did my 1st motor pacing session of the year (sitting behind a scooter and riding hard pretty much it really!) at the end of a long ride at the weekend and that felt good as well as painful! good fun as well. the annoying thing was that it's a 50cc and is speed restricted at the moment so although you can be doing 50kmh on the uphill drags, he couldnt really go much faster on the downhills meaning that at times i was infront of him pacing him along!! ;-) getting it unlocked next week hopefully though so can down some more specific faster efforts or sustained hard efforts which continue on the desents. yesterday i had my final hill reps before thursdays race and i felt awesome and the good sensations were there as well as a big chunk of motivation so i think im ready to roll now! Today i'm just chilling out and will probably go and turn the legs over easily this afternoon as the weather is being kind again... has been for a few days now which makes a change! then tomorrow ill crack out the first pre-race ride of the year which is usually between 1h and an 1h 30 steady ride with a couple of easy geared sprints and A 5minute sustained effort at about 75% max hr to flush out/open up the legs ready for some hard riding the following day.
you can follow the stage results and video's/pics of each stage at http://www.cocpv.org/ . the 1st 3 stages have been done with 3 different winners including a beglium wrapping up the bunch sprint on sundays stage. the belg is riding for the same team as british rider Andrew Griffiths who has done a couple of the stages so far and hopefully will still be there when i go down for the last 3 stages. will be gud to race against another brit and can hopefully catch up a bit too.
so the next blog will b up after the weekend and ill hopefully hav lots of interestin race reports to put up nd some photo's of us rockin out the new kit too!
oh yea forgot to mention... i had to go to the local sports doctor to have a check up done to allow me to get my race licence for the season... a bit late i know! turns out after alot of wierd noises (on his part) and bizare standing positions (on my part!) that my hips are a bit out of line... my right one is higher than my left. not too uncommon apparenty tho so nothing to worry about i jus need to get riding position checked to make sure that they aren't too bad when i ride which could lead to back pain. so i mite need some sort of shoe support to balance me out a bit he says!!
apart from that abnormality all is in good working order.. and i'm not quite as tall as i though.. 192cm not 193! mayb i've shrunk now im getting older! and if dan smith is reading this... Dr Graziana says hello!
keep following!
t
my training has still all been going to plan and the legs are feeling good going into the start of racing. i did my 1st motor pacing session of the year (sitting behind a scooter and riding hard pretty much it really!) at the end of a long ride at the weekend and that felt good as well as painful! good fun as well. the annoying thing was that it's a 50cc and is speed restricted at the moment so although you can be doing 50kmh on the uphill drags, he couldnt really go much faster on the downhills meaning that at times i was infront of him pacing him along!! ;-) getting it unlocked next week hopefully though so can down some more specific faster efforts or sustained hard efforts which continue on the desents. yesterday i had my final hill reps before thursdays race and i felt awesome and the good sensations were there as well as a big chunk of motivation so i think im ready to roll now! Today i'm just chilling out and will probably go and turn the legs over easily this afternoon as the weather is being kind again... has been for a few days now which makes a change! then tomorrow ill crack out the first pre-race ride of the year which is usually between 1h and an 1h 30 steady ride with a couple of easy geared sprints and A 5minute sustained effort at about 75% max hr to flush out/open up the legs ready for some hard riding the following day.
you can follow the stage results and video's/pics of each stage at http://www.cocpv.org/ . the 1st 3 stages have been done with 3 different winners including a beglium wrapping up the bunch sprint on sundays stage. the belg is riding for the same team as british rider Andrew Griffiths who has done a couple of the stages so far and hopefully will still be there when i go down for the last 3 stages. will be gud to race against another brit and can hopefully catch up a bit too.
so the next blog will b up after the weekend and ill hopefully hav lots of interestin race reports to put up nd some photo's of us rockin out the new kit too!
oh yea forgot to mention... i had to go to the local sports doctor to have a check up done to allow me to get my race licence for the season... a bit late i know! turns out after alot of wierd noises (on his part) and bizare standing positions (on my part!) that my hips are a bit out of line... my right one is higher than my left. not too uncommon apparenty tho so nothing to worry about i jus need to get riding position checked to make sure that they aren't too bad when i ride which could lead to back pain. so i mite need some sort of shoe support to balance me out a bit he says!!
apart from that abnormality all is in good working order.. and i'm not quite as tall as i though.. 192cm not 193! mayb i've shrunk now im getting older! and if dan smith is reading this... Dr Graziana says hello!
keep following!
t
13 Feb 2009
Not much really to report here since i last posted. I’ve just been settling in, keeping up the kilometres and just getting back into the swing of French ways really. Quimper hasn’t changed much since I left after last season, actually it kind of feels like I haven’t been away from here for long. It’s been good meeting up with the local lads and catching up on how everyone’s been getting on and about who’s changed teams, who’s flying or who’s just been out on the piss all winter! My French is gradually coming back to me now, and not being around other English speaking people at all helps! This is probably the weirdest thing about this season so far, living on my own. It’s nice to have my own place and all that but it does get a tad dull sometimes! Especially this Sunday; I had a rest day on the plan and kind of forgot that everything shuts down on Sundays…. I can’t quite work out where everybody goes actually! They must all go home and shut themselves away because it all goes a bit dead. So I spent the day with a mix of DVD’s and XBOX!! Good recovery but quite boring! Luckily from now on I’ll be racing on Sundays so I wont make the same mistake again!
Training has been going well; I’ve been training a lot with Mathieu Jeannes from the team who’s a last year U23 and a strong one too with a good palmares to back it up. The team seems quite close nit and everyone gets on well so it bodes well. I’ve been doing quite a few split days with turbo efforts in the mornings followed by sessions in the afternoon too but when sitting on the turbo at 9am doing hard threshold reps, making the floor buzz from the noise of the turbo, I have been wondering if I’m waking the whole appartement block up or if they’re wondering what’s going on in apartment 12! Oh well, 9am, they should be awake by then anyway… lazy frenchies ;-) they’re alrite really!
The weather has been pretty dodgy though, but maybe not as bad as back in the UK from what the family tells me! We had one day of heavy snow nd i've put some snaps up of that, but in general it’s been pretty wet and windy… very windy! Those winds that feel like they’re going to stop you when going down hill and lift you off from the side! All good fun though and good
resistance training apparently! Seeing as it’s the typical weather in this region it is good to get used to it again so I’ll have no problems getting pinning on the numbers before getting drenched while doing 50k’s an hour in the gutter! That’s what I’m here for, but this year it will be me and the BIC2000 lads splitting the field from the front! You just wait and see!
Racing kicks off next Thursday and it can’t come round any quicker trust me! In terms of team mates, the rider who on paper is going to be provisional team leader is Clement Mahé who was last season riding for Chambery Cyclisme which is the AG2R feeder team and is one of the biggest and best amateur teams in france, so he has a load of top quality experience and a beast of an engine to top it off! A top bloke to which makes working for him a lot better! But if the legs go as to plan then it won’t all be working for team mates… noooo! Watch this space… next Thursday they’ll get back up to race speed.
I’ve finally got internet sorted in my flat and it comes on soon so I’ll be able to blog more regularly, and with racing starting ill have more interesting things to talk about that chatting bollocks about the bad weather day in day out!
My birthday next Wednesday, should be an interesting day, spent getting prepped for 1st race and having a cake…. Of pasta … followed by an early night! Interesting way to spend my 20th birthday but I know the commitment will soon pay off and hopefully I can celebrate in the following days races by getting a good result or two!
A la prochaine!
Training has been going well; I’ve been training a lot with Mathieu Jeannes from the team who’s a last year U23 and a strong one too with a good palmares to back it up. The team seems quite close nit and everyone gets on well so it bodes well. I’ve been doing quite a few split days with turbo efforts in the mornings followed by sessions in the afternoon too but when sitting on the turbo at 9am doing hard threshold reps, making the floor buzz from the noise of the turbo, I have been wondering if I’m waking the whole appartement block up or if they’re wondering what’s going on in apartment 12! Oh well, 9am, they should be awake by then anyway… lazy frenchies ;-) they’re alrite really!
The weather has been pretty dodgy though, but maybe not as bad as back in the UK from what the family tells me! We had one day of heavy snow nd i've put some snaps up of that, but in general it’s been pretty wet and windy… very windy! Those winds that feel like they’re going to stop you when going down hill and lift you off from the side! All good fun though and good
resistance training apparently! Seeing as it’s the typical weather in this region it is good to get used to it again so I’ll have no problems getting pinning on the numbers before getting drenched while doing 50k’s an hour in the gutter! That’s what I’m here for, but this year it will be me and the BIC2000 lads splitting the field from the front! You just wait and see!Racing kicks off next Thursday and it can’t come round any quicker trust me! In terms of team mates, the rider who on paper is going to be provisional team leader is Clement Mahé who was last season riding for Chambery Cyclisme which is the AG2R feeder team and is one of the biggest and best amateur teams in france, so he has a load of top quality experience and a beast of an engine to top it off! A top bloke to which makes working for him a lot better! But if the legs go as to plan then it won’t all be working for team mates… noooo! Watch this space… next Thursday they’ll get back up to race speed.
I’ve finally got internet sorted in my flat and it comes on soon so I’ll be able to blog more regularly, and with racing starting ill have more interesting things to talk about that chatting bollocks about the bad weather day in day out!
My birthday next Wednesday, should be an interesting day, spent getting prepped for 1st race and having a cake…. Of pasta … followed by an early night! Interesting way to spend my 20th birthday but I know the commitment will soon pay off and hopefully I can celebrate in the following days races by getting a good result or two!
A la prochaine!
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