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!