Week of pain, little gain and a bit of McCrap!

This week started with a cheeky pizza restaurant on monday night but with some interesting company; team mates for the evening were Matthieu and thibault from Bic, as well as a rider from Bbox Bouygues Telecom, Bretagne Schuller and also Roubaix Lille metropole, all local lads and training pals from time to time. This made for interesting table talk as recent races they'd just come abck from included Criterium International and Castilla-y-Leon with Leipheimer/contador mopping up the competition.

On the way home however, their professional attitude was put on the backburner for the eve as we rolled up at McDonalds as they wanted to get a quick McFlurry! Tut Tut! I however was the only one not to over some Mc Crap! ;-) (more of a KFC man to be honest!)

After our monday night antics, tuesday was pre-race day and 2 hrs were on the programme with 45mins behind the scooter tempo. However i was in a pretty grim state all round. Managed to pick up a cold after the weekend, and today it had moved to my head making me feel shite! Then when i headed out on the vélo the legs were non-existant! Smallchainring (aka granny ring) felt like churning 53-11 ... in non-cycling terms imagine a nice gentle stroll, but say a horse on your back! Felt something like this! Although the scooter effort did manage to loosen up the legs a bit making it not all doom and gloom looking ahead to wednesdays race.

Race Day: Rolling out today for the lads in green were Clement, Matthieu, Vincent, brothers Glenn and Yann and myself, making for a small but strong team or so we thought! The race started under warm blue skies but the the classic brittany wind was out in force again. From the start i knew the legs weren't great but still found myself following an early move before getting shelled on a hill before returning back to the calm of the peloton. I found my rhythm and started feeling gradually better when a break of 10/12 clipped off without any of us in it. This called for a quick jump onto the front and some pain to be dished out all round. As it turned out, we started chasing as we hit a long straight road with a nice cross wind so we were soon joined by Cotes D'Armor and Bretagne Schuller in trying to bring back the break while also splitting the peloton up behind. This quickly had an effect with the DS shouting down the earpieces to keep the hammer down and lots of people were getting shelled behind. One of the riders doing some huge turns up front was Lilian Jegou from Schuller, easily pulling through at 4or5 kmh faster than anyone else! So after bringing back the break we tried to keep the pace ûp but some of the groups came back together and more attacks started.

Later on after what can only be described as a wall (see photo... im somewhere a lot further back i think!) which we all slogged up, the race split to sh1t and the break of the day went. I was way too far back on the hill and could do nothing! However i attacked later on and ended up doing a 3up time trial with Matthieu and Yann Guyot from C-D'armor for the last 20km, nearly getting up to the break after closing down about a 45second gap however they pulled away in the last 5-10k's leaving us to finish between the front and the peloton for about 30th place! Not great! Again on my part i know where i went wrong in being way too far back as we hit the bottom of the "wall" and was catching up all the way after that!

An easy few days now before my first non-elite race of the season, a 1,2,3 cat race at Pontivy, home turf for Salva Vilchez and co, and a race which always gets a good field so should be a good race and hopefully if i stop riding like a plonker i can get the good result that i know i deserve!

Gotta go put the washing on!

Enjoy the sunshine (if its sunny where u are that is... lovely here, blue skies, 18degrees! sweeeeeeeet)

Tom