Update

Not much happening, I sat on a train for a while coming home. After climbing some of the more famous peaks in the Pyrenees: Ventoux, Plateau de Beille, Col de Pailleres... and am now back home. My races last weekend were canceled, which was unfortunate, but gave me a better chance to rest up and prepare for this weekend. 4-5 days of straight racing. Crit Thursday to find some racing legs, Tour des Alps Friday and Saturday, and some 4 hour relay race Sunday. Monday is potentially another road race. Should be good. Tour des Alps is even a Cat 1-2 FFC race, which means double the hurt, and then add in some Alps and we can quadruple the hurt. For now, I have some laundry to do, a bike to clean, and some groceries to aquire. And maybe a little spin. I won;t rub in any further how good the weather is, but... I'll be happy to be up in the mountains and not sweating like a rappist here on the coast soon. Cheers

Change

Busy few days. After a train strike derailed my travel plans, I finally made it to Limoux. 6 hours of trains. Staying here at a decent house with ol' Vince, Paul Smeulders of ErgVideo, and a couple of Brits. Good times. We ride, Paul films (with Van-cam and helmet cams) and generally enjoy ourselves. An awesome way to see some new roads, and get some quality training in. Today was a solid "rolling" 4 hours with a quick stop for another view of the Tour before a stop at the Medival city of Carcasonne for dinner and a pint. Or "half liter" as the Brits called it. Softies. Tomorrow a few ascencions of the infamous Ventoux. 2 sides is the plan. Friday is up in the air as I'm waiting on racing news for the weekend. C'est la vie. Good times however.

The ride to end all

5 hours, just under 140km of hot hot heat, and some pretty awe inspiring riding. First off, I should mention this ride was both for training purposes AND bike nerd purposes. Basically, I rode to Monaco, and then rode the tt course a few times. With some of the biggest names in cycling. After a 2 hour or so ride to arrive (with some well encouraged drafting of a Tour commissar car), I arrived and set out to see if I could get on the course. Many of the sketchier frenchmen were being kicked off by Gendarmes after all, but I seemed to get on no problems. After riding a bit, I was passed by Lance and Levi. I even got this kinda stare down look from Lance for some reason, maybe my orange EVA kit stood out as "not a tour team". Either way, I sped up a bit and rode along with a quick hello. After a round about, where I was left behind after having to stop to avoid a car, I rode merrily along content with not being the Lance stalker in the news tonight. I was feeling pretty cool as photographers were taking my picture and tourists were talking. As I came back through the finish line, people began running over and pushing to get my picture. Cooler than I thought, until suddenly Alberto Contador and Andreas Kloden (along with the rest of the Astana team) pulled out from behind laughing as they passed. Damn. So I followed along. At the next round about a flying Denis Mechov joined the group chatting away as we rolled along the tough course. We were then joined by a few Silence Lotto boys and caught up to the Quick Step boys with Styjn Devolder looking resplendant in his National Champ kit. After a lap with these guys I figured I would pull into a cafe by the finish and watch the sites with a fine cafe. Good call, as no sooner had I pulled over to scout a cafe, I looked up to see Eddy Merckx yelling at Lance. No time to waste, a handshake and a hello and suddenly I was posing for a quick photo. You can't waste a chance like that to meet the Cannibal. The rest of the ride went by, sharing the miles with a Belgian dude who is living in Monaco (racing for the Belgian National Devo team) to Nice and then rolling the rest of the way back in solitude. Good times. I'll leave with some pictures, vive la France!

The team presentations at the Moncao harbour. Say hello to Columbia HTC.

Yours truley and a pre-occupied Eddy Merkcx. Fair enough.

Didi and I are both quite pumped on bike racing. He seems to enjoy Monaco.

Le Tour

Not much going on in France right now, minus some Grand Tour coming through town. I had a pretty awful day which is now put behind me on Sunday. Super hot, super fast. Not happy, but have put it behind by ending my recovery week with some long hard days in the mountains. Two days of about 4 hours with a few thousand meters of climbing. Today will be more hills as I have a bit of a respite from racing. Thursday will be spent in Monaco for the team presentations (not mine, but for that Tour de France thing), Friday ride and relax, Saturday Stage one tt in Monaco, and Sunday will be spent on a mountain watching the first road stage. Nice for the motivation. If you haven't yet, get in on the Tour Pool. Good fun. Well, its hot which means its time to get out and rolling.

test

Rest week is done, and I now have 2 "decent" rides under my belt. I was hoping to push myself a bit at the track on Thursday with the local "crit", but apparently that got canceled. So I had a few solo efforts on a local climb to remind my legs of some pain. Not as good, but hopefully helps for this weekend. It'll be by far the longest race I've done here at 163.5km so I am looking forward to it in that sense, but have no idea how my legs will react. Should be a hilly, but not mountainous course I'm told but otherwise all I know is that we do 3x 50something km laps. You do the math. Easy spin today and some rest, as tomorrow is work.

Rest

Not sure whats happening with my body right now, but I think its been a little run down after a hectic few weeks of visitors. The course on the weekend should have had me in the running, but instead found me having to dig deep to simply finish. The intense heat and humidity probably didn't help me much, but that's simply an excuse. To say the course was selective was an understatement. We started off with a 15km neutral start/parade out of Monaco which was pretty awesome. I stuck myself directly in the front again so was able to enjoy riding through the downtown and along the coast to the official start. Nothing like having Ferraris and other swanky cars pull out of your way in Monaco. We then stopped for final instructions and immediatly hit the first climb. On the Col de Castillon I stayed at the front and made the selection. Within 5 minutes the group had gone from 50+ to 10 or less. The heat was incredible and I cracked towards the top after about 30 minutes of climbing. From there on things got worse. The climbs never stopped, we had only 2 descents of 5 min. the entire race. I had no idea you could link so many cols with so little of anything else. Just as you would reach the summit sign for one, you would take another turn (quick descent if you were lucky) and then start climbing again. As confusion descended, you saw more signs explaining how many more kms (generally enough to make you curse) until the next summit. I completly exploded out of the chase group (4 of us) on Col de Brous I think and struggled hard home. The last 45-50 minutes of the race were spent at a pathetic pace up the Col de Turini. 17km of death. In the end, 62km of cols took 2:45ish to complete. From sea level to 1607m, 24km/h average speed. Needless to say, I have been taking a little rest period after to try and recover my form from the earlier races, my legs need that old freshness again. I have just learned today's crit in Aix-en-Provence has been cancelled so will be spending today again relaxing with a little spin. Training will start again Thursday with the La Bocca crit and then Drauginan road race on Sunday.
A quick shout out to DSJ for taking home the San P. at Preston on the weekend. I'm sure you've wanted that one for a while.

Monaco-Turini aka "Trophee Jean-Luc Schopf"

Monaco, Col de Castillon(707m), Col Saint Jean (1333m), Col de Braus (1002m), Col de l'Able, Col de l'Orme (1005m), Peira-Cava, Col de Turini (1607m, 20km at 8%). Finishing at 1607m on the summit of Col de Turini.

Ouch.