That was a great Tour de France and a fabulous advert for the sport and with quite a few deserving champions, unfortunately, even being in France, I was unable to go and watch the Tour even with 2 stages in Brittany, (well the time-trial was held on contested ground between Brittany and Normandy) but nonetheless I was still touched by the Tour. This is because since I began road racing seriously, more and more friends, family and acquaintances have got increasingly involved in cycling for a number of reasons and with le Tour. This has only increased with old school friends contacting me saying not only have they been affected by the stunning images and deeds on T.V., but have been inspired in some part by my own journey over here in France to take up cycling. Not only to commute between places, but to maybe race and generally take the whole cycling experience much more seriously.
Obviously I would just like to say how incredibly humbled I am by such feelings and honesty, but fundamentally it shows how our actions, no matter how minor they seem, really can resonate and how our own selfish actions can influence others, but in a positive manner. The recent success British Cycling has experienced recently provides plenty of fertile ground, but with me getting an increase in interest and support from more and more distant people also demonstrates the power of mass media. Ultimately I wish this to lead to more national televised coverage of cycling and instead of ITV4 showing more Minder, why don't they have the Clasica San Sebastien, the last hour of the Tour of Poland? You get the idea. Thank you to everyone for the recent support and hopefully you will all fall in love with cycling as much as I have.
I said in the last blog about my problems with the heat and now these problems should be increasing eradicated as in the past couple of weeks I have lost 3.5kg, I plan on losing the same amount again, not only to deal with the heat, but climb better. My weight has become a real issue, not only because it usually is, but with me being incapacitated with tendonitis for so long, I know that it is more than likely not to be muscle. I have now started cautiously training again as I don't want to suffer a relapse like Brian Badonde which will help with me to lost weight, build muscle and control the weight.
Now on to the racing, both were 2/3/J races, one on Friday night, one on Saturday afternoon with both having about 85 competitors. Friday night was 38 lap fast, flat circuit and there was a bit of wind, there was also a lot of money up for grabs and with primes, points and prizes every lap the race was always going to be fast, there was a UCHL rider in every break and I was feeling good, then with 9 laps to go a tornado (as the French press referred to it) hit our race causing trees to be uprooted on the circuit and visibility to be greatly reduced. It was cancelled, hopefully it will be held at a later date as they could not give the majority of the money away for overall classification, sprint classification and points classification, I managed to win 5 euros. Unfortunately the weather ruined my Garmin and I was unable to use the next day as it had not dried out.
The next day was held in sweltering conditions on a tough circuit with 14 laps and three short, steep climbs, two were next to each other and the last one was where the finish was on top of. Towards the end of the first lap a group of 10 went clear, then 3 laps later a big group got clear and across the gap to the first group, which I happened to be in, then another little group of 6 joined us. Basically the field had been split in half, but I was dying in the heat at the back doing nothing, all I had was the energy to sprint. Gradually more and more people were dropped by the front group leaving about 25 riders, at the bell 5 or 6 got away and finished just in front of the rest of us, me team-mate Stephane did a wonderful job to try and set-up the sprint up the hill for me, but I launched my sprint between 50 metres and 80 metres too early. So with 50 metres to go, coming 6th or 7th I died and ended up finishing 17th. Rubbish!!!!
It's even more rubbish when only the first 15 gets points towards getting their license upgraded, in a 2/3 race, and I have only a month now to accumulate enough points to get upgraded to a first category rider. It certainly can be achieved, but I need not only consistency in finishing and getting points, but also I need to score a good few top 5s or even a win and that would really seal it for me.
Hopefully I can bag a few points and placings this weekend, until next time, get out on the bike as much as possible.
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