Gouensnach & Classic U Val d’Ille - 12th June 2006

Having got home and demolished a pizza and an entire smoked chicken (hmmm there's a common theme here), and not to mention over three litres of water, I’m feeling a bit more like writing about what was a pretty frustrating weekend.

So I grabbed the team car yesty and headed off to Gouensnach. Objective, to help Mattieu keep the lead in the local “Trophee Aven Moros” series. 24 times 5km with a couple of drags but pretty much flat … work cut out with only four of us.

Anyways it proved to be a pretty frustrating experience, we ended up missing the move that stayed away and despite riding myself through the floor-boards, couldn't get it back. Luckily the people at the front didn’t have many points in the series and we managed to at least mark down the guys in second and third overall, so Matt keeps his jerseys.

Highlight of the day however, was the Frenchie who was glaring at me like I was a huge disgrace when out the back with a mechanical a month ago, coming up after the race today and saying well done, good work, have a beer (apparently Indurain always had a beer), etc etc … don’t mind if I do … just happy if I can make people happy really …

The next day was the Elite Open Classic U Val d’Ille, three hours drive away on the other side of Rennes. Hard work, not used to mornings these days!! As per usual, the best way to prepare the day before a big bike race isn’t with another bike race … so the legs weren’t the best for the first few km of today’s outing. 150km pretty much flat, first 90km en ligne then a variety of confusing circuits at the end, 30deg, over 150 starters, heaps of money, stick-on numbers and even showers for after!! When I say big there were a couple of pro teams, including what appeared to be the entire Jean Floch squad, so figured it wasn’t going to be easy.

Correctamundo, first 20km was a case of staring at the wheel in front and trying to find the ten sprocket. Found out later the average speed for the first two hours was 47kph, not slow then, not exactly on big smooth fast roads either. 60km into it the legs had come right, we had about two groups of 25 up the road and about fifty in the third, danger, so all the French decided they’d try to get across solo – good luck!! So we had about 10km of fast-slow-fast-slow, eventually missed the group of about ten that did get back on, banging-head-on-handlebars-with-frustration material … after being in a group of six that almost got back, then they all started attacking each other … !!!!!! Anyways that was it for the rest of us, rode to the circuit and surprisingly they let us finish, well OTA though. Pretty funny to average over 43kph and be way out the back!!

So that’s about 400km of racing this week and over 800km all up, well and truly smashed to bits so here’s hoping it’s good for me!!