Seans Tour de France Part 2

[seanN]

Part one ended with me and my dad sitting in the heat in the south of France contemplating whether to go to Bordeaux to race, or to head north to a town called Chateroux (which meant saying goodbye to the Tour), or go to the pyrenees to watch the Tour.

After a lengthy discussion with my dad, we decided not to carry on following the Tour, as we had spent a lot of time driving about 400 miles to see a glimpse of Mark Cavendishs teeth (like this!-> ). No doubt, the atmosphere was amazing, and seeing the pro riders for real was even better, but truthfully, unless you have a lot of experience of past tours, the best way to see it is on a TV.

So that meant we may as well go North to the race in Chateroux as Bordeuax was a long(ish) way away, and we needed to head North soon anyway to get back to England for the British Championships which were happening in six days. We were going to go to see my dads friend one day, and go to Disneyland another day, plus a days travelling and the race, so that left us with two days to spare.

Anyway, we travelled out of Bourg les Valence (which had 14 pizza takeaways in the main street, and my dad said it was just like "Penicook" without the drunks ), and up to Chateauroux.

After getting to Chateauroux in the morning of my race, I went to the sign-on to see the organiser, and he was so amazed to see a Scottish rider at his race he started to talk in rapid French to me about how pleased he was (I think), forgetting about our language differences.The course was 10 laps of a 3km circuit, with not really any hills, but with a strong headwind. Soon enough I found out when my race was and I hurriedly warmed up.

From the off, the pace was slow, and after half way round the circuit, a rider jumped. Me and another rider followed him, trying to stay on his wheel, until we got away from the bunch. That same rider jumped again, and this time I was only able to stay on his wheel for 100 metres before he dropped me. I looked behind and the other guy had been dropped way before I had, but he caught up with me, and we started to try and get away from each other.

He started to look very tired, so I launched an all out effort which suceeded, as he didnt even attempt to try and catch up. The leading rider was 3 minutes in front of me, so I had a lot of work to do. I chased hard, and the gap came down to 2 and a half, then with 4 laps to go 2 minutes. By the finish, it was down to 1 minute and 30 seconds, but it turned out he was the area champion and had won 14 races so far this year.

We stayed in Chateauroux for the night, then moved to a lovely village called Chateauneuf-sur isere. We went out training runs, and timed them so we would get to watch the end of the tour on TV at a bar. A one point there was only 2km to go, so it was perfect timing. We did our washing in the river, in front of some tut-tutting French women  .

Had to rush this report, as we are now back home, and off to the kirky 10, so the final report will be much more detailed 

cheers
Sean

[neil_in_oz]

Nice report Sean and congratulations on an excellent 2nd place in Chateauroux!