Friday, June 20, 2008

Mont Ventoux Screwballs

A bit late with this but we are now mad busy! Two weeks ago was La Ventoux Beaumes de Venise Cyclosportive. 175km, 3200m of ascent, over 1000 starters in both the Master and Senior events. Considering I'm still a 80 kilo lardy I should be pleased with my classification of 45 in a time of 6h 21m. Bizarrely 3 minutes slower than my 2005 time when I didn't even scrape into the top 100??????

Last week was great. On Thursday I rode (for the first time officially, even though I've done it twice bfore) The Cinglé du Mont Ventoux Challenge. I rode this with a top bloke called Guy Wilson Roberts who writes for http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/ . We rode steadily all day with a nice lunch stop and plenty of photo stops. Total ride time about 7.5 hours.

Good training for La Marmotte in 2 weeks time which I'm dreading.

Monday, June 2, 2008

St Tropez!!!

I did L'Epervier Cyclosportive yesterday down near St Tropez. I can thoroughly recommend this to anybody. Drop the missus off on the beach in St Trop and go an kill yourself for 6 hours in the hills above the Cote d'Azur!!! Anyway, yesterday we set off at an amazing pace. What a feeling riding along that beautiful coasline to the west of St Tropez in a bunch of 60 at 45kmh! On the second climb of the day I got dropped and about 10 riders went off into the distance. Then a nice "laughing group" formed of about 20. On the third climb we were all plodding along nicely when a chap in pink kit decided to up the pace on the front - groans all round - I hate you! Just 2km/h above most of the group's comfort zone. 5 more off the front, dropped again So I plodded round with the remaining group and had a go off the front with about 20km to go. I managed to stay away then with about 2km to go I saw a chap in pink up ahead suffering. I caught him, passed him and he sat on my wheel. With about 200m to go he tried to get round me. No way - not after the mayhem you caused 3 hours ago!!! Bliss

179km, 5h 31m, 17th overall - very pleased.