Monday, April 21, 2008

Monts du Vaucluse - Cyclosportive

First sportive of the season and my best ever sportive finish, 14th out of 350.
These things really are harder than road races. The reason is that you have the French equivalent of Elites, Cat 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's and everyone else all lumped into one big group of anything from 200 - 9000 riders.
Anyway, the weather forecast was atrocious and on arrival at the HQ in Villars near Apt we found the route had been cut short from 140km to 125km and the biggest climb of the day had been taken out. Nevertheless, 2200m of climbing and a very very strong SE wind made for a hard day.
Once again the Scott/Velo 101 team went off strong sending riders up the road almost immediately. They were pushing about 2-3kmh above everyone else's comfort zone so by the time we reached the foot of the Col de Murs many were blowing just to keep with the front group. About 6 got away, I was dropped and managed to hang on to the second peleton of about 20 riders.
The next big climb, the 9km Cote St Hubert near Sault was a struggle, any gradients over 7% and I was the one at the back on the elastic! Not nice. The long descent to Sault came and 4 of us got a 20s gap but into the wind up to St Christol we were clawed back.
Then a long descent to Apt then the sign arriveƩ 5km. I decided I didn't fancy the bunch sprint through the narrow streets of Villars so launched myself off the front. Unfortunately, after riding most of the last 5km alone with a gap of about 10s, I died near the line and lost 6 places and a top 10 placement! Finished 14th, not sure about time but close to 3.5 hours.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

More Race Action

Last week saw the next round in our series. It was my club's home event (USC Vaison) in a lovely village called Villedieu about 6km from Vaison.
Well, I have to say we probably rode the perfect race. The race was 14 laps of a 6km long circuit which had a descent into a headwind then a nasty little climb every lap.
The first attacks came on lap 2 and after a strong attack by clubmate Bruno, I managed to jump on the wheel and cover a strong guy called Alain from Isle sur la Sorgue. Suddenly there were 4 of us working well with a gap that went from 20s to 3 minutes over the next 9 laps.
With 3 to go we dropped the 4th chap on the climb then Bruno and me did the classic 1-2 on Alain. I rode on the front for the whole of the last lap, led Bruno up the false flat to the finish and just managed to get 2nd place behind Bruno! (see the pic)
The perfect result followed by a fantastic barbeque in the vllage square.
4 more USCV podiums in the other categories meant it was a super day for the club.

Club des Cent Cols


Last week over a bottle of Cotes du Rhone I started logging my cols and mountain passes. Anyway, after an evening of browsing maps I found I'd done about 120 named passes and cols in SE France. So, I sent the info off to the Club des Cent Cols (100 Cols Club) and they sent me back a membership number, medal and certificate. I've done 114 in total including 5 over 2000m. I know it's a bit geeky but who cares. What I need to do now is do the remaing 20 in the Drome department so I'll have done the 100 in the Drome.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself then I looked at the list of over 6000 members and found a chap at the top of the list called Michel Verhaeghe - he's done 9100 cols and passes!!!!!!