Nice.

[David Mclean]

If anyone is interested in my exploits in Nice, here they are:

I arrived on Tuesday last week, met Yannick (my DS) and then went to meet Eric at his house in the little village of La Gaude. We strapped a double bed to the roof of the team car with some old string and drove to Eric's other house, where I am now living. The driveway is about 100m long and about 1 in 4, I've absolutely no idea how my bed stayed on as the hairpin is about 1 in 2.

The house is more of a Villa really, with about 15 rooms, a pool and an amazing view. There are a couple of practical downsides, though: no TV, Phone, Internet, washing machine or much furniture for that matter. I'm sharing the house with only one other rider at the moment, a keen first year senior called Logan Loader (yes, thats his real name) from California. The terrain around here is exclusively long climbs unless you ride on the coast roads (something I've not bothered with, yet). Its very cold here at the moment and will remain so for another month or so.

As if to test my decision on coming here over Belgium my first races were criteriums, wet, cold, full of dead turns ad with a frustratingly large on lap numbers.

I did 2 races on Sunday, both in Monaco on part of the GP circuit, the bit with the chicane, pool and millionaire's yachts:

I was told I wouldn't start the first race due to license problems (it was run by a different federation to the FFC) until 10 minutes before the start when I had to suddenly get changed and race. Without a warm up I was immediately in trouble trying to stay on, in fact it was so bad I could taste blood for the first 20 laps of 40. It was a points race with a sprint every 5 laps, fortunately, while I was suffering Logan was racking up points. I felt better after a while (despite the ironic pain of flat crit riding whilst walls of mountains surround you) and got into a break of 4, the other 3 were on the same team so I only had to sit on and upset the sprint. My breakaway companions couldn't get rid of me, one of them almost put me into the barriers to interrupt my sprint. I complained to the commissaire but they saw nothing despite being just before the line (how else is a Frenchman to win, I ask you?). It came back together in the last few laps and Logan came 3rd in the sprint, 2nd in points, I was 5th, matching my best result abroad last year in my first race.

The second race was much harder, also a points race but with more and stronger riders. no one escaped except out the back of the group, my kind of race. Within half distance there were only 20 riders left (of about 70 starters, 50 laps of the same circuit as before, 1.25k). I got dropped, chased back on for 5 laps, stayed on for a few more and then blew spectacularly and packed. I'm confident I would have finished with the remainder had I not raced in the morning. I wasn't too bothered, though because the sooner a crit is over the better in my opinion.

My next race is on Saturday in Italy, I am told that normally we would do a support race before Paris Nice comes in on Sunday. However this year there are local elections on making it hard for organisers to get things off the ground.

So far I have been asked a few times what the racing is like in France. Well, I can't honestly give an answer to that for a while as I'll only have raced in Monaco and Italy even once I've have been here for over 2 weeks. They're not as good at Crits as they are in Belgium though, thankfully.

Stay tuned for more exciting developments next week.

[Roz]

David, What an excellent report, I`m sure you will improve very soon. I have some suggestions about counteracting confrontations in sprints but dont think I should mention them here ( perhaps when you are back next ). Anyway your probably too nice to use them. To others who have never raced abroad - now you have an insight to what its like !! & I hope understand why I like to take teams abroad if only as a taster.
Alan Rosner.

[Duncan Murphy]

Monaco, I dunno, here we are hanging around at village halls and racing in gales

Hopefuly you'll soon be suffering doing long time trial type efforts up those big climbs instead of looking at nice ladies on expensive yahts

[dds11]

Dave,

Nice sounds nice. Well done on your crit result. Keep sending the updates. I'll be looking for you on telly on Sunday.

Digby

[David Mclean]

Not much to report this week.

It was looking a little bleak a week ago with the weather and in typical British fashion I let it affect me more than it should. Fortunately the past week the sun came out and the snow has disappeared from the tops of the nearby mountains at least. In fact its very hot now indeed, I also was foolish enough to believe my French teammates when they said it would remain cold for another month. The fact is it is cold for them but anything over 20 degrees is full blown summer for me. On Wednesday I went training with the club, I was the only one sweating away in my shorts and short sleeves whilst the rest were quite comfortable in legwarmers, long sleeve tops and full finger gloves.

The bad news is that I misunderstood what was happening this weekend. It turns out the race we were supposed to do in Italy was cancelled due to local elections and there is no support race for Paris Nice (slightly different to what I posted above). So basically I haven't raced since Monaco and won't do until Saturday, However, since the weather has been good I have been training 4-6 hours a day since Wednesday. On Saturday there is a 12k TT, on Sunday a full blown road race in Italy and on Monday a crit right next to our DS's house.

Instead of racing we went to watch the Paris Nice on Saturday with the team, combining it with a long training ride with a team car for support. We saw the break with Gert Steegmans and the KOM leader go past followed by the peloton 5 minutes later at the top of a 3rd category climb fairly early in the stage.

Not racing is very annoying, I'm thinking with hindsight that I should have done the Essex classics and come a little later, never mind. Training in summer sunshine and massive mountains kind of makes up for it, though.

[ChrisAdams]

Great reports, David.

Would you mind if they found their way into to the newsletter?

Chris

[ChrisB]

Not racing is very annoying, I'm thinking with hindsight that I should have done the Essex classics and come a little later, never mind. Training in summer sunshine and massive mountains kind of makes up for it, though.

Easy tiger - it's STILL only March

Would you mind if they found their way into to the newsletter?

I'd put a caveat on that Dave - that pelOton is spelt correctly in any newsletter your work appears in

[ego_land]

Hey Dave, glad to hear you're doing all right. As Chris says, it is ONLY March, I'm sure you've got plenty of racing ahead of you...

On a related note, the post of Cambridge Chain-Gang-Master is still open. Must be capable of routinely crushing a pack of good 2nd Cat riders week after week from April until October. Our road racing team's fitness depends upon you! Apply in person, bring yer bike.

Cheers,

[David Mclean]

Thanks for the comments guys, there have been many developments in the past week. stay tuned for a full report tomorrow. Feel free to put it in the newsletter Chris A, you have my full permission to spell peleton however Chris B wants.

I know its only March but this is probably the fewest races I've ridden by this time in the season in many years. However, like I said, the mountains and sunshine more than make up for it.

[David Mclean]

There have been a couple of developments since last week. Logan has returned to the US indefinitely because his grandmother is very ill, as a result I'm living in a 15 room villa on my own. Not nearly as much fun, in fact its extremely boring, particularly on an easy day before a race. My book supply is depleting rapidly.
Onto the racing: The TT and crit I mentioned in the last report were on Sunday nd Monday, not Saturday and Sunday as previously stated. For all those concerned, my French is improving but I can't understand everything yet, like important instructions relating to which days the races are on.
The TT was akin to your average sunday morning TT in the UK in March albeit for a couple of subtle but important differences:

The sun was out and it was very warm by 9.
The average age of the participants was about 23.
Every rider had a DS following in a car screaming encouragement
It was only 12k (an extremely painful distance I can tell you)
It had about 200m of climbing spread over 3 large draggy hills.
We did it all again aftewards in teams of 4.
We had a podium and many trophys handed out afterwards.

There was one outstanding similarity, though. There were no people watching, I guess TTs are boring to watch whichever country you're in. Now, let me get my excuses in early, I only have one bike with me in France and I don't have any TT wheels, bars or pointy helmet, the entire top 10 had all the gadgets except for me, which makes me feel a little proud and a little stupid for not having the kit. I was a full 37 seconds behind the winner, I expect with all the equipment it would have been alot closer, how much closer I don't know. However, I still came 4th out of the 92 starters so all was 'most satisfactory' as Jeeves would say.

The TTT was another matter altogether, out came the team skinsuits (i.e. they belong to the team, we had to give them back afterwards) and off we went. It was a shambles from the start which was a 2k descent, I didn't clip in properly (there was no one to push us off) and we lost our junior rider almost immediately. we coasted for him to get back on but we were spread all over the road anyway, the wait wasn't worthwile as we lost him for good on the first ascent (they timed back to the 3rd rider, like in a team pursuit). The next rider to start a reverse solo breakaway was Florentin, this was because Olivier, our Grimpeur wa giving it the Charlie big potatoes on all the climbs.Yours truly (who was doing his first ever TTT) took the descents and flat sections and gave orders, in english ofcourse, so it made no difference. Unfortunately, by the time we had reached the bottom of each climb Florentin had recovered enough to do a turn, making him even more tired for the subsequent ascent.

By some miracle, and due to the fact that there were only 7 teams competing we won. we were also the only team to beat the individual winner's time (by less than a second), I have absolutely no idea what the other teams were doing.

The second race, on Monday afternoon was a crit starting about 500m from our DS's house. Unfortunately for me I mustn't have reheated my pasta sauce properly the previous night or something and got food poisoning. During the night I felt terrible, during the morning I felt OK despite what one might call, in polite company, 'digestive issues' but before the race I felt OK so I started. During the race I felt sick every time I attacked but was ok in the peleton. halfway round I got fed up, attacked, felt sick, stopped, was sick and went home. Fortuately Florentin won so all was well. All in all it was a good weekend for SC Nice despite my ups and downs.

Next weekend we have a 4-stage race in 2 days.

Au revoir,