Paris - Rouen

With a good weeks rest after 3 hard one day races the previous weekend, I was feeling good and looking forward to Paris-Rouen.

Paris-Rouen is a very old race being the first cycling race between two cities. Back in the 1880's it would take the winner around 10hrs to finish and most of the other competitors over 24hrs. I am not sure why but they had two rules then and they were that you weren't allowed to take your dog and that you weren’t allowed to put any form of sail on your bike.

Anyway todays race is raced from just outside Paris, I am not sure of the village so we will just say that I was so focused on the race to notice and it finished with 3 laps of an 8km course in the centre of Rouen. This totalled 155km.

We rolled out at 2pm with a neutral of 5km before we were stopped for the offical start. Where they started the race you could see down the road as it was straight and maybe after a few hundred metres there was a sizeable hill. Sure enough as the gun went off for the start people started to attack and the peleton was in single file in no time at all. Luckily I was at the front of the peleton for the start and was in about 20^th wheel going up the climb. As we crested the hill a break of about 10 skipped away. Not long after that I joined them as some one had attacked and I just jumped onto their wheel. The break now being 12 after only 5km started to work pretty well together as all the main teams were well represented. Within the first 50km we gained an advantage of 3.30min and it was still going out. Then after about 70km the official's car pulled up in front of us and tried to make us stop which really confused me. All the others in the break just rode around the car and continued on so I just followed them and then the car came up beside us and started to argue with a couple of the riders. By now I was totally confused. After a very heated agument the car pulled back in behind us and let us continue on our way. I decided to go back to our car and get a few biddens and ask our director what was happening as he spoke English. They said that the peleton had stopped chasing. This seemed quite wierd to me as there was still 90km to go. It was not til after the race that I found out that the lead motor bikes had taken the peleton the wrong way which cost them maybe a minute or two.

So the break just rode along easily and we continued to get time gaps that went from 5minutes to 13minutes and then 21 minutes. With around 40km to go the first attack from our group was launched but nobody really went after him for about 10km preferring to leave him out there for awhile. It was not until we hit a hill that I attacked the group and rode away quickly catching and riding past the solo rider that had been hovering around 20seconds ahead of our group. I had a nice gap of around 30 sec on about 4 riders one being from my team coming into the start finish line where I was given 3 laps to go. Straight after the start finish line I turned right into a 2km hill which I knew as I had taken the opportunity to ride it a couple of days before. I knew that I just had to keep a nice even pace for the first 80percent of the hill and then really dig deep for the last bit of the hill. After the hill it flattened out for a couple of km before descending and then a slight rise for the last 500m to the finish. Now I had two laps to go and still felt pretty good. The gap now hovered at around 25 – 30 seconds for the second lap. Now on the final lap I just gave it my all up the hill. Getting to the top of the hill I now had a 40sec gap on the chasing group but I did not know who was in it or how many people were chasing. With 2km to go I knew it was my victory as I had 45sec. I ended up crossing the line 53sec ahead of second place which was taken by my team mate. So that capped of a good days race for me.

Strength or Stupidity

Yesterday I competed in the first of three one-day races that I have scheduled for this weekend. The race was called Grand Prix du Muguet, it was 110km road race consisting of 4 small laps each being 12.5km and 3 big laps of 20km with a steep hill of about 1km only 3 km into the lap.  As soon as the race was out of the neutral zone an escape of 5 riders formed gaining an advantage of around 30sec, after 10km I broke away from the peloton with Florent who is a team mate of mine and 3 other riders.  Within five kilometers of our group forming we caught the front, now with 10 riders in the break the time gap went out to and stayed at about 1.20 min. On the first of three big laps going up the climb I found myself with a small gap on the break. I decided to keep going and see what happened, by the time I was at the top of the hill I had taken the KOM points and had about a 20sec gap. I decided to take it one lap at a time as there was still 60km to the finish and I was by myself. For the next 40km I found a pace that I felt comfortable on and thought I would be able to hold for a prolonged period. Now that I had been away for 40km solo I had about a 1min gap on the break behind me. When I started the last lap with a 1 min gap I thought that it would be quite possible to stay away as I felt pretty good considering what I had done already.  With 10km to go the break behind me was caught by the peloton, I still had around 1min so pushing myself through the red zone I rode on, I knew that the peloton could quickly close a 1 min gap in 10km. Fortunately I held the peloton off and went across the finish in first place recording my first win of the season and also taking the KOM jersey. I am still unsure as to how I managed to pull this off as the odds of a single rider holding off a peloton for over 60 percent of the race coupled with the fact that I didn’t drink much throughout the race as I had taken water bottles that had pure cordial in are quite slim, but I will take it none the less.