On Wednesdays I meet Geoff for a long tempo ride over the Col de Llauro to sometimes meet some British professionals in Thuir. That was the plan this morning, but as the cold rain trickled into my socks on my ride to Le Boulou and the mercury struggled to reach 45, I pulled under the new TGV overpass and pulled out my cellphone. No answer at Geoff's; he was on his way. There he was at the rondpoint, this time earlier than me, and we had our 'Salut, ca va?' and rolled on in the rain to St. Jean Pla de Corts where David and his friend Bob may or may not be waiting.
The traffic was heavy today and we rode in single file, en train, just outside the white line marking the three foot riding lane. My worry was glass. Not normally a problem on dry days, glass and water were a deadly combination for my tubular tires and I was tired of fixing them. At the rondpoint in St. Jean, David and Bob were waiting for us in the bus stop. We pulled in and I took off my shoes and socks and wrung out a half-cup of water from each sock. A good wring of the gloves and I was ready to ride. David and Bob, on the other hand, had their eyes fixed on the pharmacy clock across the street flashing the current temperature, 6.5 C, and the wipers of the parade of cars coming past on the rondpoint, wipers on intermittent.
'I don't think we'll ride today,' David said in his Scottish lilt. 'I've ridden six days in a row,' Bob added, 'I can dry off my shoes and ride this afternoon.' His blue and white Dogma leaned against the bus stop, rain beading on its magnificent paint. 'Does magnesium oxidize?' I asked, but Bob doesn't get the barb and launches into the wonderful qualities of the metal, and his frame, and his back problems. Normally, this is where Geoff comes in with his 'Are you man or mouse?' spiel, but I know he's even having doubts right now. 'Ok, let's go. We'll be warm by the top of Vives.'
And we were. If it weren't for that bus stop and the pharmacy sign, David and Bob would be riding with us, I think. On the climb, the rain stops and a stillness is in the air. It again is beautiful. Like the Ancient Greek said, without the sour, honey wouldn't be so sweet. And without the pain and discomfort of life, and rain, and cold, the richness of our lives would be much less. It strikes me that most people spend their lives avoiding discomfort, not just Bob in his expensive Assos foul weather clothing, at least he made the effort to roll down from Ceret to meet us, but the people passing us on the road in their cars, on their cells, bathed in a temperature controlled environment, can't have a clue about why Geoff and I ride our bikes in such weather.
Over the top of the climb and we're into the sour again. The rain starts before we reach Fourques and just before the hermitage at Monastir de Campo, I feel the softness of my rear tire. A flat. A laugh, a squirt of the magical flat fixer from Zefal, a few k's gingerly riding out of the saddle and then a blast of CO2 and we're good. At a critical junction near Brouilla, a right turn takes us home, a left farther into the valley, we turn left and pass through the familiar countryside of vineyards and groves of flowering cherry.
In Elne, we stop at a light. Geoff asks, 'Cafe?' 'Sure.' and we jump out of line and duck into a smoky PMU betting shop and order two grande cafe cremes. Life is good. Life is better when I see a gent sipping a beer nearby pointing at the window: a downpour is coming down, rain bouncing hard on the pavement. I hold the cup in my hands and take a sip.
I can almost feel my finger tips now.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Last ride from Amelie
The morning is cold; dark clouds hang over the Alberes and the ground is wet with rain. The temperature is hanging in the low 40's. Today is my last Sunday ride with the Club du Vallespir in Amelie les Bains, my eleventh ride I think, enough to become a tad nostalgic. Now each spot, village, and landmark is embued with layers of memories from the past months.
The wind is blowing about 10mph out of the northwest, a welcome relief from the 40-50mph gusts of the past week. A new front is moving in and a few drops of rain spatter the bars. The rondpoint at Le Boulou, the meeting place for group rides with Geoff. The first morning in January, fresh from my drive from the north, and I remember the cold pink sunrise on the Canigou, snowless then, but my first view of it.
Geoff rolls up. 'Bonjour. Ca va?' Our ritual greeting and hand grasp. Twenty five times now? We roll on through St. Jean Pla de Corts, passing our Wednesday turn to Vives and the Col de Llauro, David's meeting spot. Ceret comes after a lovely four k's on new tarmac and then a rude reintroduction to broken asphalt. We pass the house where I waited last week for Janet and the kids to bring a replacement seatpost; we pass the turn to the incredible Musee d'Art Moderne with its collection of Picassos and I remember ambling through the hallways with my boys and Janet.
The red-faced drunk, who must live outside, greets just as we turn towards La Cabanasse, Le Pont de Reynes, La Forge, the villages roll past. This climb doesn't feel like much of a climb anymore; 120,000 feet of climbing in the past three months has seen to that, and now the focus is on the place, searing in the sights, smells, sounds, trying to hold on to the memory of it. Geoff and I are talking about cycling in his childhood, his use of the bicycle as both entertainment and escape. We pass the Amelie les Bains sign still three kilometers from the meeting spot in the centre ville.
The ride today is about 70k roundtrip from Amelie with the club, adding in another 60k for me travelling up and down the valley and a few more k's to ride to the Bourne Michelin with Geoff afterwards. Length is one measure of the ride and 140k seems long, but elevation is now more important to me and, outside of the small 6k climb Geoff and I do after the club ride, today is pretty darned flat and the group will stay together for the most part.
David has a couple of friends visiting from Scotland and Bob is out for the ride today. He and I coast down the valley to St. Genis together, passing my village road en route. Bob is on a magnificent Pinarello Dogma, Record-equipped, complete with squiggly carbon forks and dropouts. Later, Geoff will tell me I'm the only one who noticed, but this bike is art and a pleasure to look at. Also later, Bob will shoot out the back when the pace goes from 21 to 25 as we climb back up the valley; there is pressure to perform when you have a 8,000 dollar machine underneath you.
The pace is easy for me and I slot in with Bob and then a French rider for a while as we roll towards the apex of the route at Villaneuve de la Raho. As we approach the town center, confusion reigns for a few minutes as the group completely circles the rondpoint; the front of the group doesn't know the route to Bages. Geoff shoots to the front and guides the point in the right direction.
The rain returns as we cross the small hills of the Aspres, small rises between the vineyards. 'En train,' someone yells as the group negoitiates the potholed tarmac. The brings out the dark brown of the old vines and the crimson of the rocky soil. I move up behind David and Geoff to avoid eating too much of the road spray and we roll on through the edge of Banyuls des Aspres and into St. Jean Lasseille's narrow streets.
The cold rain is starting to soak in now, but my legs feel warm enough. David asks if I'm going all the way up the valley to Amelie; my village is 12k the other direction. This being the last club ride for me, there's no way I'm cutting it short. He shakes his head as if talking to a crazy man. His fellow Scot, Bob, has gone off the back now and he'll wait for him at the rondpoint in Ceret and head home. Of all of the temptations to turn for home, Geoff's was probably the strongest. With the rain pouring down, we passed within a half kilometer of his house. After the ride, I asked him if that was tough and he laughed. It was.
Past Ceret, others turn off and we have maybe eight riders left. Phillipe is leading us now, a good rider with smooth style. Geoff yells for me to grab his wheel and I do. I'm not working too hard yet and if there is a sprint, I feel like I have a good chance today. Geoff is on my wheel and Bernard, a young French rider is on his. We cruise through the villages I rode through a few hours before, faster this time, Phillipe hammering out a tempo. I check, I'm in the right gear, and move just to the left of Phillipe's wheel.
Just inside the town sign, a kilometer from the sprint finish, Phillipe eases off and I have to brake to stay behind him. It's too early to go and I start to wonder if there is going to be a sprint. Phillipe completely eases off and I have two choices. Sprint now and try to open a gap on Geoff, or ease off to and accept there won't be a sprint. There is time for the question to pop into my head, what if I sprint and no one else does? A few weeks earlier, there was no sprint; everyone just eased off. Maybe because of my continued role as a foreigner on the ride, maybe because I'm still lacking confidence, maybe something else causes me to downshift and ease up with Phillipe and in that instant, Geoff reacts and shoots by with Bernard on his wheel. I jump and catch Bernard's wheel, but I'm a long way from Geoff.
I get chastised as we eat our food at the bus stop in Amelie. I know what my problem is: I still want to belong to the group and the risk of not following the group outweighed my need to finish first. I'm frustrated with myself. I also think that I should actually have taken Geoff's wheel and not vice versa. 'Bourne Michelin?' Geoff asks? 'Sure.' The short climb will be a good penance for screwing up the end of a good ride.
78.3, 4:38, 3020ft.
The wind is blowing about 10mph out of the northwest, a welcome relief from the 40-50mph gusts of the past week. A new front is moving in and a few drops of rain spatter the bars. The rondpoint at Le Boulou, the meeting place for group rides with Geoff. The first morning in January, fresh from my drive from the north, and I remember the cold pink sunrise on the Canigou, snowless then, but my first view of it.
Geoff rolls up. 'Bonjour. Ca va?' Our ritual greeting and hand grasp. Twenty five times now? We roll on through St. Jean Pla de Corts, passing our Wednesday turn to Vives and the Col de Llauro, David's meeting spot. Ceret comes after a lovely four k's on new tarmac and then a rude reintroduction to broken asphalt. We pass the house where I waited last week for Janet and the kids to bring a replacement seatpost; we pass the turn to the incredible Musee d'Art Moderne with its collection of Picassos and I remember ambling through the hallways with my boys and Janet.
The red-faced drunk, who must live outside, greets just as we turn towards La Cabanasse, Le Pont de Reynes, La Forge, the villages roll past. This climb doesn't feel like much of a climb anymore; 120,000 feet of climbing in the past three months has seen to that, and now the focus is on the place, searing in the sights, smells, sounds, trying to hold on to the memory of it. Geoff and I are talking about cycling in his childhood, his use of the bicycle as both entertainment and escape. We pass the Amelie les Bains sign still three kilometers from the meeting spot in the centre ville.
The ride today is about 70k roundtrip from Amelie with the club, adding in another 60k for me travelling up and down the valley and a few more k's to ride to the Bourne Michelin with Geoff afterwards. Length is one measure of the ride and 140k seems long, but elevation is now more important to me and, outside of the small 6k climb Geoff and I do after the club ride, today is pretty darned flat and the group will stay together for the most part.
David has a couple of friends visiting from Scotland and Bob is out for the ride today. He and I coast down the valley to St. Genis together, passing my village road en route. Bob is on a magnificent Pinarello Dogma, Record-equipped, complete with squiggly carbon forks and dropouts. Later, Geoff will tell me I'm the only one who noticed, but this bike is art and a pleasure to look at. Also later, Bob will shoot out the back when the pace goes from 21 to 25 as we climb back up the valley; there is pressure to perform when you have a 8,000 dollar machine underneath you.
The pace is easy for me and I slot in with Bob and then a French rider for a while as we roll towards the apex of the route at Villaneuve de la Raho. As we approach the town center, confusion reigns for a few minutes as the group completely circles the rondpoint; the front of the group doesn't know the route to Bages. Geoff shoots to the front and guides the point in the right direction.
The rain returns as we cross the small hills of the Aspres, small rises between the vineyards. 'En train,' someone yells as the group negoitiates the potholed tarmac. The brings out the dark brown of the old vines and the crimson of the rocky soil. I move up behind David and Geoff to avoid eating too much of the road spray and we roll on through the edge of Banyuls des Aspres and into St. Jean Lasseille's narrow streets.
The cold rain is starting to soak in now, but my legs feel warm enough. David asks if I'm going all the way up the valley to Amelie; my village is 12k the other direction. This being the last club ride for me, there's no way I'm cutting it short. He shakes his head as if talking to a crazy man. His fellow Scot, Bob, has gone off the back now and he'll wait for him at the rondpoint in Ceret and head home. Of all of the temptations to turn for home, Geoff's was probably the strongest. With the rain pouring down, we passed within a half kilometer of his house. After the ride, I asked him if that was tough and he laughed. It was.
Past Ceret, others turn off and we have maybe eight riders left. Phillipe is leading us now, a good rider with smooth style. Geoff yells for me to grab his wheel and I do. I'm not working too hard yet and if there is a sprint, I feel like I have a good chance today. Geoff is on my wheel and Bernard, a young French rider is on his. We cruise through the villages I rode through a few hours before, faster this time, Phillipe hammering out a tempo. I check, I'm in the right gear, and move just to the left of Phillipe's wheel.
Just inside the town sign, a kilometer from the sprint finish, Phillipe eases off and I have to brake to stay behind him. It's too early to go and I start to wonder if there is going to be a sprint. Phillipe completely eases off and I have two choices. Sprint now and try to open a gap on Geoff, or ease off to and accept there won't be a sprint. There is time for the question to pop into my head, what if I sprint and no one else does? A few weeks earlier, there was no sprint; everyone just eased off. Maybe because of my continued role as a foreigner on the ride, maybe because I'm still lacking confidence, maybe something else causes me to downshift and ease up with Phillipe and in that instant, Geoff reacts and shoots by with Bernard on his wheel. I jump and catch Bernard's wheel, but I'm a long way from Geoff.
I get chastised as we eat our food at the bus stop in Amelie. I know what my problem is: I still want to belong to the group and the risk of not following the group outweighed my need to finish first. I'm frustrated with myself. I also think that I should actually have taken Geoff's wheel and not vice versa. 'Bourne Michelin?' Geoff asks? 'Sure.' The short climb will be a good penance for screwing up the end of a good ride.
78.3, 4:38, 3020ft.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
A Cold Day in St. Marsal
Today on weather.com it was 57 degrees in Colesburg, Iowa. Here in sunny southern France, on the Cote Vermeil, it was 43 degrees when I left the house and a balmy 47 when we stopped for a cafe at 11am in St. Marsal. With winds gusting past 50 miles per hour.The winds started on Monday and now, on Wednesday, it's hard to imagine a ride without them. The Tramontane commonly blows out of the northwest this time of the year and so I rely on Geoff's expertise at route selection to keep us on the south east side of things and in the trees as much as possible. I bundled in my winter riding kit and took a very easy ride to Le Boulou into the wind, spinning and remembering the summer breezes of a week earlier. Geoff popped up to the rondpoint right on time, ten to nine, and we collected David a few miles down the road at the rondpoint in St. Jean Pla de Corts, turning our attention then to the Col de Llauro and the blessed sanctuary of the cork trees on it's easterly slopes.
Conversation today turned to the upcoming Milan-San Remo race on Saturday and whether it was possible to get close enough to see it, my creaking seatpost and my weight, the proliferation of watt meters and other devices among riders not dedicated to riding their bikes, and my pedalling style.
The last topic waited for our stop at the crossroads just beneath Llauro, as I begged an Allen wrench off of Geoff and David stripped his windbreaker off and packed it away. 'You pedal like you're chopping wood,' Geoff said. I thought about this. 'Don't take it personally and you can tell me to shut up, but you need to get more relaxed on the bike.' On one level, criticism of anything one does, stings a bit, but on another level, I was pleased that Geoff cared enough to risk sharing it with me. A good teacher is one that is still learning or as Socrates said, you fall off the path of philosophy when you think you've found the truth.
The basis of Geoff's critique were two things: my high cadence climbing style, and my body position. I'm not going to change my pedaling style on climbs as it's what gets me over. Pushing 100 kilograms of mass up a col wreaks havoc on my knees and keeping less pressure on them with a high cadence and shifting to keep it high, means no knee pain after the ride is done. The real underlying issue, as it is with my creaking seatpost, is my weight. 100 kilos is a lot of weight and dropping it down is a struggle. I am way to stiff on the bike and have to constantly remind myself to relax, especially shoulders and hands. These things come with miles on the bike, fatique and more miles on the bike, and pointed criticism from friends.We roll on towards the Col de Xatard. 'Don't work so hard,' Geoff yells through the wind. But I'm not working hard, my heart rate just on the edge of zone 2, 135bpm, pretty good for climbing an 8% grade. I tell him so, and he mumbles something about turning the monitor off. There's snow on the ground now, in the shadowed areas. It's strange seeing snow, the first time it's been this low since my arrival January 2nd.
The Col de Xatard sits at about 2100 feet. We stop and David puts his windbreaker back on, snap a few pics and we're off towards St. Marsal and what is looking to be a very cold descent to Ceret.
By the time we spot the chairs outside the cafe in St. Marsal, my toes are numb, fingers following suit and the idea of a hot cafe creme is appealing. Inside the cafe, the word rustic falls short. There's a boar's head over a fireplace, leaded glass windows framed in dark oak line the walls, and rectangular wood tables and angular chairs welcome us. We're alone inside and the smiling innkeeper takes our order for three cafe au laits. Life is good. We pull out jam sandwiches and David checks his messages. I stretch out and wonder how they got the boar's tongue to twist in that way.
The Rain in Spain...
The road seemed dry. This line echoed in my head as I slid across the rondpoint, sans velo, and just on the front of our group. We were on the Spanish side of the Alberes, riding with a combination of Bridlington and Club du Vallespir riders. I could hear both English and French conversations happening in the peloton and more than once mixed up languages while addressing someone next to me.
The morning had started out wet, rain was falling and plip-plopping in the gutters when the alarm went off at 6. By the time the oatmeal was ready at 7, the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing over Perpignan to the north. By 8, I was on the road north to Amelie, picking up a little slop on the tarmac down, but the roads were drying. My only worry was picking up some wet glass on the road.
Well that and my legs. I wasn't sure if how they would feel after a fairly hard ride the day before with the club. Overall, my form had been getting better and better. 'Miles in the bank,' Geoff was fond of saying, 'Can't take that away.' Indeed, I did feel the cumulative effect of 2300 miles of riding begin to fill up my bank account. Still, today was a question mark.
The Bridlington Cycle club was visiting Amelie for a week-long training camp and they were joining our Spanish excursion en masse. Geoff had belonged to the same club years ago when he lived in northern England. They were friendly and decent, if querky riders. One of their querks was a reluctance to wear helmets. Reading through the British cycling mags from Geoff, it was apparent that many British riders didn’t wear helmets. When I pressed one of the brits on the ride, she insisted she did wear a helmet occasionally, in competition.
A causal pace up to Le Perthus, left me feeling fresh and more confident for the day. Food wasn't a problem: I'd packed two sandwiches, a banana and some energy bars for the ride. That, and a stop at a café in Banyuls would preclude any bonks, or defaillance, today. And the roads were drying.
I picked myself up and surveyed the damage. A skinned elbow, through my long-sleeved jersey, a nice raspberry on my hip, and... that was it. My bike had slid on the brand new levers I'd picked up two days before. I looked up at Geoff; he put a finger to his lips. There were no excuses; I screwed up, hitting the rondpoint with too much speed, on a line a bit too tight and forgetting about that slippery mix of diesel exhaust and moisture that is like ice.
We rolled on towards the Col de Banyuls, revisiting the same climb we did a few days before on Wednesday. This time, the temperature had dropped with the arrival of the cold front and, as we ascended, the tramantine, the north wind began to blow.
'How are those wheels in this wind?' Geoff used some Spinergy four spoke wheels, carbon and aero, for training. Now I was thinking of aero more in terms of Bernouli's Principle of lift than of slicing through the wind. We were on the front, pacing the group up the col. Every few seconds a gust approaching forty or fifty miles an hour would push our front wheels to the side a foot or so.
A flat on the descent slowed down the group, but we stopped for a wonderful café crème at the same café in Banyuls.
A half hour later, the wind had become biblical. The climb out of Banyuls wasn't too bad, but just past the first rondpoint, the road passed through a cleft in the rock, open directly to the north. It was a wind tunnel and brough everyone to a halt. Traffic was still passing us as if there was no wind and I looked behind me to see Geoff holding on to the top tube of his bike, wheels lifting it skyward.
I wan't sure what we would do now. Ahead didn't look to promising, with a few miles on a heavily trafficked road, wind like an invisible hand pushing us backward, but we weren't going back either. I put the cleat covers on and trudged with the others over the top of the ridge.
Between gusts, we jumped back on the bikes and basically blocked traffic to have enough room to blow from side to side. I could see the surf below on the sea, crashing into the rocks, and decided not to look down again.
Of course, we made it, taking more time to safely arrive in Argeles and ride west along the relative calm of the Alberes. The temperature had dropped into the single digits Celcius, and this had the positive effect of numbing the road rash on my hip and arm.
Turning off in Villelongue, I considered the ride and reviewed my expensive but valuable lesson from the rondpoint in Spain.
The morning had started out wet, rain was falling and plip-plopping in the gutters when the alarm went off at 6. By the time the oatmeal was ready at 7, the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing over Perpignan to the north. By 8, I was on the road north to Amelie, picking up a little slop on the tarmac down, but the roads were drying. My only worry was picking up some wet glass on the road.
Well that and my legs. I wasn't sure if how they would feel after a fairly hard ride the day before with the club. Overall, my form had been getting better and better. 'Miles in the bank,' Geoff was fond of saying, 'Can't take that away.' Indeed, I did feel the cumulative effect of 2300 miles of riding begin to fill up my bank account. Still, today was a question mark.
The Bridlington Cycle club was visiting Amelie for a week-long training camp and they were joining our Spanish excursion en masse. Geoff had belonged to the same club years ago when he lived in northern England. They were friendly and decent, if querky riders. One of their querks was a reluctance to wear helmets. Reading through the British cycling mags from Geoff, it was apparent that many British riders didn’t wear helmets. When I pressed one of the brits on the ride, she insisted she did wear a helmet occasionally, in competition.
A causal pace up to Le Perthus, left me feeling fresh and more confident for the day. Food wasn't a problem: I'd packed two sandwiches, a banana and some energy bars for the ride. That, and a stop at a café in Banyuls would preclude any bonks, or defaillance, today. And the roads were drying.
I picked myself up and surveyed the damage. A skinned elbow, through my long-sleeved jersey, a nice raspberry on my hip, and... that was it. My bike had slid on the brand new levers I'd picked up two days before. I looked up at Geoff; he put a finger to his lips. There were no excuses; I screwed up, hitting the rondpoint with too much speed, on a line a bit too tight and forgetting about that slippery mix of diesel exhaust and moisture that is like ice.
We rolled on towards the Col de Banyuls, revisiting the same climb we did a few days before on Wednesday. This time, the temperature had dropped with the arrival of the cold front and, as we ascended, the tramantine, the north wind began to blow.'How are those wheels in this wind?' Geoff used some Spinergy four spoke wheels, carbon and aero, for training. Now I was thinking of aero more in terms of Bernouli's Principle of lift than of slicing through the wind. We were on the front, pacing the group up the col. Every few seconds a gust approaching forty or fifty miles an hour would push our front wheels to the side a foot or so.
A flat on the descent slowed down the group, but we stopped for a wonderful café crème at the same café in Banyuls. A half hour later, the wind had become biblical. The climb out of Banyuls wasn't too bad, but just past the first rondpoint, the road passed through a cleft in the rock, open directly to the north. It was a wind tunnel and brough everyone to a halt. Traffic was still passing us as if there was no wind and I looked behind me to see Geoff holding on to the top tube of his bike, wheels lifting it skyward.
I wan't sure what we would do now. Ahead didn't look to promising, with a few miles on a heavily trafficked road, wind like an invisible hand pushing us backward, but we weren't going back either. I put the cleat covers on and trudged with the others over the top of the ridge.
Between gusts, we jumped back on the bikes and basically blocked traffic to have enough room to blow from side to side. I could see the surf below on the sea, crashing into the rocks, and decided not to look down again.
Of course, we made it, taking more time to safely arrive in Argeles and ride west along the relative calm of the Alberes. The temperature had dropped into the single digits Celcius, and this had the positive effect of numbing the road rash on my hip and arm.
Turning off in Villelongue, I considered the ride and reviewed my expensive but valuable lesson from the rondpoint in Spain.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Col Xatard
The Sunday morning roll up to Amelie les Bains was interrupted by a rifle shot, and then tinkling sound of bolts hitting the pavement. 'What the hell was that?' Geoff thought that maybe a sniper had taken me out. No, just the seat bolt on my FSA carbon seatpost had sheared off, leaving me seatless in Ceret.
'I'll call Janet and have her bring her bike and I'll swap the seatpost out.' Geoff would meet the club 8k up the road in Amelie and come straight back and we'd ride back to St Jean Pla de Corts and meet them on the road. We had a big ride planned today: 3 cols, albeit small ones, in the beautiful Aspres foothills of the Canigou. Now I was sitting in front of a curious woman's house, staring at my shoes and trying to look inconspicuous in my bright orange and red kit.
Janet came along in twenty minutes, kids in the back seat worried about daddy's crash. No crash, just a few too many kilos on the seat yet. A large brocante, or garage sale, was taking place in Villelongue and Janet wasn't sure she'd be able to get the car back to the house.
In a few minutes, the seat was on, post in and Geoff had returned to continue our ride. Once in St Jean, we quickly found the club, having to weave through a classic auto show that was taking place (what happened to people going to church on Sunday morning?) and dodge an imbecilic woman on a cellphone intent on causing a pileup of expensive cars. The club had picked up their pace to 22mph on the flat road to Ceret and our first climb, making our catch a little harder than expected.
For the first time this year, there were more English speakers in the bunch then French. A club from England was visiting for a week-long training camp and eight of their riders had joined the ride. Four quickly dropped off the back on the way up to the Col de Llauro and weren't seen again. This time my big idea was to follow wheels to the top. My legs were still a bit sore from Wednesday's effort in Spain and Friday's three hour ride in the wind. A day off hadn't fixed things and I wasn't sure what they would do for me on the climbs. Moving up wheels till I was third wheel, behind Geoff and Bernard was fine. We were rolling along at about 12mph or so, not bad for the grade and most of the talking in the group behind had stopped. Bernard pulled off on a corner and Geoff led us for a couple of kilometers, churning out a comfortable gear. By the time he wiggled his elbow for me to come through, I was actually feeling rested and picked up the pace a bit. Not going into the red and fully aware of the fact he would expect me to contest a sprint at the top.
Thinking about this I wiggled my elbow and let one of the new English guys through, who promptly pushed the pace again. The game was on and I took his wheel and Geoff, mine. I don't know who else was behind, everything was focused on the road in front. After a bend, Geoff shouts 'A gauche' and I sprint hard to the left dropping the Brit, but not hard enough; Geoff had caught my wheel.
'You didn't give it 100 percent, did you?' True, because I didn't know where the top was exactly (it was a few hundred meters ahead). 'Nope.'
Our smaller group reconvenes at the top and we roll on to the village of Llauro, now following Jean Marie who sets a comfortable pace. We pass through Oms and turn right at the crossroads for the Col de Fourtou. No heroics, just a nice rolling pace. I feel my legs recovering from the sprint earlier and get to know one of the young Brits. I share that I'm training my weakness at this point, hill-climbing. He notes that I must be a pretty good sprinter, but nods when I tell him I had just lost the last one to a 61 year old man. We reconvene again at the col. A hunting party has gathered there, getting ready to call their dogs up from the valley, driving game at them to be shot. After a few minutes the rest of the group arrived and we decided we should leave before the shooting started. Jean Marie heads back down the mountain, leaving the climb to the Col Xatard to us.
The pace heats up quickly and soon it's five or six of us rolling up the slope again. According to the Michelin map, there's actually two more cols on the way to the Xatard, the Col del Rang and the Col del Ram. As these don't actually have road signs and I really can't remember where they would be, I won't count them in my col tally today. Before we reached the Xatard, it was Geoff, me, David, the Brit I beat on the Llauro col and Bernard. I had Geoff's wheel but wasn't sure what the sprint was or if there was one. I would just wait until he let her rip. When he shifted to his big ring, I did too and jumped when he did, passing him before the village. Did I win a sprint from Geoff? I'm still not sure and didn't have time to think about it as we turned the corner and carried on to St. Marsal.
The road dipped and our speed reached 40mph. The Brit was in front, but I moved past him when I had the chance, not knowing how he descended, prefering to crash on my own terms. Geoff, David and Bernard were tight behind and we reached the first of several long false flats that were as hard as the actual cols. Pulling off after two, Bernard offers, 'Vous travaillez.' and we continue down.
With about 5k to go before Amelie, Geoff dives around a corner and I follow behind, finally having an advantage, my weight. We stay together to the bottom and have a cold beer with our new friends from England, after they get arrive a while later.
'I'll call Janet and have her bring her bike and I'll swap the seatpost out.' Geoff would meet the club 8k up the road in Amelie and come straight back and we'd ride back to St Jean Pla de Corts and meet them on the road. We had a big ride planned today: 3 cols, albeit small ones, in the beautiful Aspres foothills of the Canigou. Now I was sitting in front of a curious woman's house, staring at my shoes and trying to look inconspicuous in my bright orange and red kit.
Janet came along in twenty minutes, kids in the back seat worried about daddy's crash. No crash, just a few too many kilos on the seat yet. A large brocante, or garage sale, was taking place in Villelongue and Janet wasn't sure she'd be able to get the car back to the house.
In a few minutes, the seat was on, post in and Geoff had returned to continue our ride. Once in St Jean, we quickly found the club, having to weave through a classic auto show that was taking place (what happened to people going to church on Sunday morning?) and dodge an imbecilic woman on a cellphone intent on causing a pileup of expensive cars. The club had picked up their pace to 22mph on the flat road to Ceret and our first climb, making our catch a little harder than expected.
For the first time this year, there were more English speakers in the bunch then French. A club from England was visiting for a week-long training camp and eight of their riders had joined the ride. Four quickly dropped off the back on the way up to the Col de Llauro and weren't seen again. This time my big idea was to follow wheels to the top. My legs were still a bit sore from Wednesday's effort in Spain and Friday's three hour ride in the wind. A day off hadn't fixed things and I wasn't sure what they would do for me on the climbs. Moving up wheels till I was third wheel, behind Geoff and Bernard was fine. We were rolling along at about 12mph or so, not bad for the grade and most of the talking in the group behind had stopped. Bernard pulled off on a corner and Geoff led us for a couple of kilometers, churning out a comfortable gear. By the time he wiggled his elbow for me to come through, I was actually feeling rested and picked up the pace a bit. Not going into the red and fully aware of the fact he would expect me to contest a sprint at the top.
Thinking about this I wiggled my elbow and let one of the new English guys through, who promptly pushed the pace again. The game was on and I took his wheel and Geoff, mine. I don't know who else was behind, everything was focused on the road in front. After a bend, Geoff shouts 'A gauche' and I sprint hard to the left dropping the Brit, but not hard enough; Geoff had caught my wheel.
'You didn't give it 100 percent, did you?' True, because I didn't know where the top was exactly (it was a few hundred meters ahead). 'Nope.'
Our smaller group reconvenes at the top and we roll on to the village of Llauro, now following Jean Marie who sets a comfortable pace. We pass through Oms and turn right at the crossroads for the Col de Fourtou. No heroics, just a nice rolling pace. I feel my legs recovering from the sprint earlier and get to know one of the young Brits. I share that I'm training my weakness at this point, hill-climbing. He notes that I must be a pretty good sprinter, but nods when I tell him I had just lost the last one to a 61 year old man. We reconvene again at the col. A hunting party has gathered there, getting ready to call their dogs up from the valley, driving game at them to be shot. After a few minutes the rest of the group arrived and we decided we should leave before the shooting started. Jean Marie heads back down the mountain, leaving the climb to the Col Xatard to us.
The pace heats up quickly and soon it's five or six of us rolling up the slope again. According to the Michelin map, there's actually two more cols on the way to the Xatard, the Col del Rang and the Col del Ram. As these don't actually have road signs and I really can't remember where they would be, I won't count them in my col tally today. Before we reached the Xatard, it was Geoff, me, David, the Brit I beat on the Llauro col and Bernard. I had Geoff's wheel but wasn't sure what the sprint was or if there was one. I would just wait until he let her rip. When he shifted to his big ring, I did too and jumped when he did, passing him before the village. Did I win a sprint from Geoff? I'm still not sure and didn't have time to think about it as we turned the corner and carried on to St. Marsal.
The road dipped and our speed reached 40mph. The Brit was in front, but I moved past him when I had the chance, not knowing how he descended, prefering to crash on my own terms. Geoff, David and Bernard were tight behind and we reached the first of several long false flats that were as hard as the actual cols. Pulling off after two, Bernard offers, 'Vous travaillez.' and we continue down.
With about 5k to go before Amelie, Geoff dives around a corner and I follow behind, finally having an advantage, my weight. We stay together to the bottom and have a cold beer with our new friends from England, after they get arrive a while later.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Pouncing Lessons: Part 2
At the crest of the Col de Banyuls, the smooth pavement of Spain gives way to the rotted and rutted pavement of France and we descend a perilous road the width of one small camion. We were dropping through the ancient vineyards of the Romans and Templars, home of the famous Banyuls appellation of strong and sweet wines, and sharing the tiny road with working vehicles.
The group reconstitutes at the bottom, some had started down already when David's tube gave up its ghost, and we take a leisurely ride down the valley bottom to Banyuls sur Mer and a cafe on the plage. My legs still feel fine. I've done about 55 miles at this point, about normal for a mid-ride coffee. We park the bikes near the chairs by the sand and decide which section is open for business. The cafes across the street each have a grouping of the chairs and tables, in their shop colors, and they send out a waiter to brave the tourist traffic and take our orders. The three English-speaking riders order coffees, as does Veronique, several of the Frenchmen order beers and pull out sandwiches made with half a baguette. The Club du Vallespir generously picks up the tab and we sit in the sun for some time, drinking, eating (jam and cheese for me) and sharing anecdotes.
The road along the sea climbs out of Banyuls and I try to shift down on the front rings on the climb, promptly dropping my chain. 'Attende, attende,' Veronique says and she pulls out her hand cleaning wipes. I'm perfectly willing to wipe the grease on the black of my shorts but accept her gesture. We start the climb and the crew ahead is nowhere in sight, but we soon reconnect at the rondpoint above town.
The pace now picks up and it's again Alain, Geoff and myself riding at tempo up the rest of the climb. Geoff swings out and waves me through. I know we've just shifted back from club comraderie to race training, but misread his arm wave and shoot past both him and Alain, continuing on my merry way ahead of them until I get stopped by a bus trying to negotiate the hairpins on the coastal road. He and Alain catch me there and a furious Geoff asks me what the hell I was doing? And so, the pouncing lessons begin.
My kids were watching Lion King on video last night and there is a scene where the king, Mufasa, is showing his young son how to hunt. The parrot, Mufasa's major domo, is the unsuspecting prey. It occurs to me that this is what Geoff is doing with me, teaching me how to hunt in a race. Identify the prey, wait for weakness and then pounce, and pass, without mercy. I get it, but Geoff is accelerating up the hill before Collioure and I have to push to gain his wheel, dropping Alain in the process. We careen towards the central ville and stop at the public WC at the beach. The other riders reconvene, fill water bottles and make use of something better than a bush on the side of the road. Several are looked a bit peaked. 'He's focked,' Geoff surmises of the fellow on the Trek who had just consumed a beer and a sandwich the size of Pittsburgh. This time Veronique and the rider having the hardest time on the hills don't reappear before we head on; we're officially in competitive mode now.
The road to Argeles is flat or downhill and an easy roll. Once we reach the turn at the feus for Sorede, the pace quickens a bit and we settle in behind another club rider for the climb to Sorede. We're all just keeping warm and I'm preparing mentally for the hill at Villelongue and Montesquieu. I've done this so many times now, but when we hit the Villelongue climb, we're still going at a moderate pace, four of us together, now following Alain. He, like the bird in Lion King, doesn't seem to enjoy being the prey and asks me to pull in front. 'Keep on his wheel,' Geoff barks and I do.
Alain picks up the pace and we drop everyone else as we climb out of my village. We're going fast now, I'm in my big ring for the first time on this climb, following Alain and Geoff following me. Alain tries sprinting away and I close the gap. He pulls off and I accelerate through as we hit the road hits a steep pitch. This is the point where I would normally say 'That was a good ride' and spin the rest of the way up, but Geoff is having none of that and sprints past, 'C'mon, get my wheel.' I accelerate, but give up. Geoff yells, 'Are you a man, c'mon, get my wheel!' And I do. I'm way past my threshold now, having a hard time breathing, let alone holding this guy's wheel. I know Montesquieu is just around the bend, when Geoff sprints. Damn it. I try to follow but get gapped. He slows a bit, but rolls into the village 50 meters ahead of me, Alain is far back.
At the fountain, a flash of a smile from Geoff as the riders roll up. I know I've been pushed to a limit and could have pushed past it, but I will next time. There's an anger there; it lies deep in the gut, This is the difference between being really fit and training well and winning bike races.
90, 5:45, 5000ft
The group reconstitutes at the bottom, some had started down already when David's tube gave up its ghost, and we take a leisurely ride down the valley bottom to Banyuls sur Mer and a cafe on the plage. My legs still feel fine. I've done about 55 miles at this point, about normal for a mid-ride coffee. We park the bikes near the chairs by the sand and decide which section is open for business. The cafes across the street each have a grouping of the chairs and tables, in their shop colors, and they send out a waiter to brave the tourist traffic and take our orders. The three English-speaking riders order coffees, as does Veronique, several of the Frenchmen order beers and pull out sandwiches made with half a baguette. The Club du Vallespir generously picks up the tab and we sit in the sun for some time, drinking, eating (jam and cheese for me) and sharing anecdotes.
The road along the sea climbs out of Banyuls and I try to shift down on the front rings on the climb, promptly dropping my chain. 'Attende, attende,' Veronique says and she pulls out her hand cleaning wipes. I'm perfectly willing to wipe the grease on the black of my shorts but accept her gesture. We start the climb and the crew ahead is nowhere in sight, but we soon reconnect at the rondpoint above town.
The pace now picks up and it's again Alain, Geoff and myself riding at tempo up the rest of the climb. Geoff swings out and waves me through. I know we've just shifted back from club comraderie to race training, but misread his arm wave and shoot past both him and Alain, continuing on my merry way ahead of them until I get stopped by a bus trying to negotiate the hairpins on the coastal road. He and Alain catch me there and a furious Geoff asks me what the hell I was doing? And so, the pouncing lessons begin.
My kids were watching Lion King on video last night and there is a scene where the king, Mufasa, is showing his young son how to hunt. The parrot, Mufasa's major domo, is the unsuspecting prey. It occurs to me that this is what Geoff is doing with me, teaching me how to hunt in a race. Identify the prey, wait for weakness and then pounce, and pass, without mercy. I get it, but Geoff is accelerating up the hill before Collioure and I have to push to gain his wheel, dropping Alain in the process. We careen towards the central ville and stop at the public WC at the beach. The other riders reconvene, fill water bottles and make use of something better than a bush on the side of the road. Several are looked a bit peaked. 'He's focked,' Geoff surmises of the fellow on the Trek who had just consumed a beer and a sandwich the size of Pittsburgh. This time Veronique and the rider having the hardest time on the hills don't reappear before we head on; we're officially in competitive mode now.
The road to Argeles is flat or downhill and an easy roll. Once we reach the turn at the feus for Sorede, the pace quickens a bit and we settle in behind another club rider for the climb to Sorede. We're all just keeping warm and I'm preparing mentally for the hill at Villelongue and Montesquieu. I've done this so many times now, but when we hit the Villelongue climb, we're still going at a moderate pace, four of us together, now following Alain. He, like the bird in Lion King, doesn't seem to enjoy being the prey and asks me to pull in front. 'Keep on his wheel,' Geoff barks and I do.
Alain picks up the pace and we drop everyone else as we climb out of my village. We're going fast now, I'm in my big ring for the first time on this climb, following Alain and Geoff following me. Alain tries sprinting away and I close the gap. He pulls off and I accelerate through as we hit the road hits a steep pitch. This is the point where I would normally say 'That was a good ride' and spin the rest of the way up, but Geoff is having none of that and sprints past, 'C'mon, get my wheel.' I accelerate, but give up. Geoff yells, 'Are you a man, c'mon, get my wheel!' And I do. I'm way past my threshold now, having a hard time breathing, let alone holding this guy's wheel. I know Montesquieu is just around the bend, when Geoff sprints. Damn it. I try to follow but get gapped. He slows a bit, but rolls into the village 50 meters ahead of me, Alain is far back.
At the fountain, a flash of a smile from Geoff as the riders roll up. I know I've been pushed to a limit and could have pushed past it, but I will next time. There's an anger there; it lies deep in the gut, This is the difference between being really fit and training well and winning bike races.
90, 5:45, 5000ft
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Pouncing Lessons: Part 1
The morning is warm, already nearing 60 degrees at 7:30am. That make the dressing easier: no leggings, arm warmers to be removed later, regular socks. A craft baselayer tank and full dew rag for the head are concessions to the morning coolness. Able to leave off the leggings, leaves more room in the pockets to carry food. 'Brings lots of fooooddddd,' Geoff wrote in his email. 'Tell him to bring more than a banana and a granola bar,' he told Janet on their ride yesterday. Food equals fuel for the miles we have planned for today, Catalan sud.
I'm feeling fine, wonderful, as I drift through the village. The mix of birdsong and the sounds of village life and sun blend. The temperature drops just below Villelongue as I drop into the shaded valley. Cold, cold. Hard to warm-up when my knees are turning shades of red. I turn up on the road to Le Boulou and quickly meet another rider heading my way. 'Bonjour. Ca va?' 'Ca va!' The shadows tell me he made an effort to catch onto my wheel. No problem, I don't want to push very hard with these cold temps anyway and we move along the valley road together. Montesquieu, the climb onto the D618, the TGV construction that constricts the road, the descent into Le Boulou consectutive rondpoints going in every direction, Perpignan, Le Perthus, Ceret, Barcelona. The other rider's shadow is gone, dropped, but not on purpose. I ease off on the pedals and stand to stretch on the climb to the large rondpoint where Geoff and I meet.
We meet the other club riders up for our little sportif today, most are familiar, but some are new. One is Alain, a cuisinaire from Amelie. Another is an older fellow on a Trek 5500, the second Trek I've seen in these parts. On our coast down to Maureillas, I catch him checking out my Trek and we talk a bit about our bikes. Veronique is there, savage on the Col de Llauro Sunday, she takes a more maternal role today, tending the slower riders on the climbs. David, the retired Scottish architect rounds out a bunch of about a dozen. I pull a banana out of my pocket and we're ready to roll by the time I toss the peel into a trash can.
I have never ridden my bike in Spain, so this is a first. Geoff explains that this was a common training run for Thor Hushvod, imported local hero who lived and trained here. Often they would do a combination of the Catalan north and south routes, about 180k, have a lunch and a break and then do an afternoon run of 80k. Five days a week. In a training camp of a month, they could get in almost 4000 miles of riding.
We take a turn at Maureillas on the Via Domitia, the Roman road linking Spain and Rome. Again, the age of this place hits me over the head. Romans were taking this same route 2000 years ago. Once up on the national route above to Le Perthus, Geoff points out the original Roman bridge below, still functional, now a small bridge amongst newer homes. The long drag to Le Perthus and the border is about 6k at a modest 6-7% grade. Perfect for me. I just spin away, thinking of the day and riding to come. Soon, I'm behind Alain and notice he's definitely putting an effort in. Fine, I make sure it's all aerobic for me. Before the town sign he jumps. A quick look back and there's no other riders in sight, so I let him go and let the heart rate slip back into zone 2.
Geoff and David catch up in the traffic jam that is downtown Le Perthus. Everyone coming from Spain to buy things in France and vice versa across the border in La Jonquera. The border itself is a thing of the past with the ascension of the EU. A few border police are checking cars for smugglers or illegal immigrants, but most just whiz past the deserted control stations. Geoff is a bit in front of me, catching a draft from a truck. Pedaling with not much force, I can manage 40mph, but he's slowly pulling away. A black Saab pulls next to me, makes eye contact and then eases in front, offering me a draft. Gracias! Now I'm doing 50 and closing the gap. The driver taps his brakes to let me know he's slowing for traffic and I move past to pair up with Geoff.
The route turns off the national highway, direction Capmany, and wait for the other riders. Alain pulls up with several other club members, but they go up the road 50 meters before they stop. This rankles a bit and Geoff goes up to explain to them that we need to stick together. For many riders getting dropped on a climb is a loss of face, and I'm sure a couple are feeling that right now. The road to Capmany is quiet, groves of olive trees line the hillsides, along with vineyards and a variety of high desert greens. There are no people, no tourists, no cars, no trucks, just the road, the hills and some cyclists. We pass the village and the road climbs a bit, Sant Climent, Espolla, each 5k apart, separated by rolling hills and hugging the south side of the Alberes range. Between the two, there's a military base and they're shelling one of the peaks. Every few minutes a mortar would sound, preceded a few seconds by a poof of black smoke on the peak. At Espolla, we stop and regroup again; the route can take different paths here.
Col de Banyuls, the sign was small and white, indicating it wasn't a large road. No indication of how far it was, or the fact that it marked the frontier of Spain and France. Just a little sign pointing down the road. We start to climb again and again the group is whittled to David, Geoff, Alain and myself. We reach the top of a grade and I ask if that was the col. 'No,' Geoff laughs and points to a mountain in the distance. Alain keeps asserting himself at the front of the group. Funny how this works, this interaction between cyclists. Who is a courer? Who is a club rider? What does it mean when someone goes to the front for no reason but to be in the front? Are they trying to prove something, show someone up, assert their dominance? When these things are said outloud, or written down, they seem petty, foolish, trivial boy stuff. On the bicycle, a primal reality sets in. Dominance. Who is strong, who is weak? Who is alpha? It's something felt in the gut, sub-rational, but everyone feels it. 
The critical thing is what you do when you feel it.
Alain on the front for me today meant that I would follow his wheel up to the anaerobic level then let him gap me. This meant I was second by a bit on the Col de Banyuls, feeling the joy of propelling myself up it's 10-14% percent grades. Geoff and David rolled up behind us, the rest of the club quite a ways back, Veronique the mother hen making sure the last of the chicks made it to the top. The vistas were breathtaking. The Mediterannean spreading out to the east, the dry Alberes next to us and the backside of the Tour de Madeloc even with us. Alain shared that he had ridden to the Tour before. I struggled with my past tense long enough to fail to answer that I'd ridden it as well.
A couple bites of sandwich, a picture or two and, just as we set out for the rocky descent, David's front tube blows. A few minutes later this would have meant injury or worse; now it's good for a laugh and not so subtle analysis of his inner tube and it's many patches. David is a thrifty Scot and it looks like his tube died of old age.
Lavail
Just east of the village of Sorede, a small tarmac turns off the main Alberes road and heads into the hills. We've passed the road many times, on our way to Argeles to buy groceries, on club runs, but I'd never taken the right turn up the one way road, an inoccuous piece of pavement promising a dead-end and a climb, two things cyclists don't get excited about.
Yesterday was an easy, easy recovery spin with the boys at the piste cyclable outside of Llupia. Picture a proud father with his two boys riding with vineyards on both sides on a perfectly smooth bike trail. The occasional walkers, mostly elderly people, but even a group of middle-aged women jogging together to lose weight, would look and smile at the earnestness and joy of my two sons on their bikes.
So today my legs are rested and ready for something a bit more, a tune-up climb in preparation for tomorrow's longer excursion into Spain, so it gets added to my loop to Argeles and back to Montesquieu. Should be about 90 min with a bit of climbing for intensity.
Vineyard lies on right and left for the first 500 meters or so, the road rising slightly to meet the valley in front of me. Soon I'm in high desert/low mountain forest, twisting away on a road that is sometimes 8 feet wide, sometimes a tad bigger or smaller, and climbing an easy grade. With the hard climbing effort Sunday and the active rest yesterday, my legs feel terrific, turning circles, feeling power feeding into the pedals. A slight increase in
grade takes us towards 8 or 9 percent, but the speed stays constant.
grade takes us towards 8 or 9 percent, but the speed stays constant. On the right a sign, Eglise, XI siecle, a very old church, 1000 years waiting on this road for me.
The road bends back and forth, now following a rushing stream on my right. The sun is bright on the oaks and hemlock along the river and cool air pockets sit in the shaded parts of the canyon. Then the church is there, non-descript, squatting behind a gites d'etape, small country inn. More buildings and the road lurches up and I stand on the pedals for the first time. A left and up a wall of road to a cute creperie. Do tourists really come here to eat crepes? And then past, down an equally steep road of broken tarmac to cross the stream and the church is back and I'm descending.
A glance at my watch: just 40min into my ride. 17 minutes from now I'll be coming back from Argeles on the valley floor, leaving St. Andre. 35 minutes from now I'll be climbing into Montesquieu, ready for a rollercoaster ride through the cork oaks to my village. But just now, I'm content, listening to the stream, feeling my mass leaning into corners, peaking through the trees on the next bend and satisfied with my quick loop through Lavail.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Montbolo
On paper, or on the webpage, today's club ride from Amelie les Bains looked kind of short, just 60k once we started in Amelie. With the extra 60k to and from the ride, the day promised a leisurely 120k or so, a modest number for one of my big rides of the week.
The ride up the valley to Amelie would be sans Geoff; Janet answered the phone last night while doing dishes downstairs and talked to a Geoff in a lot of pain. Les calculs billaire, gallstones, had forced him into the hospital for a few hours and cancelled his weekend training. I checked anyway as I wound through the rondpoint in Le Boulou. Nope, no Geoff, the pain must have been pretty bad.
The day had come in sunny and a bit windy, but far less windy than the gales blowing the past three days. Our Lonely Planet guidebook defines le Mistral as a constant wind from the mountains that drives people crazy; after a few days of constant howling winds gusting to 70mph, this 10-15mph seemed pleasant. The sun patches on the road warmed my arms and legs and I took time to soak in the scenery. Many trips up the valley over the last two months, and I still hadn't completely absorbed the scene. The sense of size and space, the long horizontal vistas of the plain of Rousillon, the vertical presence of le Canigou; colors and sounds, mimosa yellows, almond whites, peach pinks against a canvas of desert browns and greens; and the sounds of water, birds and wind; a sensory symphony.
Around the rondpoint at St. Jean pla de Corts and the long stretch to Ceret, and, voila! a new road surface. It's been two weeks since my tires last touched this asphalt and the old bumpy tarmac has been completely replaced with a velvet smooth surface. If only they could do this to Hwy 3 in Colesburg so quickly! Alas and alack, the truly terrible section in Ceret, the one that mimics the worst sections of my highway back in Iowa, is still there, potholes and cracks and crevases uncovered and unfettered.
8:55am and I've the first one at the meeting point in Amelie's centre ville. A moment of doubt; in the states daylight savings time started two weeks earlier than usual, today, did the French follow suit? Another rider rolls up and then another, shaking hands a salutory salut and the worry fades. David, the fellow I met and rode with on Wednesday, arrives from Ceret and we're soon off, back down the valley for a climb up the Col de Llauro.
The pace down is always a bit of a frustration for me. After 30k on the false flats of the Tech valley, I'm warmed up and ready to go. Coasting back down hill, using up my brake pads and cooling off takes some patience. Not that I'm feeling too squirly today with a chest cold in full bloom (did I hurt myself at last Sunday's race?), but I miss the constant pace of my Wednesday rides. On these club runs we're either going too easy or too hard, but it's not peculiar to this club; our Dubuque club has the same issue: how to be most things to most riders. And they've come to a similar solution: easy, easy pace for the first part of the ride and then the group splits for the second part into fast and less fast. As with most compromises, it's not perfect. As a new rider in the group and a non-native speaker of French, my strategy is to wait and watch for the group split and follow wheels.
We take the split in the road right at Ceret and head towards Maureillas, another smooth, newly paved section of road. A loud bang at the rondpoint and everyone rolls to a stop. 'C'est le tourist,' one of the club riders says. Sounds like a sidewall blowout. The fellow has a cellphone and calls for a pickup; we all continue on our way. Just before Maureillas, we take the left turn to St Jean, crossing my route up, then it's the very familiar climb up past Vives and the Col de Llauro. The group is splitting on the climb and I follow the best climber's wheel, Veronique, and we're soon 7 riders spinning up to Vives, the midway point on the climb. Just before the village, the road levels and I spin lightly on the pedals, letting the legs recover and get used to the effort before we climb again on the edge of town.
Veronique, the top finisher in her age group at the Marmotte last year and one of the top women finishers overall, is putting it on today. Geoff and I normally use this climb as a warmup for our Wednesday rides, letting the cranks turn over and keeping it around 11mph. At 11 my heartrate stays just inside the aerobic zone, a perfect spot. At 13mph, my heart is pumping like crazy, 160, 165, 170 and levels out at 173, deep inside my anaerobic zone. I take a kind of detached awareness of this and wonder how long I can climb at this rate. About a kilometer from the top I get my answer and slowly lose the wheels of the five riders in front of me, led by Veronique and her husband, a rider down from Toulouse, a fellow from Le Boulou and a couple of other grimpeurs. There's no honor lost and I didn't push too hard. David is just behind me and I spin the rest of the way to the top and the group recongeals.
'This is a real pin in the neck, this,' David says as we feel our legs stiffening at the roadside of Llauro. We're soon rolling through the village, over the col and down to Ceret. Our group isn't very big now. The triathalon guy that was pushing on the col is gone, so is the little spanish guy on the yellow bike. Seven of us cruise back towards Amelie.
'Have you been up Montbolo,' David asks. I think I have, but I quickly learn I haven't. I'm sure if I had been up it on a bicycle, my legs would have remembered it. We follow a small sign for Montbolo, and Veronique's husband, a former gendarme, barks at us to follow him past a big red sign that says 'Danger'. It's just a short cut next to a slope that occasionally litters the road with chunks of granite. We 'save' maybe 50 meters or so.
Then the road lurches up. By lurch, I don't mean a paltry 8% like the Col de Llauro. Lurch means more like Potter's Hill. I'm quicly into my red zone, pumping away, trying to be smooth, letting the three in front roll off at their own pace. David soon passes me, looking good, a grimace on his face. Two riders are behind me and when I stop for a photo (and a breather) Veronique coasts back down. 'Ca va, Chris?' 'Oui, ca va. Je prende un photo. C'est tres jolie.' Gasp, gasp. My lungs are wheezing with the phlegm of my chest cold and I think either I'll get pnuemonia from this or all the gunk will get burned out of me from the inside out.
Veronique stays with me and asks about Geoff. I tell her about gallstones, very proud to be understood with this new word (les calculs billiare) but soon we're stumped when it get's to describing the treatment. The French knack for inventing new words for technical things (computer=ordinator) stumps us both. What is the word for ultrasound? (Ultrasons!) This is where the language learning hits the road. We get to the top and David is there next to the fountain. A quick refill of the bottle and we're flying down through the hairpins the back way to Amelie.
75, 4:45, 4200ft
The ride up the valley to Amelie would be sans Geoff; Janet answered the phone last night while doing dishes downstairs and talked to a Geoff in a lot of pain. Les calculs billaire, gallstones, had forced him into the hospital for a few hours and cancelled his weekend training. I checked anyway as I wound through the rondpoint in Le Boulou. Nope, no Geoff, the pain must have been pretty bad.
The day had come in sunny and a bit windy, but far less windy than the gales blowing the past three days. Our Lonely Planet guidebook defines le Mistral as a constant wind from the mountains that drives people crazy; after a few days of constant howling winds gusting to 70mph, this 10-15mph seemed pleasant. The sun patches on the road warmed my arms and legs and I took time to soak in the scenery. Many trips up the valley over the last two months, and I still hadn't completely absorbed the scene. The sense of size and space, the long horizontal vistas of the plain of Rousillon, the vertical presence of le Canigou; colors and sounds, mimosa yellows, almond whites, peach pinks against a canvas of desert browns and greens; and the sounds of water, birds and wind; a sensory symphony.
Around the rondpoint at St. Jean pla de Corts and the long stretch to Ceret, and, voila! a new road surface. It's been two weeks since my tires last touched this asphalt and the old bumpy tarmac has been completely replaced with a velvet smooth surface. If only they could do this to Hwy 3 in Colesburg so quickly! Alas and alack, the truly terrible section in Ceret, the one that mimics the worst sections of my highway back in Iowa, is still there, potholes and cracks and crevases uncovered and unfettered.
8:55am and I've the first one at the meeting point in Amelie's centre ville. A moment of doubt; in the states daylight savings time started two weeks earlier than usual, today, did the French follow suit? Another rider rolls up and then another, shaking hands a salutory salut and the worry fades. David, the fellow I met and rode with on Wednesday, arrives from Ceret and we're soon off, back down the valley for a climb up the Col de Llauro.
The pace down is always a bit of a frustration for me. After 30k on the false flats of the Tech valley, I'm warmed up and ready to go. Coasting back down hill, using up my brake pads and cooling off takes some patience. Not that I'm feeling too squirly today with a chest cold in full bloom (did I hurt myself at last Sunday's race?), but I miss the constant pace of my Wednesday rides. On these club runs we're either going too easy or too hard, but it's not peculiar to this club; our Dubuque club has the same issue: how to be most things to most riders. And they've come to a similar solution: easy, easy pace for the first part of the ride and then the group splits for the second part into fast and less fast. As with most compromises, it's not perfect. As a new rider in the group and a non-native speaker of French, my strategy is to wait and watch for the group split and follow wheels.
We take the split in the road right at Ceret and head towards Maureillas, another smooth, newly paved section of road. A loud bang at the rondpoint and everyone rolls to a stop. 'C'est le tourist,' one of the club riders says. Sounds like a sidewall blowout. The fellow has a cellphone and calls for a pickup; we all continue on our way. Just before Maureillas, we take the left turn to St Jean, crossing my route up, then it's the very familiar climb up past Vives and the Col de Llauro. The group is splitting on the climb and I follow the best climber's wheel, Veronique, and we're soon 7 riders spinning up to Vives, the midway point on the climb. Just before the village, the road levels and I spin lightly on the pedals, letting the legs recover and get used to the effort before we climb again on the edge of town.
Veronique, the top finisher in her age group at the Marmotte last year and one of the top women finishers overall, is putting it on today. Geoff and I normally use this climb as a warmup for our Wednesday rides, letting the cranks turn over and keeping it around 11mph. At 11 my heartrate stays just inside the aerobic zone, a perfect spot. At 13mph, my heart is pumping like crazy, 160, 165, 170 and levels out at 173, deep inside my anaerobic zone. I take a kind of detached awareness of this and wonder how long I can climb at this rate. About a kilometer from the top I get my answer and slowly lose the wheels of the five riders in front of me, led by Veronique and her husband, a rider down from Toulouse, a fellow from Le Boulou and a couple of other grimpeurs. There's no honor lost and I didn't push too hard. David is just behind me and I spin the rest of the way to the top and the group recongeals.
'This is a real pin in the neck, this,' David says as we feel our legs stiffening at the roadside of Llauro. We're soon rolling through the village, over the col and down to Ceret. Our group isn't very big now. The triathalon guy that was pushing on the col is gone, so is the little spanish guy on the yellow bike. Seven of us cruise back towards Amelie.
'Have you been up Montbolo,' David asks. I think I have, but I quickly learn I haven't. I'm sure if I had been up it on a bicycle, my legs would have remembered it. We follow a small sign for Montbolo, and Veronique's husband, a former gendarme, barks at us to follow him past a big red sign that says 'Danger'. It's just a short cut next to a slope that occasionally litters the road with chunks of granite. We 'save' maybe 50 meters or so.
Then the road lurches up. By lurch, I don't mean a paltry 8% like the Col de Llauro. Lurch means more like Potter's Hill. I'm quicly into my red zone, pumping away, trying to be smooth, letting the three in front roll off at their own pace. David soon passes me, looking good, a grimace on his face. Two riders are behind me and when I stop for a photo (and a breather) Veronique coasts back down. 'Ca va, Chris?' 'Oui, ca va. Je prende un photo. C'est tres jolie.' Gasp, gasp. My lungs are wheezing with the phlegm of my chest cold and I think either I'll get pnuemonia from this or all the gunk will get burned out of me from the inside out.Veronique stays with me and asks about Geoff. I tell her about gallstones, very proud to be understood with this new word (les calculs billiare) but soon we're stumped when it get's to describing the treatment. The French knack for inventing new words for technical things (computer=ordinator) stumps us both. What is the word for ultrasound? (Ultrasons!) This is where the language learning hits the road. We get to the top and David is there next to the fountain. A quick refill of the bottle and we're flying down through the hairpins the back way to Amelie.
75, 4:45, 4200ft
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Peach trees in bloom
Geoff and I met David, a scottish architect and longtime friend of Geoff's, at the rondpoint in St. Jean Pla de Corts this morning. Just in time for our weekly climb up from Vives to the Col de Llauro. The morning was sunny and brisk, temperatures in the low 50's and we could see the snows on the Pic de Canigou were receding with the recent warm weather. The wind was stiff again coming down the valley to the sea and the almond trees were losing their flowers, dropping them in a snow shower of white petals in the wind.
Geoff had received an email the night before from Caroline: Mark, Steve and herself would not be coming out today. Caroline will be in El Salvador next week for the Vuelta Ciclista Femenina a el Salvador, a women't pro event and I don't think I'll see her again before we leave at the end of the month. She needed to do some interval work today and this brought out a 'hmmph' from Geoff, not a believer in such work, when there were miles to be had on a day as brilliant as this one.
We crested the Vives climb and descended into the valley, I moved from back to front of our trio, my 20kgs of extra mass giving me an advantage on the downhill run to Fourques. For the rest of the ride, we'd shuffle the trio; two breaking the wind and one riding shotgun. Following our normal route to the outskirts of Thuir to meet our erstwhile riding partners, we pass Terrats, it's large cave and spaceship-like fermenation vats marking the turn to St Colombe and then the downhill run to Thuir and the turn to go up to Castelnou, one of my favorite roads.
Past the quarry, and onto the long drag of a climb for six kilometers, until the watch tower and church swing into view and then the ancient town and towering castle. I'm not working that hard on the climb, and when Geoff accelerates away, I jump, too. 'What did you do wrong?', he queries as we reach the flat. I think, the only thing I did do was accelerate. 'Accelerate?' 'That's right. What you do is slide over and grab that wheel. Get in behind.' I ponder the difference as we begin our descent towards the peach orchards north of Castelnou.
Coffee in Millas at the Cafe du Midi on a busy street corner; three cafe cremes for the three anciens courers. I always feel better after a bit of caffeine, jam sandwich and leg rubbing. We talk about the recent UCI/ASO squabble (that threatened to tear apart pro cycling until UCI completely caved in and allowed the race owners to ban two Pro Tour teams). The war in Iraq and Afganistan, the right way to repair the top tube of a carbon Giant frame (or whether it's possible to repair one at all), the house around the corner from the cafe that Geoff and his wife almost bought, topics surface, submerge, resurface and merge into others in a millieu of ideas. Just before the cafe as we left Illes sur Tet, Geoff and I debated whether badminton and cycling were major sports, or mightn't we be living in a bubble. Snooker was more popular in Scotland by at least 1000 to 1, Geoff said, but I noted that a doctor would never tell his patient to take up snooker as a way to combat heart disease and hypertension.
These are the things that enliven cycling. We earn a spot at the table of ideas by training hard enough to stick and then, once we do, we have a voice to use as we wish. There's still a pecking order, a status earned with racing and riding prowess, but these two group rides each week rid the training week of the sameness of riding with one's own thoughts mile after mile, hour after hour.
From Millas, we head towards the sea, crossing the A9 and the D900 and the wind is shifted now from the west to directly out of the south. A strange wind that I can't seem to get out of when I'm following Geoff's wheel, swirling and coming round him. My heart rate is moving out of the easy aerobic zone more often as tackle a false flat or a 'heavy' road with rough tarmac. When we hit both, just north of Brouilla and the one-two of the wind and another false flat, I'm very close to anaerobic. Geoff shoots past. I spend a hard effort chasing up to him, take a breather and pull in front. We're holding 21/22mph into the wind now and I know we're just a few miles from my turn past St. Genis and I'm not going to leave anything on the road. A little farther and the bridge just before St. Genis, the normal sprinting point. My brain knows this, but there is nothing left in my legs at all.
Geoff sprints by again. I stand up and go through the motions, but I'm empty. 'Bastard,' I say to no one in particular, but I'm laughing. 'Not fair, that,' Geoff says when we catch on again. 'You were pulling for awhile. Kind of like passing someone on a hill when you've been following them all the way up.'
We soft pedal through the village and reach my turn. My watch says 12:45. I suppose I could add on Montesquieu's climb and come back through the cork groves on the mountainside; afterall, I told Janet I wouldn't be home until 1pm.
4:35, 76.3, 3200ft
Geoff had received an email the night before from Caroline: Mark, Steve and herself would not be coming out today. Caroline will be in El Salvador next week for the Vuelta Ciclista Femenina a el Salvador, a women't pro event and I don't think I'll see her again before we leave at the end of the month. She needed to do some interval work today and this brought out a 'hmmph' from Geoff, not a believer in such work, when there were miles to be had on a day as brilliant as this one.
We crested the Vives climb and descended into the valley, I moved from back to front of our trio, my 20kgs of extra mass giving me an advantage on the downhill run to Fourques. For the rest of the ride, we'd shuffle the trio; two breaking the wind and one riding shotgun. Following our normal route to the outskirts of Thuir to meet our erstwhile riding partners, we pass Terrats, it's large cave and spaceship-like fermenation vats marking the turn to St Colombe and then the downhill run to Thuir and the turn to go up to Castelnou, one of my favorite roads.
Past the quarry, and onto the long drag of a climb for six kilometers, until the watch tower and church swing into view and then the ancient town and towering castle. I'm not working that hard on the climb, and when Geoff accelerates away, I jump, too. 'What did you do wrong?', he queries as we reach the flat. I think, the only thing I did do was accelerate. 'Accelerate?' 'That's right. What you do is slide over and grab that wheel. Get in behind.' I ponder the difference as we begin our descent towards the peach orchards north of Castelnou.
Coffee in Millas at the Cafe du Midi on a busy street corner; three cafe cremes for the three anciens courers. I always feel better after a bit of caffeine, jam sandwich and leg rubbing. We talk about the recent UCI/ASO squabble (that threatened to tear apart pro cycling until UCI completely caved in and allowed the race owners to ban two Pro Tour teams). The war in Iraq and Afganistan, the right way to repair the top tube of a carbon Giant frame (or whether it's possible to repair one at all), the house around the corner from the cafe that Geoff and his wife almost bought, topics surface, submerge, resurface and merge into others in a millieu of ideas. Just before the cafe as we left Illes sur Tet, Geoff and I debated whether badminton and cycling were major sports, or mightn't we be living in a bubble. Snooker was more popular in Scotland by at least 1000 to 1, Geoff said, but I noted that a doctor would never tell his patient to take up snooker as a way to combat heart disease and hypertension.
These are the things that enliven cycling. We earn a spot at the table of ideas by training hard enough to stick and then, once we do, we have a voice to use as we wish. There's still a pecking order, a status earned with racing and riding prowess, but these two group rides each week rid the training week of the sameness of riding with one's own thoughts mile after mile, hour after hour.
From Millas, we head towards the sea, crossing the A9 and the D900 and the wind is shifted now from the west to directly out of the south. A strange wind that I can't seem to get out of when I'm following Geoff's wheel, swirling and coming round him. My heart rate is moving out of the easy aerobic zone more often as tackle a false flat or a 'heavy' road with rough tarmac. When we hit both, just north of Brouilla and the one-two of the wind and another false flat, I'm very close to anaerobic. Geoff shoots past. I spend a hard effort chasing up to him, take a breather and pull in front. We're holding 21/22mph into the wind now and I know we're just a few miles from my turn past St. Genis and I'm not going to leave anything on the road. A little farther and the bridge just before St. Genis, the normal sprinting point. My brain knows this, but there is nothing left in my legs at all.
Geoff sprints by again. I stand up and go through the motions, but I'm empty. 'Bastard,' I say to no one in particular, but I'm laughing. 'Not fair, that,' Geoff says when we catch on again. 'You were pulling for awhile. Kind of like passing someone on a hill when you've been following them all the way up.'
We soft pedal through the village and reach my turn. My watch says 12:45. I suppose I could add on Montesquieu's climb and come back through the cork groves on the mountainside; afterall, I told Janet I wouldn't be home until 1pm.
4:35, 76.3, 3200ft
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Into the wind
Looking out the window this afternoon in our rented perch on the side of the Alberes mountains, the sun is reaching towards us, making it almost to Ortaffa, with the shoreline of the Med stretching north of Argeles fully sunny. The Canigou is shrouded completely in cloud and my intention, as I descended into the valley at 30mph was to ride to the sun.
What is it that determines one's mind? That makes a person roll out of bed at 6:30 and cycle for hours in misty gloom? Whatever it is, it makes me turn left at Brouilla, heading into a stiff wind. When I reach the main road from Perpignan to Le Boulou, a similiar resolution crystalizes: why not ride up to the Col de Llauro today? So, I turn towards Fourques, following the intimate road through vineyards and forest.
I feel guilty today. Sunday's race went badly and I ended up spending only an hour on the bike on a day I normally spend four or five hours on the bike. After a week of low volume, high intensity days, I should be rejuvenated. Instead my legs ache and I feel like I'm coming down with something. The cure? A climb. Is this punishment for my lapse? Perhaps it's A kind of hairshirt to atone for my sins.
The traffic is light today. Cyclists
have been enduring lots of tourist traffic lately as school districts around France take turns sending their students on holidays. It's about 3pm as I turn into Fourques. Some older folks are talking outside a boulangerie and watch me approach in slow motion on the steep grade in town. Smiles and I hear an 'allez' as I roll past. There is definitely a generation gap among cycling fans; over 60 and you see them paying attention to passing cyclists, under 40 and we seem to be more of a nuisance. Karl and Johann, my two cycling prodigies, get lots of looks from les vieux on the beach promenade. Karl on his racing bike, getting out of the saddle; Johann right behind or right in front, smiling away, a manifestation of the joy we all feel riding our bikes.
What is it that determines one's mind? That makes a person roll out of bed at 6:30 and cycle for hours in misty gloom? Whatever it is, it makes me turn left at Brouilla, heading into a stiff wind. When I reach the main road from Perpignan to Le Boulou, a similiar resolution crystalizes: why not ride up to the Col de Llauro today? So, I turn towards Fourques, following the intimate road through vineyards and forest.
I feel guilty today. Sunday's race went badly and I ended up spending only an hour on the bike on a day I normally spend four or five hours on the bike. After a week of low volume, high intensity days, I should be rejuvenated. Instead my legs ache and I feel like I'm coming down with something. The cure? A climb. Is this punishment for my lapse? Perhaps it's A kind of hairshirt to atone for my sins.
The traffic is light today. Cyclists
have been enduring lots of tourist traffic lately as school districts around France take turns sending their students on holidays. It's about 3pm as I turn into Fourques. Some older folks are talking outside a boulangerie and watch me approach in slow motion on the steep grade in town. Smiles and I hear an 'allez' as I roll past. There is definitely a generation gap among cycling fans; over 60 and you see them paying attention to passing cyclists, under 40 and we seem to be more of a nuisance. Karl and Johann, my two cycling prodigies, get lots of looks from les vieux on the beach promenade. Karl on his racing bike, getting out of the saddle; Johann right behind or right in front, smiling away, a manifestation of the joy we all feel riding our bikes.
The climb itself to the Col de Llauro isn't extreme, about an 8% grade, sometimes more, sometimes less, for about 6k. The reward is a long view of the valley stretching to the Alberes and a snug road lined with cork trees.
During the descent and return with the wind on my left cheek, I realize my legs are feeling pretty good, the crap from the previous day rinsed clean and I take the hairshirt off. But maybe I'll add that little climb to Montesquieu...
1:52, 28.4, 1580ft
During the descent and return with the wind on my left cheek, I realize my legs are feeling pretty good, the crap from the previous day rinsed clean and I take the hairshirt off. But maybe I'll add that little climb to Montesquieu...
1:52, 28.4, 1580ft
Monday, March 05, 2007
GP de Armissan
'Never raced this course before.'
Geoff and I are driving in his black Peugeot north on the N9 to Narbonne. Janet, the kids, my sister and her friend and my bike are trailing some meters behind in our Espace. Today is my first race of the season, a strange season for me, much earlier than past years when I would be getting ready for the Great Bear Chase ski race in northern Michigan.
The arid scenery north of Perpignan and the Salanque plain pass outside the window, olive trees, vineyards, cactus, vineyards and more vineyards. Mussle beds spot the Medeterranean shoreline as we approach Narbonne and we hit the first rondpoints coming into town. The race is being held in Armissan, about 10 kilometers from town; the registration is at the cave cooperative. We've given ourselves an hour to register and warmup, but we take a wrong turn and end up at the Narbonne plage. Beautiful, but no bike race. We retrace our route back towards town. As we discuss the relative merits of each tiny tarmace heading into the hills, I'm aware of the minutes ticking away.
We find our wrong turn and head into Armissan. An ancient stone portal looms over the right side of the road, the three story face of a church missing it's other three walls and roof. Newer, cinderblock houses line the road before we reach the cooperative and the jungle of bikes, cars and people. Geoff noted earlier how strange it is to drive to one of these events and not see a single bike before reaching the starting area. Of course, we have about 30 minutes before the race starts and we hustle into the line of riders to register.
I don't have my blue UCI license in hand; USACycling ignored my request to send it to France and, instead, it has meandered its way to Iowa, Milwaukee and points east. I hand the elderly official my USCF license, 'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' 'C'est ma license domestique aux Etats Unis. J'ai cette lettre de permission de UCI aussi.' Grunting, huffing. I throw in my foreign permission letter as well, for effect. Geoff is next to me, having problems with his license. He usually races UFOLP races instead of FFC events and a new requirement for a more expensive license wasn't mentioned on the race form, but seems to be in effect anyway. Geoff's strategy is to become non-fluent in French. Quite effective at exasperating the old man holding my letters and license. 'You need a letter of permission for this department as well.' I don't understand this and smile at the woman with the numbers. 'Pour les deux? Dix quarant Euros.' 'Tres bien, merci.' We now have about 20 minutes before the race start.
In line, a fellow dressed in the green of the Narbonne club, explains that there is a 'hill' in the course. Driving in we noticed that there was a small mountain seperating Armissan from the coast. Surely, they wouldn't route the race up the hill.
After a pee in the bushes and various and sundry activities related to getting ready to race, I bid adieu to the family and warm up for eight minutes before we're called to the line. I look at the odometer, 2.3 miles. Not good, but I feel comfortably enscounced in the peloton grouped at the line. About 120 of us, a few older, but most young. Two elite woman are entered as well. My goal is to warmup on the first of the eight laps and try to stick in the pack, sucking wheels.
The fellow on the mike talks for about 10 minutes, his unintelligble words mangled by the squawks on the speaker system. And we're off. The course snakes it's way through the centre ville, compressing the peloton. I'm in the middle and grab the brakes hard several times. We're like a large sausage begin stretched and shaken on the broken streets and then we're spit out the other side of town.
Voila, the 'hill'! My legs have that odd feeling when they're asked to do something they're not ready to do, like climb a 10-15% percent grade at speed in my big chainring. I make it with the group to the first plateau and then get shat out the back when the climb shoots up again. I keep turning over the pedals and my heart rate shoots far into the red zone. I must be a spectacle; a fellow with a camera sits in the road in front of me, waiting until I fill his frame perfectly with my agonized grimmace, before scooting out of the way. A fast downhill with speeds approaching 45mph gets me within spitting distance of the commisar's red car, but I'm alone in the wind going back into town and slowly lose the group.
One lap. Ok, I'll pedal within myself and hitch on with some of the other fallen riders. But there are no riders in front and those in back have quickly withdrawn and I pedal another lap by myself (damn that fellow with the camera!), feeling slightly better on the hill this time. There's a rider a hundred yards in front of me as we approach the town in the wind. Pick up the pace and reach him... and he pulls into the parking lot. OK, one more lap. The sour taste of my stomach pushes up as I crest the hill again. I'm done, not really racing anymore, broken.
It's been a long time since I've been dropped like this in a race and Geoff and I are philosophical about it on our drive home. 'Not a course for no-uppers like us,' he says. I don't think there are many races in the midwest that have a climb like that in their route. Snake Alley comes to mind, but it's not two miles long. Having a propper warmup would have helped, but we were both doomed from the start. We leave Narbonne a bit wiser, and a lot more interested in our training regimen over the next few weeks.
Geoff and I are driving in his black Peugeot north on the N9 to Narbonne. Janet, the kids, my sister and her friend and my bike are trailing some meters behind in our Espace. Today is my first race of the season, a strange season for me, much earlier than past years when I would be getting ready for the Great Bear Chase ski race in northern Michigan.
The arid scenery north of Perpignan and the Salanque plain pass outside the window, olive trees, vineyards, cactus, vineyards and more vineyards. Mussle beds spot the Medeterranean shoreline as we approach Narbonne and we hit the first rondpoints coming into town. The race is being held in Armissan, about 10 kilometers from town; the registration is at the cave cooperative. We've given ourselves an hour to register and warmup, but we take a wrong turn and end up at the Narbonne plage. Beautiful, but no bike race. We retrace our route back towards town. As we discuss the relative merits of each tiny tarmace heading into the hills, I'm aware of the minutes ticking away.
We find our wrong turn and head into Armissan. An ancient stone portal looms over the right side of the road, the three story face of a church missing it's other three walls and roof. Newer, cinderblock houses line the road before we reach the cooperative and the jungle of bikes, cars and people. Geoff noted earlier how strange it is to drive to one of these events and not see a single bike before reaching the starting area. Of course, we have about 30 minutes before the race starts and we hustle into the line of riders to register.I don't have my blue UCI license in hand; USACycling ignored my request to send it to France and, instead, it has meandered its way to Iowa, Milwaukee and points east. I hand the elderly official my USCF license, 'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' 'C'est ma license domestique aux Etats Unis. J'ai cette lettre de permission de UCI aussi.' Grunting, huffing. I throw in my foreign permission letter as well, for effect. Geoff is next to me, having problems with his license. He usually races UFOLP races instead of FFC events and a new requirement for a more expensive license wasn't mentioned on the race form, but seems to be in effect anyway. Geoff's strategy is to become non-fluent in French. Quite effective at exasperating the old man holding my letters and license. 'You need a letter of permission for this department as well.' I don't understand this and smile at the woman with the numbers. 'Pour les deux? Dix quarant Euros.' 'Tres bien, merci.' We now have about 20 minutes before the race start.
In line, a fellow dressed in the green of the Narbonne club, explains that there is a 'hill' in the course. Driving in we noticed that there was a small mountain seperating Armissan from the coast. Surely, they wouldn't route the race up the hill.
After a pee in the bushes and various and sundry activities related to getting ready to race, I bid adieu to the family and warm up for eight minutes before we're called to the line. I look at the odometer, 2.3 miles. Not good, but I feel comfortably enscounced in the peloton grouped at the line. About 120 of us, a few older, but most young. Two elite woman are entered as well. My goal is to warmup on the first of the eight laps and try to stick in the pack, sucking wheels.
The fellow on the mike talks for about 10 minutes, his unintelligble words mangled by the squawks on the speaker system. And we're off. The course snakes it's way through the centre ville, compressing the peloton. I'm in the middle and grab the brakes hard several times. We're like a large sausage begin stretched and shaken on the broken streets and then we're spit out the other side of town.
Voila, the 'hill'! My legs have that odd feeling when they're asked to do something they're not ready to do, like climb a 10-15% percent grade at speed in my big chainring. I make it with the group to the first plateau and then get shat out the back when the climb shoots up again. I keep turning over the pedals and my heart rate shoots far into the red zone. I must be a spectacle; a fellow with a camera sits in the road in front of me, waiting until I fill his frame perfectly with my agonized grimmace, before scooting out of the way. A fast downhill with speeds approaching 45mph gets me within spitting distance of the commisar's red car, but I'm alone in the wind going back into town and slowly lose the group.
One lap. Ok, I'll pedal within myself and hitch on with some of the other fallen riders. But there are no riders in front and those in back have quickly withdrawn and I pedal another lap by myself (damn that fellow with the camera!), feeling slightly better on the hill this time. There's a rider a hundred yards in front of me as we approach the town in the wind. Pick up the pace and reach him... and he pulls into the parking lot. OK, one more lap. The sour taste of my stomach pushes up as I crest the hill again. I'm done, not really racing anymore, broken.
It's been a long time since I've been dropped like this in a race and Geoff and I are philosophical about it on our drive home. 'Not a course for no-uppers like us,' he says. I don't think there are many races in the midwest that have a climb like that in their route. Snake Alley comes to mind, but it's not two miles long. Having a propper warmup would have helped, but we were both doomed from the start. We leave Narbonne a bit wiser, and a lot more interested in our training regimen over the next few weeks.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
The Hardest Week
After three weeks and 800 miles of riding, this week has been a lower volume week, a chance to consolidate fitness, scrub fatigue and recharge the batteries. For me, not going on a ride is much harder than riding. Sunday's four hour ride marked the last high volume day until Sunday's race. In between, Monday-rest, Tuesday-1hr intense ride, Wednesday-rest, Thursday-1 hr with cruise interval, Friday-rest, and today a good pre-race warm-up, a few 30 sec sprints and cool down.
What I know: It's not always about the miles. The time on the bike, like all exercise, actually breaks your body down. It's the time between rides when the body repairs itself and becomes stronger. Without the downtime, whether the rests between rides while you sleep, or the day off in the training week, or the half-volume week thrown in once a month, we need these rests to avoid the fatigue trap.
So I tell myself as the temperatures are hovering around 75, the sun is shining and the bike sits in the corner.
What I know: It's not always about the miles. The time on the bike, like all exercise, actually breaks your body down. It's the time between rides when the body repairs itself and becomes stronger. Without the downtime, whether the rests between rides while you sleep, or the day off in the training week, or the half-volume week thrown in once a month, we need these rests to avoid the fatigue trap.
So I tell myself as the temperatures are hovering around 75, the sun is shining and the bike sits in the corner.
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