Tuesday morning 7am and we were on the road! I was fast asleep for the first half of the journey until I got woken up around Paris by some crazy French Police. I don’t know what their agenda was! They were kicking off about something, I couldn’t understand. Turns out they wanted to check the paper work of the vehicles and drivers. I just went back to sleep until we stopped along route for a picnic before and then cracked on to a hotel in Limousine.
No Stress before the start
We took a spin that evening on the bikes to get the travel out our legs. Having an awesome sense of direction I said I would take us for a loop but no one had any faith in me so we ended up doing some funny out and back ride. We got a little worried midway when we only had 10 minutes of our ride left and we were in the middle of nowhere and getting chased by some crazy dogs. But all was well and we made it back in time for tea, big steak and ice-cream to make sure we kept morale high for start of the race!
Accommodation for the race was pretty basic and the food, well, lets just say everything was either covered in ketchup, salt or balsamic vinegar.
Annie enjoyed our last dinner before the race
Stage 1 kicked off and was epic… first half of the race was a loop around the lake with 2 climbs either side so I was pretty pleased with myself for staying in the bunch for as long as I did. They weren’t hanging around as there was a GPM every lap as well! If they were trying to crack me on stage one, it worked!
Alex before stage 1
The TT was pretty simple just ride around to get in the time limit. Stage 3 was probably the worst for me suffering all day from the off. I felt a bit off all ride but just had to man up and get through it, although it was oh so tempting to just stop when you rode through the feed.
Stage 4 didn’t start well, as some mad spectator decided to basically block our whole team in so we couldn’t get going when the flag went down, and it went up hill 300m after the start. I needed all the help I could get so starting right on the back wasn’t the best for me. Not being in the best of moods I kicked off! I had to barge past but she was a fair old size! Definitely got my heart pumping!
Me and Simo couldn’t wait to get back to Belgium for some flat roads and a good party! I was looking forward to just kicking back in the van on the way home have a little sleep good old chat with Annie but that was another stressful journey. A few near death experiences due to the road madness on the Paris Ring Road! Bit of chocolate and A-Z of celebrates kept us going though.
Monday was a pretty awesome rest day as went to a Spa with Helen Wyman, Rachel, Penny and Simpson. Major chill out Sauna/Steam room/Jacuzi, I loved it. Nice and relaxed now and ready for a night out in Belgium.
Alex x
My hero on stage 4! Couldn’t believe we were using rugby skills again!