Sim Green used to live and race in the US, but now lives and races in southern France. Read more about Sim here.

Finally here it is, Diary # 4.

In my last update, the team was doing it’s training camp, and we had completed phase 1.  Phase 2 didn’t go as well.  A freak snowstorm that had been causing havoc in the Ukraine, Russia etc hit France and covered the country in many inches of snow.  Naturally training camp was cancelled as we could even get out of the house.  So the few team members who had made it to the team house in preparation went cross-country skiing… the rest of us stayed at home and watched the snow come down.  I went back to roots of off-road stupidity and went out for some sliding fun on the Cyclocross bike.  I had a blast riding though totally white countryside and getting lost in the blanketed countryside. 

Apart from that there is fairly little to report on.  The usual early season stuff.  Licenses etc, I finally got my license from the British Federation, I was starting to worried it would never show up.  I still have a few tests and paper to submit to the BCF, but I have a little more time for that.  I have spent a little time doing a few tests on the Time Trial bike to get my position figured out.  I have got a new TT frame for the season, so I want to make sure everything is fitted perfectly and that it all fits into the UCI regulations for TT bikes. 

I’ve also been piling up the miles.  Nothing special seeing as I spend most of my days sitting in class, but I’m getting in some pretty nice 4 hour rides, so I’m feeling fairly strong, but we will only know once I start racing.  I did get my early season schedule the other day.  I will be racing the Grand Prix D’Ouverture de Castres, the Boucles du Vaurais, and the Boucles Gerssoises.  I can’t wait to get back out there racing, I only hope I’m in good enough shape to at least help the team.

The big news has been the arrival of John Parks.  He got here a little over a week ago.  We got in some nice rides before he headed off to yet another team training camp.  We put in a few pretty hardcore 4 and 5 hour rides. 

I like riding with John, because neither of us ever give up, and we just seem to push each other to the limit while both trying to pretend neither of us is feeling it.  Great fun.  We usually end up riding full blast, side by side as if on a little afternoon jaunt.  This time the team was meeting in Amelie les Bains in the eastern Pyrenees on the Spanish border.  Most of the team was there except for those of us that have school.  The team did about 100miles a day for three days, including some races in Spain that they used for training.  They rode into Spain to the races, did the races, then rode home to the hotel.  One day things got a little miscalculated and they ended up riding home to the hotel in the dark with only the following team car’s headlights as guidance… Epic story I’m sure. 

The week’s training camp then ended with the Essor Basque, the tour of the Basque country.  The team performed well on Saturday’s event with one of our young riders spending most of the day in the break with a Pro rider from Russian Pro team Omnibike, he was caught near the end and Julien Schick (ex Credit Agricole) finished 5th!  A great performance for our team in such big races with some competition that included some pro teams from France, Belgium and Russia.  Today (Sunday) was a double stage day including a mountain top finish.  I don’t know how the team did there yet.  I have just got a call from John saying things went OK, it was interesting.  He’ll be back here tonight, so I’ll find out more.

All in all the team have had a great training session.  Our Director Sportif would like to have our team do some races in the US.  Hopefully that will work out, though we don’t know which riders would be on the team yet of course.  Hopefully there will be more to read about next time.  I’m sure there are some epic race stories just around the corner.  Think of it as “suspense”, right now it is mainly just training and getting the season kicked off.

Thanks for reading.
Sim