Racing Union

race report from the Classique Nord Charente

The day before Paris Roubaix, is a “mini Paris Roubaix” in north western France.

Thursday 7th April, I get an e-mail from my DS who has just returned from the tour of Majorca saying that I am racing both Saturday and Sunday.  But Saturday is not just any race.

Friday 8th, I load up my car and drive up to Castelsarrasin to the team house where I sill spend the weekend.  John is at the house (of course, he lives there) and so is another team mate who is from central France in Poitier and had to spend most of the week down south for some tests being run in Toulouse.  A number of other people are also at the house this weekend as Saturday morning will be an early start.  We are supposed to have a team meeting Friday evening to discuss our racing schedule for the rest of the season… but in typical French style, the meeting is first put off for about an hour, and eventually put off all together.

Fearing that the team meal that night might be a big plate of simple pasta with no sauce etc, John and I sneaked out to get some food, and I also needed a new cassette and some brake pads.  So we hit the bike shop which was miraculously still open.  I got what I needed and we headed towards the shops.  Realizing that if we got some food, everyone would eat it thinking it was team food, we decided against getting actual food and sneaked into the local McDonalds for some rather inappropriate fare.  Making ourselves feel better about our sinful act by recounting the story of Chris Horner’s fight to get a burger and fries during last years Tour de France, we munched our food quickly and headed back to the house.  The guys were waiting for us to go and eat… so we all piled into the team cars and went out to a cafeteria for dinner, paid for by the team.  So John and I got in 2 meals that evening.  Americans. puh. (** - see editor’s note below)

Saturday, the big day.  The team loaded the vehicles and got everything ready for the long drive up to northern France for the Classic Nord Atlantique.  2 cars and a mini-bus, 3 drivers and more wheels than you can shake a stick at accompanied the 11 rider team for this mini Paris Roubaix.  After about 2 hours of driving, we stopped for lunch.  John and I looked at each other and people started to pull out Tupperware full of food, we had prepared nothing.  A moment of panic went through us until we found out that 4 or 5 of the other guys also had nothing.  So the team paid for our cafeteria lunch.  The choice was limited, and we needed some kind of carbs.  So I went for fries and sausage, far from ideal.  Back into the vehicles we piled for more driving.  Eventually we get there.  The team helpers get all the bikes out, get everything sorted, fill the water bottles, get our race numbers etc etc.  I had put on my new chain, so I got changed and went off to shake the legs out after that long drive.  5 meters out of the parking area and of course the chain is slipping all over the old cassette.  So I go hunting in the back of the van, all we have in 9 speed is a cosmic carbon with a TT cassette, so I put the cassette on my wheel and off we go to race 130km of dirt on a 11-19 cassette that isn’t shifting very well anyway.

The race gets underway with a 10km neutral start, after about 20km is the first dirt section.  There are 15 in total, each one named and with a big sign at the entrance with the name and distance up for all to see.  The first hour of racing was at 44km average, and there was no hiding in the field, it was strung out all the way.  I really didn’t feel well at first, and not long into the race, that greasy sausage and fries started to come up.  I threw up 3 times and got dropped twice.  I sat in the cars for a while and waited until Marion pulled up in our team car.  For some reason I was really thirsty and had gotten through a whole water bottle in only 30k.  She told me that there was a little group of riders behind me with Thibault Marc (one of our guys) in there, so I could wait for them… she was a little surprised when I asked her for a water bottle this early into the race.  In fact you are not allowed to be fed within the first 50km of the race, but I’m guessing no one saw because we didn’t get a fine.  Then I worked my way through the caravan and got back into the race.  Sadly a little later the food came up again to say hello, and I was off the back, this time with Couscous (Christophe Cousinie, one of the area heroes who is on our team this year), he’s not in great form at the moment as he was sick over the winter.  I sat in and let the other guys who were with us do a little work, but seeing it wasn’t doing much I took control of things.  I worked my way through the caravan and got back into the race once again.  I think Couscous followed me but the other guys dropped.

About half way into the race, a break had got away early and we didn’t have anyone in it.  As we headed up a little hill John attacked at the perfect moment, it strung us all out and I wanted to kill him because here came the food again.  Sadly for John it came to nothing.  So we put 3 guys on the front to try and close the gap to the group off the front, the 3 were Beaudet, Parks and Trouche, then we had 3 other guys sitting in the field.  As we hit another dirt section everyone flatted, there were guys all over the place.  Seemed like all but 2 or 3 of us from our team flatted.  A few meters later John got a flat too.  This race was absolute carnage back in the team cars.  Cars were stopping all over the place, they were running out of wheels, there was dust everywhere.  Seeing as we no longer had our 3 guys up front I got myself up to the front and tried to control the attacks.  But by the 2nd section of dirt near the front I started to drop back as people let gaps open.  Frankly from this point on I don’t know what happened.  There were cars all over the place, riders in ones and twos, guys crashing in the middle of the “road”, motorbikes going through farmers’ fields.  I do remember being amazed at the amount of spectators out watching the dirt sections.  We would come crashing over the dirt, through a field out in the middle of nowhere, and there were all these people just standing in the middle of a field in the north of France cheering a bike race.  Well the rest of the race is a blur of dust and confusion.  All I know is that less than half of the field finished.  Only 2 of us from our team finished.  I was quite happy to be one of them even if that northern style of riding with lots of accelerations isn’t what I’m best at.  I actually didn’t flat.  Although a lot of it is luck, I think that my years of mountain biking really helped me to choose the right gear and adopt a pedal style that minimized the risk of flatting.  I was quite amazed actually because before the race I pulled out a big chunk of glass that left a big deep hole in my rear tire.

I’m pretty bummed for John who flatted, and then (maybe stupidly) waited for a team mate who also got a flat.  John was riding a very smart race.  Now he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about the group that was off the front and stayed off the front, but I feel pretty sure John was on a good day and could have got himself a top 20 finish… which in that race would have been more than respectable.

I may not have got any flats, but I did crack my rim.  I’m pretty annoyed as I now don’t have a rear wheel.  That was my race wheel, and I only have a really heavy and crappy shimano rear wheel now.  Sucks.  I also tore my saddle.

After the race, it was back in the cars for the long drive home.  We got in at 11pm, and it was off to do it all over again early the next morning for 150km of racing with a slightly different team consisting of 5 riders who had done the Classic Nord Charente.  John and myself were there, but that’s a different story.  Another slightly modified team race on Monday as well.  I wasn’t part of it, John was the only one to do all 3 days.  He didn’t have to, but he chose to go monday anyway, and was totally toasted.

Classic Nord Charente (Paris Roubaix) in a few words and numbers:

130km
15 dirt section:
1st hour at 44kph
41kph average for the whole race.

website: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.baudouin/velo.htm
France 3 coverage:
http://jt.france3.fr/
and click on 19/20 Poitou-Charentes and then click on Dimanche 09 avril.
around  7minutes in

Results:
1- LEBRUN Charles Henri (CC Marmande)
2- Limoges V. (Blois CAC 41)
3- Mainguenaud (Deux-Sèvres C)
22- Pozza S. (CC Castelsarrasin)
36- Siméon G. (CC Castelsarrasin)

(** editor’s note – - – there is no real literal translation for what sim is giving you here: “Americans. puh.”  the french have a stunning array of dismissive gestures and phrases.  the gestures tend to be small.  you are generally not deemed worthy of any sort of vocalization or arm waving unless you run over their citroen with tractor or you’re caught stealing their heating oil or groceries.  as a result, the most common thing you’re likely to encounter is this “puh”.  it’s very amusing as i knew immediately what sim was talking about.  to make this work, you puff out your cheeks ever so slightly, form your lips like you’re going to say the letter “p” or the beginning of the word “pug” and then push the air out your lips.  the rest of your face is motionless.  to add emphasis, you can supplement this with an almost indiscernable shrug or a barely detectable flick of your hand.  try to look off slightly from the object of your disgust.  these small gestures speak volumes.  oh yah, and i’ll try to get some pictures up fairly soon from the race.)

by sim

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