On Your Marks, Get Set, Race Cancelled!

David Smith

• Moving On...
• Adieu Vaulx-en-Velin
• All Good Things Come to an End
• A Race Diary
• Seen Better Days

Well this is a first, I am writing this entry on the train journey from hell that is Thurso to Edinburgh. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if you were doing it for the first time, the scenery is pretty spectacular but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve made this trip and the novelty wore off many years ago. It’s mainly the frustration of knowing that if I was in a car it would take roughly half the time that cracks me but I’ve no choice as my flight from Edinburgh (accommodation courtesy of coach Mark Young and his wife Judith this evening, thanks!) back to Lyon is early in the morning. So I thought why the hell not make it a productive journey for once and bust out the laptop!

The last month has been relatively quite. After Savoie I had a weekend without racing as it was the Rhone-Alpes regional championship and not being French I couldn’t do it. I went along anyway and helped get the bikes ready before heading off for a ride myself up the fearsome Col de la Ramaz which was fun. I got a call mid-week from the manager Regis to say I was going to go up to Tour d’Eure et Loire the following weekend when I had been scheduled to do a local one day race as he was a rider short. I wasn’t over the moon about this as I’d come down with a pretty heavy cold and wanted to try and recover for Tour du Nivernais Morvan which was a race better suited to me. The Eure et Loire, for those of you without a map handy is the area around Chartes near Paris which is flat and windy, not by any means my favourite territory! I struggled my way round the first stage which was a gutter fest due to strong winds, checking my cycle computer after the stage I noticed my top speed had been 70km/h at some point when we must have had a tailwind but still very fast on the flat! I ended up in a group that finished along way down and was feeling rough to say the least. Regis said to me that evening that if I didn’t want to start the following day he didn’t mind.

When I got up the next morning the weather was much better so I thought I’d at least start the first of the day’s split stages just to see what happened. I was feeling a bit better and there were a few more hills on this stage which were sending a few guys out the back. With 15km left I was still in the main group and thought I may as well try and get in a move if I could. I saw two riders from the UCI team attack and went with them and we were quickly joined by five others. At almost every stage race I’ve done this year there has been a guy placed on general classification in the break’s I end up in and this time was no exception. Had that not have been the case VC LaPomme (who had the yellow jersey) would have been happy to let the move go to the finish but unfortunately we didn’t manage to get more than 20seconds up the road as they were riding full gas behind. However coming into the final kilometre we still had around 10seconds. A rider attacked and I went with him but we were immediately countered by the two from the UCI team. I maybe had the strength to go with them but I hesitated a fraction of second too long before reacting in the hope someone else would shut the gap (schoolboy error). The finish straight was slightly uphill and into the wind and I was unable to close them down, the rest of the riders from the break had blown but the bunch was bearing down rapidly behind. If I could hold on at worst I was going to get third but with 100metres left the entire peleton came barrelling by arriving right on the wheels of the two UCI guys who got a one two! I was fuming and threw my bike into a corn field after I crossed the line, childish but I was in a really bad mood.

The rain came down again in the afternoon so I called it a day after 60km of the last stage, still feeling lousy from the cold.

Regis then decided it would be better I didn’t do Nivernais Morvan to give me a chance to recover from the cold and be in better shape for the national champs. I went training with a Charvieu rider mid-week, Guillaume Lejeune who told me Regis had probably made a wise decision as he reckoned Nivernais is one of the toughest stage races of the year! Instead I did a couple of races on the south coast, one at Miramas and then the next day at Pernes-les-Fontaines. I pretty much rode round at Miramas as I still wasn’t in great condition but on Sunday at Pernes I’d come round a bit and ended up getting in a few early moves although the only one I missed turned out to be the winner…typical. Still with team mates Remi and Nicolas up the road I wasn’t about to make any efforts to get across.

I flew back for the nationals the Wednesday before. I was really looking forward to it as my dad was coming down from Caithness to watch and help me out. He doesn’t often get a chance to see me race and was looking forward to it too I think. The next morning I was checking my email when I got a message from Adam Illingworth on MSN that went something along the lines of,

‘oi, gutted about champs eh!’

In the conversation that followed it quickly transpired they’d been cancelled due to the flooding around Hull earlier in the week. I’m not sure the last time the nationals were cancelled if ever but I was really disappointed the year I’d decided to come back there wasn’t even a race. Were I a superstitious man I’d be starting to think I’d been hexed but as the French say, ‘c’est la vie.’   

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It wasn’t a waste of a trip though by any means as I’ve just spent ten days back home having a bit of a break It was great to see friends and family and I feel I’ve recharged the batteries for the second half of the season where my main objectives will be Tour d’Alsace  and Giro de la Vallé d’Aoste in Italy in August and September. With any luck I’ll have been de-hexed by then…

A bientôt.

Team website is finally up and running at www.vclvv.fr plus a couple of good sites for following the French amateur scene; www.velostory.net and www.velo101.com