Carcassonne

Just a super quick one today to put up a few pictures. One from the race at Madrid and a few from a little day trip today to Carcassonne. Wow, that is one nice medieval city...chockas with culture. (Reeny and Davo, we went passed the Canal du Midi too, and thought of you).

I am really starting to miss Benjamin too. I had really grown accustomed to him greeting me each morning in Madrid with Spanish phrase i taught him: "buenas dias, mi amor" (good morning, my love). I wonder if he didn't realise that i had used a little artistic licence in the translation or if the little fellow was rather fond of me, i guess I'll never know...we will always have Madrid.

that is definately a grimace

La cité de Carcassonne

The city ramparts with the gothic cathedral in the back

one of the many gargoyles

Another gargoyle....scary.

You don't see drain pipes like this back home....yes, that drains straight out onto the footpath!

World Cup #4 - Madrid

After preparing for the typical hot and dust conditions at Madrid it was pretty surprising that a huge storm came though on the Friday night and saturated the track. There were more showers through until race day which was overcast and not super hot (good for me). The rain had eased and after the women had dried out the track for us we had "hero traction" for the mens race.

I decided that in this one i wanted to race less like a tortoise and more like a hare. Although i have been fairly consistent and getting some good results with the old "slow and steady", i want to go faster, so i tried to go out hard and see if i could hang on. The traffic on the first lap was farily bad with a few scary moments and some bottle necks in the early singletrack i came through in about 95th in a small group after one lap. I managed to move up a few places into about 85th by the end of lap 4, but i was starting to feel tired. I really turned myself inside-out on the last 2 laps but i wasnt really moving fast up the hills. I lost a couple of places and then had a crash and lost another. In the end i rolled across the finish in 89th. I am quite happy with how i raced, i may not have quite finished it off but i did ride quite fast for the first few laps. I still need to get faster, but hopefully i am on the way.

We are now in Bagnieres-de-Luchon in the French Pyrenees for 3 weeks with Ian and Kate Potter. I am looking offward to not travelling for a while and getting some quality training done. Looks like i will also get a bit of work as a mountian bike guide for Kate and Ian's company, www.aquickrelease.com.

Heubach Bundesliga - Germany

hey there, unfortunatelty Sunday was another tough day for me at the hors category Bunbesliga XC race at Heubach. The course was bloody tough with one blutal climb followed by a long slippery descent creating a piramid of a course profile. We were to do 8 laps (which would have been an epic race) so i tried not to blow for the first 4 laps. i was starting to think about ramping it up for the last half when i got pulled...4 laps down in 26th. rubbish. Anyway, it was a fun course and most of the field got lapped. It was quite a nice weekend too, we stayed in the nearby town of Schwarbish Gmund were we met a nice Italian lady called Isha, in the restaurant we ate at twice. She is also allergic to gluten so she & her boyfriend, Jan, invited us for a nice dinner after the race. Authentic Itatalian gluten-free pizza, well tasty.

We are back in Annecy now for a quick catch up with Yohann, Estelle and Aurelien. We fly to Madrid today.

More from Deutschland

Well, not too much news from Germany. I have just been training. Oh we did visit the factory/office of Canyon Bikes, that was awesome. They have a great set-up about 20km from here with 170 staff; all the design, protypes and assembly are done there. They have a roady that weighs 3.8kg, it is a one off but that is crazy. We also visit the Marksburg Castle. That was nice. We are off the Heubach tommorrow for a Bundesliga XC race. Bye for now, until next time here are a few more pictures:

Benderson and i behind the car

A lovely little castle in the middle of the Rhein

Our favourite little tearoom


The "horseshoe" bend on the rhein




the Marksburg Castle

"i wonder how this town got its name?"

I'm not sure what Leanne Henderson buys down Monash way, but i sent Benny out to buy TP and he came back with kitchen paper! Johnny's arse isn't that big, is it?

Weiler-Boppard, Mittelrhein

hey they, just a quick one. We are quite enjoying it here in Weiler, it is a cool vilage right near the Rhein...heaps of castles. From any spot on the river you are doing something wrong if you can't see at least two at any time. There seems to be some good training here with quite a few hills around and nice flat riding along the river. We found some mtb tracks today, hopefully we will find more soon.

Rosie took us motor-pacing along the Rhein today, which was pretty fun. It workd really well with the back door of the Kangoo open so we could talk to the pilot. I thought i'd try putting a little video on my blog, check out the little castle on an island in the middle of the river.

here are a few pics too:

this is the view from our house

we found a stationary bike in town so i busted out an impromptu ergo session!

this is the town of Boppard

Hendo with Boppard in the background

World Cup #3 - Houffalize, Belgium

Houffalize

The start of the womens world cup race

Macca

Me going a little close to the padding

Hendo through the finish straight

Bikes in Maastricht, Nederlands

Some more sight seeing in Maastrict

(photos courtesy of Warren Burgess)

The Houffalize World Cup with its challenging course, huge field and even huger crowd was a real

eye opener, no wonder it has established itself as a "classic" mountain bike race.

The race consisted of a start lap followed by 5 laps of the course proper. The course had over 300m of climbing per lap...that is heaps, probably double the average course back home. Fortunately there were plenty of really fun descents, but they always seemed to be over so quickly. There is definitely no place to hide here.

The start lap smashed up a very steep bit(ch)umen climb for roughly 2.5 minutes. I started from 92nd in the field of about 220 and found myself getting caught up by a couple of crashes early on. I tried to dose my effort up this climb because i was worried about the rest of the race, but i think i should have pushed harder because i did not maintain my position and ended up closer to 200th by the first descent. The traffic was the worst i have ever seen, several times there were huge bottlenecks that caused absolute chaos, a real nightmare. Needless to say i lost a fair bit of time and had a lot of work to do. I had a pep talk from Wazza Burgess (from KOM) after Offenburg and he told me i needed more mongrel, and that i had to stop riding like a gentlemen. I tried my best to be an arsehole and it worked a few times, on one steep downhill i saw a different line down the side and managed to snake about 10 guys. By the second lap i felt like i was back in control of my own race and riding a good tempo. I managed to pulled back a quite a few spots but it was a real suffer-fest. I thought i had paced myself pretty well and was not going to get pulled, but with one lap to go the dreaded 80% red flag came out meaning that my race was over. I was 152nd.

I was not really happy to get pulled twice in a row after such a good first round. Oh well. After 7 weekends of consecutive racing i am happy to be having this weekend off. I think i know what i have to work on so it'll give me a chance to get out and do some hard training. Clarkey wants Ben and i to get into a bit of motor pacing to build our speed, so we'll have to be super nice to Rosie so she will drive for us! We are now back in Germany staying right near the Rhine so we should be able to find a nice flat road where we can wind up the 44-11 behind the Kangoo.