Holland, a french cup race and Belgium again

Instead of spending another week in Belgium after my races last weekend, I decided to make a trip up to Holland, to visit my Scottish team mates from last year. I had a great week catching up with them and exploring the town of Zutphen where they are living this year. We even managed to fit in a training race on Wednesday-unfortunately it had been raining that day, so I finished the race looking like I had been sprayed with a hose full of mud!

After the training race!

On my return to France, I got a bit of a shock when I was picked up by my team manager and told that we were going to pick up her car which I was going to drive home. She didn’t seem worried when I told her that I had no idea how to drive a manual, telling me that it was easy, and should be no problem since I would only be driving on a 110km/hr motorway!!!! Luckily I managed to look scared enough that she decided this wasn’t the best way for me to learn how to drive a manual!!!!

Yesterday was the 3^rd round of the French cup series in Izernore, a small town 2 hours south of Dijon. Like all French races, the circuit was hilly, with 2 climbs on each of the 8 laps. I felt really strong in this race, and the pace felt so easy after all the Belgium UCI races we have been doing! My team mates Beatrice, Magdalena and I put in lots of attacks to try and split up the group, with all of us getting in small breakaways during the race. At one stage, Beatrice had a 50 second lead on the bunch, but unfortunately she was brought back by the strong Vienne Futuroscope team. In the last lap, we managed to get the group down to around 10-12 riders. However, the pace then slowed, and it was a reasonably big bunch at the finish. The race was won by 2 girls who had attacked early in the race, and I had a bit of a disappointing sprint, finishing 17th out of the 130 starters. However, I retained my 12^th place in the overall French cup standings, and as a team we retained our 2^nd place in the teams classification. Our young rider Alexia Muffat moved up to 3^rd place on the overall standings, with another top 10 finish (10^th place). Overall it was really nice to do a race which I could actually attack, and be a player in the race, rather than just trying to finish with the bunch! I am really looking forward to the 2^nd half of the season when I will be doing a lot more of these types of races.

Today Gen and I are heading up to Belgium (again!) for a UCI race on Thursday in Gooik. I did this race last year and it is HARD- 4 cobbled sections, one of which is on a hill called the Mur (English translation = wall!!!). I only completed around half of this race last year, so the goal this year is to finish! Hopefully my good feelings from the weekend will continue on Thursday!