SPAIN

After a long string of races in cold, wet and windy Belgium, Gen and I got a well deserved break this week, with a training camp in Platja d'Aro, Spain. The camp was run in an ideal area, only 10km of flat roads in the whole region, and the hotel was 500m from the beach! So mornings were spent attacking the men up the hills and afternoons 'recovering' on the beach or walking around some of the amazing coastline.

One of the beautiful arched walkways around the coast line

Riding with my team manager's son, Tom on the recovery day of the tour

Platja d'Aro beach

From Spain I travelled straight to Holland, experiencing my first ryanair flight (which was not as bad as I had been warned about! I competed in 2 races over the weekend- saturday was a belgium UCI race, and was typically flat, windy and cobbled. After some bad positioning near the start of the race, I finished in the 2nd peleton. Sunday was a national race in Holland, and was a similar course to the day before. I had a pretty good race, managing to position myself well in the bunch and get through the 5km long cobbled section with the front group. Unfortunately, after surviving this selection of around 35-40 girls, we were then caught by a 2nd peleton, resulting in a mass sprint finish, in which I finished mid bunch at 48th place out of 160 starters.

This week I am staying in Holland with some of my team mates from last year. So far it has been really good being able to talk english all the time again, and not having to concentrate all the time, trying to understand the french (it is really tiring!!!!)

I am heading back to france on friday for the 3rd french cup of the season on sunday.