4th Overall in the Coupe de France

Sorry for lack of updates, has been a very busy few weeks and is just going to get busier over the next month. Yesterday I worked out that this week I will have been in the following countries- France, Holland, England, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland! I am definitely getting to see a lot of Europe!

A quick summary of what has been happening…
At the start of June, my mum came over to Europe for a work conference in Strasbourg, and afterwards came to visit me for a week. We spent the first part of the holiday in Switzerland, which was amazing, and is probably the first country in Europe that I’ve been to which is as beautiful as NZ. It also had the added bonus of massive hills everywhere, so I got some good training rides in too! After this, we returned to Dijon for a few days, before going to Paris, where mum flew home from.

The next weekend I was back to racing, competing in a 2 stage tour-road race and time trial. I had an average road race, followed by a surprisingly good time trial, and finished 8th overall. I got a nice surprise at the prizegiving- because the race was held in the region of Champagne, the top ten all got a bottle of champagne and some other food from the region!!

On my return to Dijon, it was time to knuckle down and do some study, as I had a university exam 2 days later. For this, I had to travel to Paris to sit the exam at the NZ embassy. I had a very nice exam supervisor, who made my exam a bit more interesting by telling me his life story while we were waiting for the exam to start!

I then got the train up to Holland and met up with my team from last year, where I helped them enjoy their team barbeque 

A few days later, I travelled to Scotland with some people from the team (a verrrrry long trip), where I stayed for 2 weeks for some hilly training. Because all the European countries have their national championships in the same week in June, there are no races for us non-europeans, so it was a good chance to get some good training in. As well as training, I got to see some of the sights of Scotland, including…

View from a tower in Scotland

• a tower which took 1 hour up a hill to walk to, but ended up being only slightly taller than me
• an old jail
• a 2 story supermarket which had a dentist surgery inside it,






• the bottom half of the Edinburgh castle (was very misty!!!).

It was my first time to the UK and it was so good being back in an English speaking country and being able to understand everything! Plus, the coffee in the UK is much better than in France!!!!

I returned to France for the weekend to compete in the final race of the French Cup series at Poitou-Charantes. The course for the race was a bit disappointing, with the longest hill only being about 500m long, resulting in a big bunch sprint at the end. I had a good sprint, finishing in 8th place. This moved me up to 4th overall in the Coupe de France series, an agonizingly close 2 points away from 3rd place!

Climbing a hill at the French Cup race

I am now on my way back to Holland, where I will meet up with Team Ibis again, and travel with them to the Czech Republic, and compete in the Tour of Krasna Lipa with them, starting Thursday. I then return to France for the tour of Bretagne and the tour of Limousin. So will be a very busy month!