Trophee d'Or: Only one word to describe it...HOT

I have just spent the week racing the trophee d’or, a 6 stage race base around Saint-Amand-Montrond, which is somewhere in the centre of France. I went down to this race, expecting it to be a good tour to ease the legs back into racing, as it is not that hilly. What I didn’t count on was the extreme heat wave which is happening in France at the moment. Lining up on the startline of the first stage of the tour, my garmin was reading 48.9 degrees, and this was at 4.30pm!! I don’t think I have ever been anywhere so hot before, let alone raced a bike in it!! After only a few minutes of riding, my drink bottles were boiling, and I pretty much spent the whole stage pouring water over my head, or trying to strategically position myself behind other girls who were spraying themselves with water! The stage ended in a sprint, with me coming in just out of the top 20, in 21st place. However, even after the stage finished, there was no escape from the heat! It was so hot at the end of the day that we had to get up several times during the night to have cold showers, and it became normal to walk around in just a sports bra and shorts the whole day! It also became normal to have a constant headache from the heat, which was not nice at all!

Stage 2 was a team time trial around the city, and as per the norm in France, the course was all ups and downs and corners. This was a bit of a worry, as our team had never ridden a team time trial before! However, we managed to make it through without crashing, and even bet 2 teams, so that was better than expected!

That afternoon, there was another road stage, and like the day before, the temperature had risen into the 40s by the time 4pm rolled around. Again, I spent the day pouring water over myself and made it to the end with the peloton, having another good sprint to come in 28th place. My team mates were not so lucky, with one fainting during the stage and ending up in an ambulance, and my kiwi teammate Gen, spending several hours in hospital after the stage due to extreme stomach cramps from the heat!

Day 3 arrived, and I woke up with an even worse headache than the day before, and was dreading the stage that afternoon. Although the temperature was slightly cooler than the day before, it was very humid, so it felt a bit like riding in a sauna! Unfortunately, this proved to be the limit of the amount of heat I could handle, and after 30km of racing, I fainted and spent the rest of the race in the ambulance, with a French nurse trying to feed me cubes of sugar!

While I was disappointed that my tour had ended early, in reality it may have been a good thing, as it has allowed me to recover better for the world cup that I am doing this weekend. We have been told that this is going to be the hardest, hilliest race we have ever done, and we are not expected to finish! So the aim for Saturday is to prove that wrong!!