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!

Top 10 at French Cup race!

Yesterday I had probably my best race since being in Europe, at the 4th round of the French Cup series. The race was held in Plumelec, Bretagne, on a very hard course, with a steep 2km climb that we did 9 times, finishing on the top of it.

The race was pretty hard from the start and after 15km of racing, I got into a breakaway of 12 girls. The break contained all the favourites in the race, so we very quickly gained a big gap over the bunch, and it was clear that we were going to stay away. However, we still had to get up that climb 7 more times!

Attacking up the hill

Unfortunately with 15km to go, I punctured, resulting in me having to chase quite hard up the hill to rejoin the breakaway. This took a bit out of my legs for the finish, and I ended up 7th. My team mate Claire Thomas was also in the breakaway, finishing 9th. This placing has moved me up to 7th equal in the overall standings in the series with one race to go.

Overall it was a good but extremely hard race. This week has been the first really hot week since I have been here, and the temperature during the race was 33 degrees-not my favourite conditions to race in!!

After the race we had a lovely 7 hour drive, getting back to Dijon at 2.30am. Safe to say everyone was pretty knackered by the time we finally got home!!

I am now on my way to Strasbourg to meet up with my mum who is over in Europe for work at the moment.

Surviving the cobbles!

Well the good news from yesterday is that I survived the cobbles of Belgium and had a really good race in Gooik, a 140km UCI 1.2 race in Belgium! After a stressful lead up to the race, where me and Gen didn’t actually know if we could get a ride to the race until 7pm the night before, this race turned out to be a very successful one for our team, with 4 riders making the front peleton.

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As well as our normal Belgium team (Claire, Gen, Alex, Oriane and I), we had 2 guest riders joining us for the race- one from Italy and one from Luxembourg. This made for a very interesting team briefing, with the Italian only speaking Italian, Gen who only speaks English, and a team manager who speaks French and Dutch! There were multiple translations going on the whole time. Luckily the briefing for this race was pretty simple-get to the front before the cobbled climbs, otherwise you will definitely be dropped and your race will be over!!!

Team talk: everyone looking confused, with me just finding the whole thing quite funny!!

Climbing the Bosberg

In total there were 3 sections of cobbles in this race, the first two being over 2 of the famous climbs which are used in the Tour of Flanders- the Muur and the Bosberg. These climbs are HARD! They reach 20% at the steepest points, and when you are riding up a cobbled hill, you can’t get out of your seat or your wheels will slip, so you just have to grind your way up them. I managed to get over these hills with the front peloton of around 50 riders, with 7 breakaway riders in front of us. Also in the group were Gen, Alex and Claire. Out of the 200 riders who started the race, only the girls who made this group would be allowed to finish- racing in Belgium is definitely not like NZ where everyone can always finish if they want to!

This group stayed together for the rest of the race and I finished 33rd in the sprint, with Alex and Claire close behind. Unfortunately Gen suffered a mechanical in the last 20 km (her seat fell off!!!!), so was unable to finish.

The finish

After the race, its safe to say Gen and I were pretty smashed from 140km of pain!! However, we were very lucky to come home to an amazing dinner, cooked by Gen’s sister who is over to visit for a few days.

I am now on the train (again!) back to Dijon, where I will stay for a few days before the next French cup race on Friday. After that my mum is coming to stay for a few weeks, so I am really excited to see her!

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!

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.

Racing over the last few weeks

Since the last post I have competed in two races over here in Europe, one in France and one in Belgium. Last week was the 2nd round of the French cup, which was held in Pujols, in the south of France, on a very hard circuit. The course consisted of 6 laps around a hilly course, which included a steep 3km hill and then finished up the hill on the last lap. The team had 3 goals for this race- 1. To win the race, 2. To keep our young rider Alexia in the U23 jersey for the series and 3. To maintain our 2nd place on the team classification.

Unfortunately, the race did not pan out exactly according to plan. Halfway through the race a group of 12 riders escaped off the front, including 2 riders from our team. Unfortunately, they were outnumbered by the Vienne Futuroscope team, who were able to continually attack the group in the last lap and get some riders off the front of the breakaway, leaving our riders had to settle for 5th and 7th places. I had a good finish coming in near the front of the peleton, in 18th place. With 4 riders in the top 20, we were able to keep our 2nd place in the teams classification for the series. However, our young rider slipped to 2nd place in the U23 competition.

Finish of Pujols

This weekend, I did a UCI race in Belgium, Halle Buizingen. I did this race last year, finishing in the main peloton. However, this year the standard was a lot higher, with a lot of strong teams in the peloton. The pace was on right from the start with many the group being greatly reduced in the first 40km, due to the high pace and also several crashes. After around 50km there were two short steep climbs, which split the group to pieces. Unfortunately, my legs just blew up after these climbs and I was unable to stay with the front group and I ended up in a group which was pulled out with 20km to go. Although I was extremely disappointed to be pulled out, it ended up that only 44 riders finished, out of the 170 starters!! Our young rider, Alexia, was the only rider from out team to make it to the finish coming in at 28th place.

Trip to Dijon with my team mates Alexandra and Claire, team manager Sylvie, and her son Tom

As well as racing, I have also had a few trips into Dijon to look around the city, one of which included meeting up with my cousin Chris and his wife Jess, so that was good to catch up with them, and hear some kiwi accents!


We also had some team photos taken while we were away at the french cup. These have got to be some of the strangest photos that I have ever been in!

Dottignies

On Monday I raced in the Belgian UCI 1.2 race, Dottignies, a 133km course. Before the race I was told not to worry, the race was flat, no cobbles and would not be to hard. Well after doing the race, I don't know where this information came from, because this race had hills, it had cobbles, and even had a hill WITH cobbles.

The race started fast, with 200 girls all trying to get to the front, before the first narrow road, which started 1km into the race. After this came the first cobbled section, which luckily wasn't too hard or fast. However, after this we started a series of climbs, the last of which was very steep and all cobbled. I started this climb with the front group of around 30-40 riders. However on the climb I just felt like I was going backwards! Because I don't weigh much, I get bounced around a lot on the cobbles, so I don't enjoy them at all! Luckily, I was not too far off the back of the first bunch over the climb, and was with some strong girls from the AA drink and Dolmans-Boels teams who were able to get us back to the bunch.

One of the climbs on the course

After this, the course was reasonably flat, which allowed a lot of other riders to also catch up, so we entered the last circuits of the course with a peleton of 100 riders. The last 4 laps all contained a short section of cobbles, but there was no real effort to string out the bunch, with the big teams all keen for a bunch sprint. The sprint was quite difficult with a few corners in the last kilometre of the race. I finished midway in the bunch, so not the best sprint. After the race we drove straight back to France, getting to Domois at about 1am, so I was VERY tired by the time I got home. 

Riding in the bunch behind 2nd place getter, Emma Johansson

The rest of the week has been good because another kiwi, Gen Whitson has moved into the house where I am staying, as she is also riding for our team this year. It has been great being able to talk english, and feels weird to be able to talk so much after 3 weeks of just speaking french!! 

This weekend we have another big race coming up. It is the 2nd French cup race, and is in the south of France, so is very hilly. As we have lots of hill climbers in our team, we really want to win this one! So this week will be an easy one, to make sure I am ready for the race

Emma