Bike racing (aka war)

Oh wow, what a race! There is so much to say about the last week and a half, I don’t even know where to start. We took two days to drive to the west coast of France. The best part of the drive was getting pulled over by the cops to search the car. They went through every bag, every zipper, pocket, everything. I knew bad news was coming when they got to my bag. I had a zip loc bag with all my vitamins thrown in unlabeled. At the time of packing, I thought it might not be a super good idea, but didn’t have room for all the bottles. After several times asking “dopio?” and me saying “NO. I promise.”, I got to keep my vitamins and continue on the journey.
This was a UCI 2.1 race, so only UCI teams were represented. The field was smaller than I was expecting, but most teams with their A squads. There are some pretty serious and bordering on mean-looking girls. Get ready to throw some elbows and get your mean face on! It takes so much energy to sit in the top 15 of the peloton! If you let your mind wander for a tiny second, you just went back 20 riders. The mental energy on top of pedaling a bike pretty fast for quite a while will leave you pooped at the end of the day. There is so much road furniture and roundabouts and going through the little towns at full speed is crazy. So much fun! The race profiles in France seem to be a suggestion of what the course MIGHT be like, but probably not. On the first road race finish, we got into town, saw 1K to go, 500m, 200m, 50m, and Kirsty Broun raises her hands in victory. But boy do the Europeans cool down fast! Oh no! That wasn’t the finish! We had to do another 5K loop that nobody except Columbia seemed to know about. So of course, Ina won. The night before I was behind her in the line for food. She was trying to communicate to the server that she wanted two beefburgers but the woman couldn’t understand her and just gave her one. I convinced the lady serving that I needed two and gave my extra to Ina. So I’ll go ahead and say the extra protein made her go a little faster at the finish and helped her win. Whoo!
More crazy stories from racing in France. On one of the stages, we had a 3K neutral behind a group of kids. That was a nice to change to have the neutral really be “neutral”. Usually the neutral starts are just about harder than the race. So after the neutral, everybody stopped, and we got in a bus. A BUS. Then we loaded up the bikes, drove for about 15 minutes, got on our bikes, and started the race. That was definitely a first for me.
More crazy stories from racing in France. On the second to last day, about 60K into the race, a punching and kicking fight broke out towards the front of the field. A Bolivian girl on an Italian team kicked a Russian girl on an Italian team and made her crash on a bit of a descent. A huge crash with everybody behind her. I went over my handlebars and slid on my stomach for long enough to get a hole in my sports bra and enough road rash. I got a neutral bike, got back in the race and rode for maybe 20K before having enough and getting in the car. I got to watch Evie cross the line in first place after a long break. Then I headed to the medical area where 6 (seriously, 6 of them), paramedics kept discovering more and more places I had road rash. It’s funny, because there are a million questions in French that I just stare blankly back at them in response. Speaking slower or louder, still in French, doesn’t help me to understand. Most of it was the normal stuff, but I did somehow get a pretty deep hole in my stomach. A pretty disappointing finish for my race, but things heal and there are more races coming.
A sequel to the previous crazy story. After the aforementioned Russian got back from the hospital with her arm in a sling, I walked down to dinner with her. Just after I headed into the cafeteria, the also aforementioned Bolivian was walking out. The Russian takes her one good arm and swings at the Bolivian who continues to try to kick her again. There was war going on in that peloton! The Bolivian voluntarily pulled out of the race the next day and is suspended from racing for the next couple stage races.
Wifi isn’t as plentiful as in the US, the reason for my hiatus in updates. I’m back in Lucca though for a while, with endless internet! The next race I’ll be doing is Trophee d’Or, a French 5 day stage race starting on the 25th. Time for some beautiful training rides and Italian Espresso!