When in Europe, hop curbs

"If you're passionate about it, you do real well, eh?"

That's what Chris Georgas, our director, said on the way home; he's from Canada, eh? I had a long drive home back to Limoux this afternoon in the middle seat of the front benchseat of the Eurovan. Chris talked about his wife, Fabian, who rides, but never did much racing.
"You see, she's an herbivore. You all, you're Carnivores, eh?"


My expectations of European racing: Like sitting in the top 10 at the end of an NRC race that is coming to a field sprint.
Today's race was a French cup, so aggressive, but a step down from next weekends UCI race in Holland.

Race report: Rolled out, went down a hill, someone attacked, we went hard, caught them. Someone countered, went hard again. Kept going hard, pace lulls. Attack (I think that was the one that stuck). I flatted, went hard, caught back on. Hopped a curb to avoid a crash. Then we sprinted up a hill.
I always find race reports redundant.

When I flatted, I rode on it a while, hoping to find one of the USA girls to ask them to tell Chris, because my radio wasn't working. I pulled over, didn't know where Chris was in the caravan (turns out he was way far back), got off, took my rear wheel off. Fortunately, before Chris got there, some other team car pulls over and the dude hops out with a wheel. He is trying to put the wheel on with the cassette on the wrong side. He didn't speak English, I was trying to tell him he might have to turn the wheel around in order for this to work. He was muttering in French because once the wheel was turned around, maybe he wasn't used to SRAM and he couldn't get the wheel on. I was laughing by now as he was giving me a push. I was off the caravan and put in a huge effort to make it to the caravan to move up.

About 5k from the start, there's a technical, narrow downhill. In a field of 130, I wanted to be top 10 going into the descent. It wasn't as aggressive at the start as I was expecting. I sat out in the wind for awhile before the descent to make sure I was one of the first to make the turn to the downhill. Better to sit in the wind than end up on the ground, eh?

My first European race, my main goal was to focus on positioning. I started on the front line...but didn't hold that long because when everybody started, I didn't know we were starting because the announcing was in French.
I felt really comfortable moving through the pack and sitting top ten. I sat on Jeannie Longo's wheel a lot. She's like a stealth bomb, a gladiator pulling everybody for miles.
I noticed her half aero helmet, French National champion skinsuit. She didn't fold her numbers like everybody else, they look more aero the way she did them. She pedals a really low cadence. She knows Chris really well, so knows we're here racing for him; she smiled at us on the start line.

I finished somewhere top 20-30. Devon made an attempt to bridge to the break, not making it, but stayed off the front to get 4th. I sat close to the front, followed a couple strong attacks, making sure that if anything went, I was in it, sitting on.

Racing in Europe seems so "right" if that makes any sense. It's the culture here, people all along the course cheering, not a blue tent ten minutes from the middle of nowhere.