The French love their loops, today being 122kms ending with 4 laps of a 7km circuit. With Kate up the road we were able to sit in, Lou unlucky to be caught behind a Lotto girl who broke her chain. She quickly recovered. Tiff covered all attacks before lining it up for a lead out in the final kms. I hit out with 600mtrs to go, lucky to stay out of trouble as simultaneously 6 girls came down REALLy hard behind us. I led into the final corner at 250mtrs and Bel came off my wheel to take 4th in the kick and 16th on the day. The rest of us cycling in safely and yes... I lost 30 places in 300mtrs. With an average of over 37k/hr it had been a hard day for Kate off the front. She admitted to being smashed and merely grovelling on the back, but we were all excited and impressed with her performance =)Results: Tour de Bretagne Feminin, Stage 2, Pipriac - Pipriac, 122.6kms
We got a workout before our ride in having to lug our bikes and luggage up 5 flights of stairs. On the first level is food, level two showers…where 80% of the time you can catch someone towelling themselves down in the hallway! I feel a bit prudish compared to the French. We’re staying in school dorms so our rooms lack toilets and contain just the one bed. A desk for our laptops and a basin for hand washing has proven them to be worthy of race requirements, despite the lack of a lift... I'm told they don't believe in them here in France! Should I have dodged our 50kg excess allowance??
When it came time to head back to the first floor for a shower Kate claimed she couldn’t go it alone and I understood why when I arrived. The cubicles are small with the door shutting tight leaving little available air. There are two hooks, no shelves and a timer button lasting 10 seconds without variation in water temperature. The positive, we are probably saving water, the negative, having to push the button every 10 seconds! Liz Taylor, my coach, wasn’t lying when she said that it was windy here. Our short ride this afternoon proved that very true. The meals here were better than expected with the choice of some bread, a starter, meal, dessert and fruit all available. Our major concern on arrival had been the lack of security but somehow Michel used his French persuasiveness to have us as the only team with keys to our rooms =)
After keeping Lou up for half an hour last night with my snoring we woke to grey skies, the thought of rain and what seemed to be a blow up dog on top our team car. We later discovered that our new team mascot, now named ‘Roofus’, had been adopted that morning from a bush after a party down the road had gone astray last night. Let it be noted that Michel is not a fan… During our training ride we performed some wheel changes, bidon changes, lead-outs and even allowed Ath to practise her road-side feeding. Our motivation stemmed not only from the beautiful rainforest surroundings with pleasant towns, narrow roads and a cool breeze, but also from the unearthing of news that Robbie McEwen, Stuart O‘Grady, Mick Rogers and Brett Lancaster were out of the ‘Tour De France’!
Despite riding our last half hour in the rain we decided to head into ‘Tours’ for a brief shopping period and some serious internet time. Negotiating with a Frenchman isn’t easy therefore not many items were purchased, the exception…if your name is Kate Mercer. The drive seemed epic so on return the girls had no choice but to devour an incomprehensible amount of bread. We were always dreading our final night in this gorgeous location and decided to celebrate with a large home cooked meal, thanks 95% to the doing of our soigneur Athalee. Despite the fact we weren’t overly hungry after another bread devouring session, we didn’t hold back on the food intake. And if you had sampled it, you wouldn’t have blamed us.