Well it’s been nearly a week since I actually went there and I apologise and put the blame on ongoing weather problems, the internet is cutting in and out.
The picture is of the beach were we ate lunch on saturday in marseille.
Anyway Marseille. It’s about a 3 hour drive but the scenery’s nice, we drove though some cute little towns and we went past the turn off for Gap and past Embrun. Remi explained to me about the Embrun Ironman which is like a normal Ironman plus it’s at altitude and the 180km ride goes over 2 HC Climbs, it’d have to be the hardest Ironman in the world. Remi and I also had a good debate about Armstrong and drugs and like a true Frenchman he thinks Lance cheated, with blood transfusion being the weapon of choice this time.
When we got there it was nice and we didn’t actually go into Marseille but into a small town about 15km away called Cassis. It’s very cool. We drove up this ridge and into a complex of houses, it was sort of like a housing commission except I doubt any of the houses were on sale for less than 1 mil Euro, and when you saw the view from almost all there balconies you can understand why. It looks across Cape Canai and the Mediterranean, It was spectacular. I ate dinner on the balcony at the house of Family Friends (Bruno is in some of the photos from the race).
The next day we slept in and the Bruno, Remi and I drove out to Marseille Uni to pick up numbers and see the set up. The run these things pretty well, they had sponsors like Look and Corima and all minor one who had tents set up around the place. The actual Uni itself is pretty cool, the registration area was in the sport science facility and that looked pretty good and reasonably modern (although I’m not actually sure what modern looks like). Then we drove down to a small restaurant in this little inlet thing. The way you get there is by going along a road only just big enough for one car (it got pretty hairy when we had to pass another car) and you go over the ridge and then drop down towards the ocean, it was spectacular. The restaurant itself was pretty small but the food was great and the view was just amazing. We went for a walk down to the beach after lunch and would have swum but the wind was too strong and too cold. You can buy and rent houses there, which are more like tiny shacks, sorta something out of a small Greek island, very cute. After that we drove around Marseille and visited the church and then went and wandered round the streets, stopping in every shop which stocked Hummel (Remi works for them not sure what but he is obviously very high up in the anarchy). We also walked down a small backstreet market were everything was shit and nothing safe. Michelle commented that we had entered another world; it was pretty cool and definitely another world. After that we sat in a pub, had a drink and watched the pub fill with people coming in to watch Marseille play an away game (soccer). These people are like Collingwood supporters except there are a million of them and no one in Marseille would ever consider supporting a different team, it would be a cardinal sin. The people in Marseille are different from Briancon, I can’t say why they just dress differently, act differently, hold themselves differently, not necessarily bad just different. Overall I really enjoyed my day in Marseille and would definitely come back, for sure.
The race the next day was awesome. It’s like two races in one. The first is a serious race with about 10 categories, I think, for all different age groups starting at 18 and finishing at about 70 and over. Everyone went off at once all 1600 of them, it was good fun however 3kms out was a climb of 4km at about 4%, not hard but enough to break everyone up. I road with Remi Daniel and Luc, it was cool we just took it easy and road. The course was great with 6 climbs with the easiest the first one and the toughest a 6km at 6/7% that was fun and the descents were quick, I found an aero position and just went, Remi’s pretty handy down a descent but he needs to work on cornering, I gain about 10-20ms each hairpin, I have CCCC summer Crits to thank for that. But yeh there was one point were we got split by a traffic policeman and I found the other 3 at a feed station, when I got there they left and told me to catch up. I had 3km of flat then the 6km hill ahead of me so I took my time ate some cheese and lollies drank some coke and texted a mate before I took off and started hunting them down. I started at a TT pace so around 40kmph (no wind and I felt good) and slowly picked up people as I passed them, a few jumped on the back and by the time I hit the hill I think I had about 15, I dropped them at the base of the hill and really got to stretch my legs up the hill. It was a good feeling and because I’d been going slow I was riding with the slower guys so up the hill going at full pace I passed quite a few and caught the boys about a km from the top. We road home and the wind started to pick up o and I nearly got ran over because I took a corner and faded into the left lane, I wasn’t paying attention and naturally I thought the left lane was my lane. Yeh the driver wasn’t too happy about it. But anyway the run home was fun but Luc had taken off and Daniel and Remi were tired so I pulled the last 20km, for the first 5km a guy refused to let me sit on the front, he felt it was demeaning to be pulled by a kid (he actually told Remi this) so when he finished his turn I accelerated and dropped him, then we just rode home. It was a really nice day, we worked out what my time would have been (based on riders who I’ve beaten here plus past avgs from road races like Modella and I would have finished around 30th and would have dominated my age category (that’s not saying much there was only 2 of them and they both finished around 10 mins ahead of my actual time). The whole race was put on by the one club, Marseille, and they did a great job it was a really great day out.
For now I must go, I need my beauty sleep today I have been swimming, running and to the gym, it’s been a good day. We had a small TT type thing in swimming for the school where we had to swim as far as we could for 10 minutes. I sorta set myself a goal of 500ms in a 25m pool, I don’t normally swim and at the moment I’ve got a cold and I really couldn’t be bothered doing tumble turns so I though 500ms was reasonable, 50ms per minute. Anyway I lost count at about lap 12 so I had to rely on my counter and I just kept going. I felt awful and was hacking water up everywhere, it’s hard to get enough oxygen in with a cold, got out of the pool expecting to hear a 400 something, anyway I hit 575 with the next nearest at 400, wasn’t bad. And the other kid in my lane finished swearing and out of breath on a 225. All I could understand was the words “I need to quit smoking and drinking”. I think it summed up a lot of people’s feelings after today. While everyone is skinny, it’s becoming rarer to find a genuinely fit person because none of them can breathe because of their smoking.
Anyway Ciao for now
Cal
Anyway Marseille. It’s about a 3 hour drive but the scenery’s nice, we drove though some cute little towns and we went past the turn off for Gap and past Embrun. Remi explained to me about the Embrun Ironman which is like a normal Ironman plus it’s at altitude and the 180km ride goes over 2 HC Climbs, it’d have to be the hardest Ironman in the world. Remi and I also had a good debate about Armstrong and drugs and like a true Frenchman he thinks Lance cheated, with blood transfusion being the weapon of choice this time.
When we got there it was nice and we didn’t actually go into Marseille but into a small town about 15km away called Cassis. It’s very cool. We drove up this ridge and into a complex of houses, it was sort of like a housing commission except I doubt any of the houses were on sale for less than 1 mil Euro, and when you saw the view from almost all there balconies you can understand why. It looks across Cape Canai and the Mediterranean, It was spectacular. I ate dinner on the balcony at the house of Family Friends (Bruno is in some of the photos from the race).
The next day we slept in and the Bruno, Remi and I drove out to Marseille Uni to pick up numbers and see the set up. The run these things pretty well, they had sponsors like Look and Corima and all minor one who had tents set up around the place. The actual Uni itself is pretty cool, the registration area was in the sport science facility and that looked pretty good and reasonably modern (although I’m not actually sure what modern looks like). Then we drove down to a small restaurant in this little inlet thing. The way you get there is by going along a road only just big enough for one car (it got pretty hairy when we had to pass another car) and you go over the ridge and then drop down towards the ocean, it was spectacular. The restaurant itself was pretty small but the food was great and the view was just amazing. We went for a walk down to the beach after lunch and would have swum but the wind was too strong and too cold. You can buy and rent houses there, which are more like tiny shacks, sorta something out of a small Greek island, very cute. After that we drove around Marseille and visited the church and then went and wandered round the streets, stopping in every shop which stocked Hummel (Remi works for them not sure what but he is obviously very high up in the anarchy). We also walked down a small backstreet market were everything was shit and nothing safe. Michelle commented that we had entered another world; it was pretty cool and definitely another world. After that we sat in a pub, had a drink and watched the pub fill with people coming in to watch Marseille play an away game (soccer). These people are like Collingwood supporters except there are a million of them and no one in Marseille would ever consider supporting a different team, it would be a cardinal sin. The people in Marseille are different from Briancon, I can’t say why they just dress differently, act differently, hold themselves differently, not necessarily bad just different. Overall I really enjoyed my day in Marseille and would definitely come back, for sure.
The race the next day was awesome. It’s like two races in one. The first is a serious race with about 10 categories, I think, for all different age groups starting at 18 and finishing at about 70 and over. Everyone went off at once all 1600 of them, it was good fun however 3kms out was a climb of 4km at about 4%, not hard but enough to break everyone up. I road with Remi Daniel and Luc, it was cool we just took it easy and road. The course was great with 6 climbs with the easiest the first one and the toughest a 6km at 6/7% that was fun and the descents were quick, I found an aero position and just went, Remi’s pretty handy down a descent but he needs to work on cornering, I gain about 10-20ms each hairpin, I have CCCC summer Crits to thank for that. But yeh there was one point were we got split by a traffic policeman and I found the other 3 at a feed station, when I got there they left and told me to catch up. I had 3km of flat then the 6km hill ahead of me so I took my time ate some cheese and lollies drank some coke and texted a mate before I took off and started hunting them down. I started at a TT pace so around 40kmph (no wind and I felt good) and slowly picked up people as I passed them, a few jumped on the back and by the time I hit the hill I think I had about 15, I dropped them at the base of the hill and really got to stretch my legs up the hill. It was a good feeling and because I’d been going slow I was riding with the slower guys so up the hill going at full pace I passed quite a few and caught the boys about a km from the top. We road home and the wind started to pick up o and I nearly got ran over because I took a corner and faded into the left lane, I wasn’t paying attention and naturally I thought the left lane was my lane. Yeh the driver wasn’t too happy about it. But anyway the run home was fun but Luc had taken off and Daniel and Remi were tired so I pulled the last 20km, for the first 5km a guy refused to let me sit on the front, he felt it was demeaning to be pulled by a kid (he actually told Remi this) so when he finished his turn I accelerated and dropped him, then we just rode home. It was a really nice day, we worked out what my time would have been (based on riders who I’ve beaten here plus past avgs from road races like Modella and I would have finished around 30th and would have dominated my age category (that’s not saying much there was only 2 of them and they both finished around 10 mins ahead of my actual time). The whole race was put on by the one club, Marseille, and they did a great job it was a really great day out.
For now I must go, I need my beauty sleep today I have been swimming, running and to the gym, it’s been a good day. We had a small TT type thing in swimming for the school where we had to swim as far as we could for 10 minutes. I sorta set myself a goal of 500ms in a 25m pool, I don’t normally swim and at the moment I’ve got a cold and I really couldn’t be bothered doing tumble turns so I though 500ms was reasonable, 50ms per minute. Anyway I lost count at about lap 12 so I had to rely on my counter and I just kept going. I felt awful and was hacking water up everywhere, it’s hard to get enough oxygen in with a cold, got out of the pool expecting to hear a 400 something, anyway I hit 575 with the next nearest at 400, wasn’t bad. And the other kid in my lane finished swearing and out of breath on a 225. All I could understand was the words “I need to quit smoking and drinking”. I think it summed up a lot of people’s feelings after today. While everyone is skinny, it’s becoming rarer to find a genuinely fit person because none of them can breathe because of their smoking.
Anyway Ciao for now
Cal
1 comment:
Hey Cal, - I know how that guy feels. I used to feel it demeaning when I was being led out by you when you were 14, - then I figured it was my reward for all the time and effort we put into your cycling!
Dad
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