I think the altitude is messing with my sense of judgement

Well I will get to the alittude later first off Sunday.
Remi took me and one of his friends to a Handball match in Chambery. Now I dno who actually knows anything about handball but we went and saw a european championship match, Chambery vs some sloveinian team. Chambery has 3 world champ/olympic champ players including the French captain, Daniel Narcisse. It was a really good game 37-30 to Chambery, they played well. Its quick and they sorta just have the ball idly playing with it before suddenly the ball's in the back of the net it's great. However while it was a great game i think the msot exciting part of it was when we drove up we went straight past the main entrance and through a back entrance, VIP entrance :). Turns out because Remi is a big player in Hummel and because Hummel sponsor Chambery we got 3 VIP tickets. Free drinks, free food, got to meet the players after the game, and we sat behind the telecastign place so we got replays and all it was awesome. We had coaches and officails and players coming up and shaking our hands.

Anyway today. Pierre has been bugging me abotu running for a while now and I haven't really wanted to, being a snob here i thought this kid drinks and smokes I thought a run with him would be like 3 km at 6mins per km, anyway i though maybe i would run to Pierre's (4km) run with him then run home a good 9 or 10km, longest run here. But no turns out pierre had other ideas. We set off on a decent pace and i was surprised. Anyway we get about 1 km down the road and Pierre stops, o yeh i though he already needs a rest, anyway he points to a village about 2 or 3km away and goes "on va" we go. Yeh cool sounds good, lol whatever i thought. Anyway he goes off again on this pace and we run and run and run. We pass through the town he pointed at and keep going, all this is uphill and I'm starting to hurt, Pierre's still running fast. And then it kicks up again, we start going up this stupid mountain, After 9 km pierre points at a sign and in english goes "our destination" its says 6.7km and 10km, "are you serious!" a few other words were used considering i was looking forward to 7kms at an avg of about 7 or 8% on dirt roads. Anyway we kept going and at abotu 5km up the hill we run into some cows, with massive horns, we stopped and deliberated abotu wether to try and run passed them at full pace, anyway we were goign to try until the big one starts moving towards, Pierres make the exucitive decision to turn around, after an 11km so far I wasn't disappointed. We get 100ms back down the road and Pierre finds a bush track, we take it (with a few more choice words from me) and skip the cows. We made it to the top (18kms). I was cramping and feeling awful, we stoped to stretch adn drinka dn then Pierre takes off again. What is wrong with this kid! Anyway we ran and took the bush path, which lead onto another bush path and then another. This stuff was steep, it's hell on the legs to instead of trying to pick up the pace we were tryign to slow down, abotu 20mins comign straight down instead of winding down the mountain. Anyway we were wrecked and walked for about a km (thank god) and then took off again, I couldn't bend my knees anymore due to cramps and we were going slowly, finally after 30kms and 2 hours and 48mins we were back home. I quickly discarded my idea of runnign home and jumped on the bus. The longest run I'd done before this was 7km, never try 30km it aint fun especially at altitude and when you keep going higher.
Anyway i cant walk now so I'm really scared about tomorrow, thank god school starts at 10 I'm going to need the extra sleep.
Ciao for now
Cal

Ice Hockey and an amazing Geographie teacher

Today I was supposed to have 4 hours worth of school and 3 tests. One hour of French, one hour of English and Two hours of Geographie, all tests. Anyway went to the French test, it was hard but I think i got it right, if i understood the question then I was correct. Then i went into the geographie test and the teacher met me outside and said na don't worry about it it's

too complex so just go home. So i did, I went hoem for 4 hours before I had to come back for an easy english oral comprehension test. It was an easy day and tomorrow I have 2 hours of school including one hour of english it's great, then off for a ride.

The picture is of the Ice Hockey match The black/red/white it Briancon and the grey is Grenoble.

Anyway the 25euro tickets (40 dollars Aus) were given to us as a present, 2 of us, so we went and it was great. The Briancon team is the pride and join of the town, it was awesome, the people there got so excited. The first third went by fairly uneventful and then with about 5 mins to go Grenoble scored the first goal and the arena errupted with boos. The next third Briancon hit back and the crowd was spastic. It was like the MCG at a Collingwood home game when they kick a goal after the siren to win the game except it was only 3,000 people. During the break I went and bought pizza and i got through it without a weird look, it was a good feeling. The third third went through without anything happening, briancon looked dangerous but couldn't score. There were a few huge hits, even in front of the refs and they did nothing, I mean i don't understand the rules but I could't quite believe it, hilarious. The at the end of the game 1-1 turns out they have golden goal. I was sure Briancon were guna get this, they were looking heaps fitter and stronger, however 5 minutes in grenoble got a quick break and scored, no defense just the goalie and there was nothing he could do about it. The mood turned sombre as we left but it was still a great night. I think I'll try and go to some more games, it's an awesome sport, pity we don't have it in Aus.

It's aggresive and fast and the changes/subs are quick as the whole team goes off at once sometime (5 on the field plus keeper, about 16 or 17 in the team) It's fast and hard to follow the puck, but it's still awesome. I think I'm going to try and play during the winter possibly for the local team because the season starts soon.

Anyway its 11.20 at night here and I have to go to school in the morn
Ciao for now
Cal

a month down as of tomorrow!

Well after this post i will finally be up to date and tomorrow I will have be travelling/in France for a month. It's weird it feels a lot shorter but then again I'm comfortable here, great city great people it's great fun. Anyway onto last week.

The photo is of a group of us who by conicedence are all going to paris in novemeber with school (coincedence being that the only people in the photo are the Paris people) From left to right Louis, Me, Jeanne, Coralie, Melissa and Lise (excuse Lise, not quite sure whats happening there)

Monday started with the swimming which I've already blogged about and I got quite sick that night, was coughing up flem everywhere, i guess all the activites have taken their tole on me. Tuesday it got worse and I took the day off school which was nice, I slept untill 12 then watched movies and the U23 world champs TT, which was great considering Cam Meyer got 3rd, awesome result also for Travis Meyer at 19th.

Then Wednesday I went to school considering I only have 2 hours so I figured I could handle it. Then that arvo iw ent to the market, bought a pair of shoes, and then just hung around Lise came over and we mucked around for a bit before she went off to Dance.

Thursday I can't really remember and Friday I got my footy! That was an awesome day, read the Footy post and you'll know what i mean.

Friday night I went to a Crepe party at Jeanne's that was cool, but fattening, I ate a pancake with nutella, Sugar and Maple Syrup on it o and Butter and not the crappy Margerine stuff in Aus but real full fat butter, it's great here.

On saturday I decided my cough was well enough and I needed to burn off the calories from friday night so i went for a ride, I felt awful and got domianted up a tiny hill by the guy that I ebat by like 4 mins up the Galiber so that was depressing but i still managed to beat him on the flats, these boys can't move fast. They cruise out to the hills ride up and down them then cruise home, they don't know how to peddle at 45kmsph it's great fun. But anyway they can climb so it levels out, back home I can climb here i can ride flats.

That night we had an Bon Anniversaire party which was cool, photos are up on facebook and if you don't have facebook drop us an e-mail thefryer_99@hotmail.com and I will e-mail some to you. It was great which ended in a rather disturbing strip show by Pierre to the music of Joe Cocker Baby you can leave your hat on. He ended in a G-string which was really disturbing but brought great laughs to everyone. The party was for myself and two other girls jeanne and Charlotte it was awesome fun only about 40 people but it was cosy and i met a few new people which was cool.

Then Sunday I went to a small village's 'Fete de la Ville' it was cool everyone had tables set up (including Marie) and you could buy food and everyone sat on table on the lawn outside the town hall and mingled. It was a nice arvo. Then I got back to watch Ballan destroy the worlds and I don't care what bike NZ president has to say the favourites didn't let no names win, they could do nothing about it and even if the favourites had been in Ballan's group he still would have won (with the exception of Bettini and that would have been because of team tactics not because Bettini is stronger).

Now today, had another 10min TT in the pool. We had to beat our previous distances, mine wa 525 although he said 550 today so I dno. But anyway I felt awful this morning and thought I'd put a couple of Tumble turns in this time and though perhaps i could 500 again and if i was really moving mayeb a 600 anyway I hit the wall finishing at a 725 so I was happy with that. Next best was a 375. It was funny the first lap i decided I'd start with Backstroke and swap every lap with freestyle because I was a little worried about my breathing and I wanted to tumble turn at the deep end, anyway I went off and spoke to a guy at the end who said after the first lap he was surprised because he was ahead of me then i turned and it was all over, he tried to stay with me but ended up cracking and finished with a 300 something. I guess it's like riding a hill just gotta go at your own pace.

Tonight I went for a run which was nice to get some exercise in, I'm still a little sick but whatever I need exercise it's killing me. I got word today that my bike is coming on Friday, I think i'll ride Grannon this weekend on a lighter bike just to see how I go. if the Bike is say 9kgs then I'll be 5kgs lighter which will be 6.25% faster according to Michael Ferrari in Tour De Force and if i did a time of 1.07 last time 6.25% faster should be around 1.02.40 (approxiametly it's late and I can't be bothered and i can't be bothered looking for my calculator). Thats annoying I want to go under 1 hr before the snow closes in, I should be able to I'll just lose some more weight and push myself harder. I'll keep you up to date on that.

I've spoken with a few people from home which is cool and it's starting to become a shock to hear an Aus accent, I now know what everyone means about the accent. I guess the track season is about to kick off soon, good luck to the NTID boys and also oli, gav, harry, ferg, in the U19 pursuit and Pistol, Trent, Nathaniel, Steph, Sas, Jack and the CCCC team and all the JDP boys and congrats to Jack for the 1 in 20 race, the kit looks good. Good luck to Gracie in the pursuit, I reckon you can do it bonne chance, Just ride faster it's not really a hard concept is it, you push the peddals harder so therfore you go faster, so do it :p. I want photos from everyone over the summer too. Sorry if I forgot to say good luck to you but I'm tired and good luck anyway

It's off to bed now, I start at 9 tomorrow which is nice, a bit of a sleep in is always appreciated.

Ciao for now

Cal

Cyclingnews is actually slow

I spoke to Oli the other day and he mentioned an interesting thing. Here in France I'm more up to date than cyclingnews is. I never realised it but Cyclingnews gets all its info off L'equipe and various european newspapers. So today because of Oli I thought I'd give you guys an update on Cycling

news before cyclingnews can.

BTW the photos are of last night's party, a birthday party for me and charlotte and Jeanne. The first one is of a group of us Left to Right: Lise, Me, Lou, Louis, Charlotte and Melissa. The second one is of me and the Danish girl; Lise Lerche, Charlotte is her host sister and cause it was sorta my party also I went early to help set up and we got dressed there, jesus girls take forever to get ready for a party.

Anyway back to the original subject of this blog.

Ballan just destroyed the World Champs. He attacked with three kilometres to go and went solo. When he went the others looked liek they were starding still. Sorenson pulled hard but Ballan was too strong, the Italian team was ridicoulous with 3 riders in the final group. Ballan put a lot of effort in all day, he deserved the win, it wasn't like he was protected then won a weak sprint.

Noone knows what the deal is with Schleck and if they do no one is saying anything, multiple interviews with dopign experts and team riders/directors and Pat Mcquaid and they all say the same thing; They'd be very disappointed if it was true but they don't know either way.

The real big news however came from the Pat Mcquaid interview. He spoke about the new doping tests and how they're goign to retest a lot fo them. Apparently there are 12 riders who they indentified early in the season and deliberatly froze their drug tests there were also 30 others who were identified as being "suspicious" during the tour. Directly from Mcquaid's mouth; The podium will change a lot and so will the top 10. Top 10; Sastre, Evans, Kohl, Menchov, Vande Velde, Schleck, Sanchez, Kirchen, Valverde, Valjavec. How many will fall? Mcquaid: "There's a lot of racers who won't sleep easy this week".

It's going to be a big week in cycling, let's see how quick L'equipe is compared to Cyclingnews.

Stay tuned

Cal

Ok finally it's here! In this blog I'll update you all on the past two weeks. its been pretty full on and I've nearly been here for a month, it seems so much shorter but it is getting weirder to speak english which is good. Also yesterday i spent 2 horus with some kids in my year level and we spoke french the whole time, the only time i spoke english was cause one of the girls wanted her friend to hear my accent in english.

The picture is of Lucie and Jeanne to friends from school. Lucie did an exchange to America with marie and Jeanne (Pronounced Jan) to England so they know what its like, but they speak french to me most of the time and occasionally explain stuff in english.

Anway since Marseille; Tuesday was my birthday. Because I get up at about 6.30 for school Remi and Michelle were still asleep but the previous night they'd layed out everything that had arrived for me in the past few days on the table, it was a pretty cool thing and I was nearly late for school because I was opening them all. the cards were cool and I've still got them up on my windowsill, thanks goes out to everyone who sent me a card. My sisters oen gave Marie a good laugh it said: "I smile because you are my brother, and I laugh because there's nothing you can do about it". Anyway that arvo the Chouissas gave me their present which was a Hummel Sports jacket which is pretty cool. It's white with Blue V's down the side, I would never wear it playing any sport though it's too good looking. That night we had a special birthday dinner were we had Carbonara which Marie cooked, it was pretty good too, Maries a great cook.

The day after on the Wednesday I went and rode the Cold Du Grannon. It hurts. it's over 10% for about 11km, when I did it I weighed in at something around 73/74 kilos (including bike) and compare that to State titles (61) it was very hard. I did a time of 1.07 hours. Jenny Longua (sorry to her because I'm sure I spelt it wrong) who is a French woman of i think 49 years of age, 4th at the Beijing Olympics beat my time by 19.50 minutes. It was slightly depressing to learn that. However just before the road gets closed due to snow I'm going to ride it again on the Basso and I'll be used to the Altitude and stronger by then and hopefully I'll go sub an hour.

Thursday and Friday were fairly unspectacular, Friday night was another party which was fun, actually it wasn't a party but a Fete which is like a gathering. it was good and I crashed out at about 3am, fell asleep with 3 stunning french girls in the same bed (Mum I kept my hands to myself like a good boy). It's not actually as good as it sounds one was Marie and another was a girl called Jan who's become my best friend/older sister here. It was a good time and I woke up at about 11 the next morning went down stairs and for breakfast was given a tub of Nutella and a spoon.

Went and rode the Cold D'Izoard that saturday. It's a pretty deceiving hill, you look at the gradient and you think yeh whatever (I think it's at about 6 or 7%) however it starts off at about 6% for 3km then for abotu 10km its only at 4 or 5% and the last 7 or 8km it slowly gets steeper, theres no rest as it slowly goes up before finishign at a fun 12%. I won the race to the top however not by much I was pretty nervous and didn't want to go too hard too early and I'm glad I didn't it would be a pain fo a hill to crack on. The descent was fun and a car had to pull over to the side to let us go through. The one benefit of riding on such a heavy bike is that I can go down hills very quickly now, after the hairpin section at the top you didn't need to touch your brakes and just sat on about 80 or 90, it was a nice day and a quick run home. On the way home ridign through the streets of Briancon I saw 2 mates Pierre and Arnould walking down the main street carrying a massive eski, i presumed it was full fo beer turns out it had Wine in there also for the party that night, anyway they went past two of my teachers, stopped chatted to thema dn then kept on there way, everybody here is so relaxed the teachers are really friendly and relaxed outside school. O and takking about teachers After the friday night party on the saturday i got a life home from my Biology teacher, it was really weird he's the dad of a friend of Marie's, I didn't say a word on the way home.

That night was another party/gathering type thing but this time it was more a dinner party. It was a roclette party. It was like mashed potato melted cheese and different types of meat. It was a very sophisticated occasion, with a lot of them swirling and comparing different types of wine comapring white and red. It was fun. That sunday i rested, God knows I needed it too.

Anyway i'm off to yet another party this time it's mine and I'll post about the week tomorrow or tonight.

Ciao for now

Footy!

I'm sorry more blogs are coming soon but It's late and i just need to say this one thing.

Guess what! I played a game of footy in the rain this arvo it was magical. I taught a few of the french boys the basic rules and we got a game going on the asphalt it was great fun, these boys can tackle hard and kick far but none can mark, it was so much fun.
I brought a ball over from australia and I finally got around to inflating it today. it was funny trying to teach them how to play, some were surprisingly good as they were rugby players but they had real difficulty getting their heads around the whole handpass thing and a lot of freekicks were given away but it was fun and noone got hurt. There's a girl here who has just got abck from an exchange in Aus and she lived in brighton so she knows all about footy and she was a real help in explainign the rules. The final score after 2 hours of play was 136-110 high scoring match but the pitch wasn't that long we could kick goals from the other end lol. It was the best agme of footy i think i've had, lots of blood as it was on asphalt but noone seemed to care adn when it rained it reminded me of home.
Anwyayz Ciao i will catch up on the last two weeks over this weekend, fingers crossed

Marseille

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