Rest

Not sure whats happening with my body right now, but I think its been a little run down after a hectic few weeks of visitors. The course on the weekend should have had me in the running, but instead found me having to dig deep to simply finish. The intense heat and humidity probably didn't help me much, but that's simply an excuse. To say the course was selective was an understatement. We started off with a 15km neutral start/parade out of Monaco which was pretty awesome. I stuck myself directly in the front again so was able to enjoy riding through the downtown and along the coast to the official start. Nothing like having Ferraris and other swanky cars pull out of your way in Monaco. We then stopped for final instructions and immediatly hit the first climb. On the Col de Castillon I stayed at the front and made the selection. Within 5 minutes the group had gone from 50+ to 10 or less. The heat was incredible and I cracked towards the top after about 30 minutes of climbing. From there on things got worse. The climbs never stopped, we had only 2 descents of 5 min. the entire race. I had no idea you could link so many cols with so little of anything else. Just as you would reach the summit sign for one, you would take another turn (quick descent if you were lucky) and then start climbing again. As confusion descended, you saw more signs explaining how many more kms (generally enough to make you curse) until the next summit. I completly exploded out of the chase group (4 of us) on Col de Brous I think and struggled hard home. The last 45-50 minutes of the race were spent at a pathetic pace up the Col de Turini. 17km of death. In the end, 62km of cols took 2:45ish to complete. From sea level to 1607m, 24km/h average speed. Needless to say, I have been taking a little rest period after to try and recover my form from the earlier races, my legs need that old freshness again. I have just learned today's crit in Aix-en-Provence has been cancelled so will be spending today again relaxing with a little spin. Training will start again Thursday with the La Bocca crit and then Drauginan road race on Sunday.
A quick shout out to DSJ for taking home the San P. at Preston on the weekend. I'm sure you've wanted that one for a while.