After not writing about any of my races over the last few weeks I thought I would take the time to type up a blog about the race I did last Sunday (20th June).
The race was the GP Gréolières, in you guessed it Gréolières. This town/village is in the "Prealpes d'Azur" area of natural beauty so you can imagine what the terrain was like, the lap consisted of one 6km climb, a plateau, a second smaller climb of 1km and a 10km decent to the finish. The race was only 110km in length making 4 lap, one half of one being the neural.
The weekend started as it usually does, we all met at the club in Aix-en-Provence at 2pm which was very late compared to most meet up times, this was because the race was only 2.5 hours up the road. We pack up the van and jump in, by the time we had for comfortable we were already there, usually the journeys are a lot long, some totally 9hours.
We arrived in the town and located the hotel, "Hotel Panorama". The hotel was right next to a viewing point which over looked the valley that lead to Nice, the town we stayed in was called Grasse, it reminded of pictures I have seen of Monaco, minus the fancy cars. Because we got there at about 4pm we had time to have a walk around the town, we went and got a coffee and looked in a few of the clothes shops.
This was a smaller race for the club so we had to arrange our own dinner, I made spaghetti Bolognese and I bought a small baguette in the town to eat along side it. It was a early race (9am) so we went to bed relatively early at about 10pm as we needed to wake up at 5 for 'breakfast'.
5am comes around and the alarm starts, we get up and make our way to floor one. This has got to be one of the most bizzare breakfasts I have ever had, first of all it was a hotel room that had been converted into someone's dinning room, so all 7 of us are crammed into the tiny little room with a massive table. Second of all the breakfast offering consisted of plain pasta, plain rice, sour cream and chive sauce and horrific coffee. The type of coffee that makes Nescafé original taste good.
We repack our bags, put them in the van and we are on the way to the race at about 7:30am. The journey consisted of about 20km of which 10km was one big climb taking up to about 1000m elevation. We arrived with one hour before the start enough time to find a toilet get changed and roll to the start. We met a few of the guys at the race who lived relatively locally, I think there was 8 of us in total.
We all roll to the start and we begin the 8km neutral which took us to the top of the climb and past the feed zone. The race started and there is a early break away of maybe 5 guys but they get no where. Fast forward 10km and we are at the beginning of the climb, as planned we road the full length of the climb at the front full gas, the race now consisted of 6 guys everyone else had been dispatched on the first lap.
Together we work well and gain over 2 minutes on the peloton, at the bottom of the climb for the second time I rode on the front setting a pace that would discourage any attacks from the riders from other teams. It works and we roll of the top of the climb in one group of 8. I attempted to do the same thing on the final lap, it worked for half of the climb and then the attacks started so I just started to follow the moves and claw myself up the climb.
There was a break of 3 guys over the top of the climb one of which being a Aix rider so it gave us a good excuse not to work. Some how we rolled back onto this breakaway by the bottom of the hill so it was a sprint finish of a group of now 6 riders. It was a negative finish everyone looking at each other and rolling to a almost stand still. A guy in yellow attacked with 500m to go and stayed away with a bike length which was frustrating, the best placed Aix rider was 3rd, I was 4th.
I really enjoyed this race, it was perfect for me and I enjoyed learning how to ride as a team on medium length climbs. I hope we can utilise these skills in up coming stage races.
Thanks to The Dave Raynor Foundation, Pedal Potential and Weltite for your support, without you guys it would be impossible to survive out here in France!
The finish 📸 - Alps Bike Cycling Team