Jamie Rhodes - Professional Triathlete

If you can remember back to Part 2, you’ll recall that we had just located Johnny’s gear and were headed back to the car. Once we made it back we packed his stuff, we got him out some warm clothes to put on and headed off to the hospital. Now that we had the Clio back and the new cable was all Hunky Dory, Jono and I reoccupied our seat in the twingo and Nicko got back into the Clio. We were off to the Hospital.

Jono had asked somebody how to get there (in French….talented man) so we lead the way with Nicko close behind. At least he was close behind…. Until of course he wasn’t close behind anymore. We had travelled no more than 500m from the race site when we could no longer see little red rocket in the rear view mirror. Surely he hasn’t stopped for another Piss!

After another illegal u-turn we were headed back to fin Nicko when we saw the red rocket half parked on the sidewalk. Nicko had a bit of a funny grin on his face before telling us that the cable had snapped again at which point our hearts sank and then we laughed a lot. Poor Johnny was waiting at the hospital and had been for some time and now Nicko had broken the car again. We quickly changed cars so that Nicko could go and pick up Johnny and then return back to see what we could do.

Jono and I once again found our heads under the bonnet on the Clio on the side of the road, investigating the mysterious snapped accelerator cable. It seemed, although had not come out until this time that when the mechanic changed the original cable for the new one, he cut it a bit short and then connected it anyway, thus making the gas pedal sit much higher than it should. Thinking that the cable was just a bit tight and would loosen up over time, Jono took the time whilst driving back to Parthenay to plant the pedal and slowly stretch the cable so that the pedal sat where it should along side the other two pedals. After time, it found its place in line with its friends and everyone was happy. That was until Nicko got back into the car and the pedal was again sitting higher than would be expected. And as Nicko often likes to drive like a racing car driver, the pedal was once again pushing against the carpet in an attempt to gain “more power”. Now, anyone with half a brain (obviously not Nicko or Jono) would realise that a steel cable is still a steel cable and that there is not much give in a steel cable should you try to stretch it. Have you ever tried to stretch a steel cable….? It does NOT stretch.

Therefore, through the subsequent attempts at the stretching of the cable, all that happened was that the special thingamajiggy which connects the cable to the engine was stretched beyond all belief and eventually gave way and the cable snapped again, but this time from the other end, this being the end that attaches to the engine and not the pedal. This left us with a bit on a predicament, in that we were still 3 hours from home, our potenital accommodation for the night had left and we now once again had a broken car. And Johnny possibly had broken ribs which we found out upon his return from the hospital with Nicko.

During the time that it took Nick o to go and get Johnny, Jono and I had been racking our brains with ideas to reconnect the cable to the engine with anything that we had in the car. We had short-listed the sourced materials from our brainstorm session and went from the “could work”, to the “could possibly work”, which were separated from the “no chance in hell” and were finally left with the “what the F%*&, let’s just try it” group. In the end, we decided that our lives would rest with two keyrings and a calliper brake pad removed from Johnny’s bike, sitting on the back seat.

A short time into our Mechanical brainstorm a nice local guy stopped on the side of the road and came to give us a hand. From what we could ascertain, he was a mechanic of some description, however all he seemed to do was take my ideas and implement them, making out as if it was his idea in the first place. After a while he gave up and headed off home to his nice warm bed and warm cup of coco leaving us Aussie battlers to fight it out with mother nature and the once loved, but now reviled Clio.

Staying in Parthenay for the night was not an option. Therefore failure was not an option, so after some time and a whole lot of fiddling and cursing we had attached the cable to the engine in a manner that we mechanically minded lads thought would last the 300km remaining to get back to Bourges. Time would tell.

But just to let you know how ingenious our contraption was created, here’s how we did it:

Although not filling us with confidence, the contraption was sturdy and after several tests in which the cable was placed under much more forced than required to safely drive the car home (Nciko’s driving not included) it was decided that we would give it a go and if we broke down on some motorway in the middle of France then we would just laugh some more and then sleep on the side of the road and hope that that Murdock bloke hadn’t broken out prison and made his way over to Europe.

Due to his track record in the Clio, Nicko was now banished from driving the Red Rocket and Jono and I were now behind the wheel of our little baby. The love had returned and the harsh feeling from before were no longer felt.

Before we knew it, it was 12:30am and we had made it back to Bourges in one piece. To let you all know, the cable lasted us until Thursday when we took it back to the mechanic (who also happens to be a club sponsor) and had the cable replaced. We also travelled to Paris on Monday and returned on Tuesday night, adding another 500kms driven on our cable. It was felt between the group that it would have outlasted the car itself.

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE: Part 2

Now we come to probably the most unimportant part of the story, the actual race. The roads were wet, the swim was good, the ride was not and the run was about as good as the ride. It seemed that all of the racing, training and travelling over the past 4 and a half months had left me a little tired once again and I was not racing at my best on this day. It was a little disappointing and a lot frustrating as my body doesn’t seem to want to do what my mind says it can. Nonetheless, I was still able to come away with third place for the day, however fourth would have been a much better place on this day, though we did not realise this until later…

It was a pleasant surprise to see Jono standing on the sidelines when running out onto the run however. The story that he had for us after the race was a funny one. After we left him on his own on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere it was not long until the tow truck arrived to pick him up. Now, after talking to the roadside assistance crew on the phone, he was under the impression that the car would be taken to the nearest garage to be eventually fixed on Monday as they would not be open on a Sunday. He was told to ring back once the driver in the truck arrived, which he did. It was then that he was told that the driver would take him back to his own garage and do the repairs straight away. If this was the case, Jono could not work out why the guy didn’t just bring the cable needed to fix the car and do it on the side of the road. Anyways, he went back to the garage with the driver (which happened to be 40km in the opposite direction) and had the new cable fitted to the car. He then drove the however many km’s it now was back to Parthenay to watch the remainder of the race. This was not a bad result, considering that when we left him, we were sure that we would be needing to find somewhere to stay for the night so that we could pick the car up the following day.

Only with the prize cheque for third place overall also came the mystery prize of a drug test with some wacky French doc in the toilet of the local swimming pool. The first three male placegetters only were tested by a surprise French visit from whoever it is that is in charge of athlete drug testing in

France

This was my first experience of drug testing although I had seen a lot of it around the races that I’ve done and was aware of the process. And as is the case with all testing as soon as I crossed the finish line I was assigned with a escort who’s job it was to follow me around with lots of water and make sure I couldn’t swap my wee with anybody else. He was a nice man and spoke good English. He did a good job as I didn’t swap my wee with anybody and he always had plenty of water on hand. As most of you would be aware, it can take a considerable amount of time to push out a couple of drops after a hard race, but luckily on this day it was quite cool and overcast. It still did take quite a while to “fill the cup” though. But not as long as the ensuing paperwork and protocol that went along with it.

The Wacky French Doc was a full blooded knob and made things most difficult for everyone involved. I was so glad to have Jono on board as his ability to speak French was most helpful. Especially when trying to explain to the doc that I did not have my passport and that we did not feel it necessary to bring it for a race only three hours drive from where we live. This particular conversation went on for quite some time, before it became a little heated and then the doc gave in after Jono hit him up with some Jedi mind tricks (his abilities are endless).

So, after about an hour and a half, the piss was in the cup, the piss in the cup was then poured into two other cups, then the cups went into two bigger cups with snap lock lids and then the snap-lock cups went into the esky and then I shook the hand of about 40 people who were in the room and then we left, with my wee in the cup, that wee also in the other cups, and the cups in the bigger cups which were now in the esky. And given the amount of water that I had consumed in that short amount of time, there was also a whole lot more wee in me… but I wouldn’t realise that until later.

When we finally got out of the swimming pool complex it was time to try and find the others. The presentations had been finished for quite some time now which I found to be absolutely ridiculous. Apparently they had been calling us over the P.A system to come to the stage area for the presentation, yet we had no idea as we were all the way over in the toilet trying to squeeze some wee out of our dehydrated bodies. I couldn’t work out why we couldn’t just go to the presentations and then wee afterwards. This would have given us plenty of time to drink copious amounts of water, stand up and feel really bloated and then receive our awards. Instead, the first three placegetters for the day sat in a room drinking copious amounts of water, felt bloated sitting down all the while why the race organisers were made to look like absolute fools for losing three athletes. But we were told that we had to go and do the drug testing, so that’s what we did.

Anyways, got that off my chest. The task of finding the others was going to a little more difficult than would normally be the case. Finding Nicko was easy enough as he was standing outside of the pool, but looking for Johnny was a different story. During the race, poor Johnny had had a little spill on one of the corners. Fully aware that he could possibly be in a right mess he did the only thing he could and attempted to jump back onto his bike as quickly as possible. Being in a country where you don’t speak the language and having to go to the local hospital to have a whole heap of stuff done to you that you don’t understand is not cool. And Johnny was aware of this, so quick as a flash he was trying to remount his bike before the crowds rushed in. Before he knew, little Johnny was in the back of the Ambulance arguing with the staff that he was fine and did not need to go to the hospital. But poor Johnny didn’t stand a chance, so off to the hospital he went. All of this took place before and during the time that I went off to the see the doc watch me do a piddle, so by the time I got out Johnny was all checked over, had told the hospital staff to go and stuff themselves and that he wasn’t having any x-rays despite his sore chest and that he wanted to leave. Therefore, all we had to do was to pack the car, go and pick up my cheque, grab Johnny’s bike and race gear from transition and then pick him up from the hospital.

The first bit was easy as pie. The car was packed and we had left plenty of room to put Johnny’s gear inside. But when we went off to transition to get Johnny’s gear we had a bit of a problem, Johnny’s bike was not in transition. We searched for a good 15 minutes but it seemed that nobody knew where his bag, bike, runners or wetsuit were. After some time, somebody was able to find his bag up on the stage which we took and filled with some goodies from inside a big shed. Then, with a bag full of dried apricots and ginger cake we resumed the search for the remainder of johnny’s gear. We found it rather difficult to understand how his bike and gear could go missing, but this is France after all. After another 10 minutes of searching we were able to locate the whereabouts of Johnny’s runaway gear and safely took it back to the car. Left upon his frame was the remanence of the crash he had earlier in the day. It seemed by the small paddock stuck to his bike that he had fallen into some grass and if his bike was this dirty, we were scared to see how dirty poor Johnny was. (somewhere in the middle there, I located my cheque….very important. Stuff Johnny’s bike, get me my money!!)

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE: Part1

This one is a bit on a longy, so I’ve decided to split it up for you all. And since this is the first part of the story, I have decided to call this:

It was decided early last week that on the upcoming Sunday that we would travel as a threesome to race the Parthenay Triathlon, which is about 3 and a half hours from Bourges. Not long after we had decided to do so, Johnny P had decided that he would travel from Aix to come and stay with us in Bourges for a couple of days and also come along to race on the Sunday.

And even that our Beast (the ’97 Renault Clio) is only a touch smaller than Keaysy’s head, the chances of fitting 4 bikes, 4 bags and 4 humans inside was near on impossible. This left us with a little bit of a dilemma…

The next few days were spent trying to organise a suitable vehicle for our journey but as hard as we tried, we came up empty handed. It was not until on Friday that Jono had the idea that we borrow Shazza and Tezza’s Renault Twingo and take both cars for the ride. The Twingo is in fact quite a deal smaller than Keaysy’s head, and as I sit typing this blog on my double bed it would be safe to say that the car would fit comfortably inside the confines of my mattress.

Nonetheless, we now had two cars to travel in which was by far the cheapest and hopefully easiest way to make the journey. With only two occupants in each car, we would have enough room to fit both bikes and all of our bags, along with a few travel goodies to keep us well fuelled as well as interested along the way. We were set to go.

The race was not until 4 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to get there and had scheduled our departure time for about 10am the morning of the race. The morning had not started off to well with the internet deciding that it would not work. Little did we know it, but this was to be the least of out problems for the day, a day which would see us finally arrive back into our apartment in Bourges early the following morning.

The first and possible my most devastating occurrence for the whole day was discovered when we stopped for a widdle after about an hour or so of travel. After having a little wee on the side of the road I decided that I was ready for a lucky dip into my bag of goodies. Only to find that in order to have a lucky dip from the bag itself, I had to take the bag off the table from our living room. Shattered…

So after a brief bit of cursing and yelling at the cows on the side of the road, I hungrily and now somewhat grumpily made my way back into the car for the remainder of the journey. Little did I know that soon after we would be stopping again and that I could then have a grab at the Johnny and Nicko’s bag of goodies.

A little way down the road and only about 30 minutes after we had previously stopped, Jono observed Nick and Johnny in the Clio falling behind after passing a car in the overtaking lane. Once we made it over a small rise and the others did not we pulled over to the side to wait for them to catch. After a few minutes of waiting, it was obvious that the boys weren’t coming. “Surely, they don’t need to go to the toilet again”, Jono said to me so we turned around and went back to see the Clio sitting on the side of the road and Nicko having a little tickle in the grass. If this were the only reason for the stop we would have been stoked, however the fact that the accelerator cable had snapped off the accelerator pedal meant that Nicko having a wee in the grass meant that he was wasting time and this made us angry.

After raiding the boys goodie bag for a few minutes, we finally decided that something needed to be done. We then had to decide what it would be that we would do. Hmmmm

In order to take part in the brainstorming session, it was necessary for me to have a few more lucky dips into the goodie bag, which I did and then we decided on the plan of attack. We now had 4 humans, 4 bikes and lots of bags to take in a car no bigger than one of my spoon thumbs (which although I have been told are enormous, are not really that big). The fact that the larger of the two cars had broken down, made little difference to our situation as the chances of the 4 of us making it the remaining 130km to Parthenay in the Twingo were as good as Owen trying not to get stuck in the trap that is “his ex-girlfriend”. Ahhhhhhh!!!!

After a short discussion, it was decided by myself that we would remove the cable from it’s casing and as it was still connected to the engine to drive the car. By simply tying the cable to an Octopus strap we could pull the cable through the window of the driver’s side as by pulling on the cable with the left hand (the steering wheel is on the other side over here) you would be able accelerate and use the other pedals to perform the medial tasks of braking and changing gears. Genius!! (photos to come)

And as nobody else was game enough to try, I was left with the task of getting the car to Parthenay. My co-driver, now Johnny P was a great deal of help throughout the next 25km as he screamed and carried on like a little girl. I mean, all we were doing was driving a car at 120kph using a piece of wire through a window. Easy. The only problem was changing gears, as with one hand steering and the other working the throttle there were no hands left use the stick. After Johnny had contained himself and I thought that he were in a position to handle the responsibility I left him in charge of gears. This worked well for the first few goes until Johnny decided that he would change gears when he wasn’t supposed to skyrocketing the engine to about 5 million revs and scaring the absolute shit out of both of us.

This process continued as I said earlier for around 25km until my hand started to get sore and we thought it best to stop for a rest. I had hope for a new co-driver but after stopping and giving me a few more dips into the goodie bag it was decided that this was probably not the safest was to continue on.

Our new plan of attack from this point on was that we would leave Jono with the car and he could call the roadside assistance. This was the case as Jono is the only French speaking person of the four of us and therefore the only one who could get it fixed. The onky problem was that it was a Sunday and we were pretty sure that there was no way that after the car was towed to the nearest garage that the car would be fixed until the Monday.

The next 15 minutes we spent strategically packing the pint-size Twingo with Johnny, Nicko and my bikes, bags and bodies. Simply fitting the gear in the back of this car was a mission, let alone fitting three bodies into the front, or cockpit as we like to call it. I had nominated myself as the driver as I was the tallest, but I also knew that the other two wanted to spend some quality time together in the passenger seat. With the driver seat so close to the pedals that I could drive them with my hands (haha) and my knees around my ears we took up with first Nicko sitting on Johhny’s lap. (photos to come).

100km and almost as many position changes later, we arrived into Parthenay to get ready to race. We all took turns in straightening out each others limbs and then made our way to the registration area where we realised that Johnny had left his wallet (with race licence) in the other car. Luckily for us the woman who helped us spoke English and we were let through without a hassle. This is an extremely rare occurrence in French Triathlon racing.

Bourges Again

I began writing this blog the other night after the Women's triathlon earlier that morning but wasn't really in the mood so i threw in the towel like Keaysy on a hot day..... or a cold day for that matter. Even a perfectly normal day.... B ut he is training partner to the stars so i'll let him off lightly this time. So keaysy, what is it like to swim in the same lane as Erin Densham??

Anyway, enough about the man who single handedly trained up Erin to race in Beijing, i must let you all know about where i am and what i've been up to. I think that eating too many creme brulee's clogged up up my thought processes so for the past week and a half all i've done is sit on the couch and stare at the TV in the hope that the babble that is the French language will somehow magically enter my head and allow my to speak fluent french.

I can tell you now after my experiment that this was not the case... Back to the books i guess..

I've been in Bourges now for just over a week and have settled back into my corner of the room. I am once again enjoying the luxury of a double bed although it seem that i have an allergy to French pillows as they do not allow my to sleep at night. Unhappy with my messy living quarters Jono and I made the trek down to the local supermarket/department store to purchase a few things. One of them being a new pillow, the other a clothes organiser. Unfortunately, the clothes organiser does not do the organising for you but it does hae three seperate compartments for all of my stylish apparel. As i look at it now i can see that the far left side is dedicated to running and racing gear (running specific socks included), the far right compartment is dedicated to cycling only gear (cycling specific socks included) and the middle compartment is for casual clothing (no socks included). In the rare case of requiring a pair of socks to wear with casual clothes then i am at liberty to choose a pair from either the cycling or running compartments.

Shoes must be aigned on the floor in pairs and any spare luggage or unwanted apparel such as cool weather gear must be stored under the bed.

Mum, before you become too excited i must warn you that this trend is not likely to continue for much longer and the chances of me bringing tis attitude home to Aus with me is remote to say the least. Nonetheless, you may find yourself lucky for a few days. Time will tell.

I am yet to get to the start of my blog from the other day, so i'll cut myself off here and begin fresh from a few days ago. Just pretend like its Monday afternoon and everything that you've just read is yet to happen..........

Jono, Nicko and myself made sure we were up in time this morning to watch the women's triathlon. It was at 4am our time which was a bit of a chore but as i had woken at the same hour to watch Grant Hackett in the 1500m it wasn't too bad. I received an email from Kepa today telling me that he was also up at 4am to watch the race. The remained of the afternoon was spent rolling around on the floor in laughter thinking of Kepa's state of being at 4am given that he thinks 9am is too early to get up to walk the 250m to work in the morning.

It was great to see the two aussie girls get onto the podium and also see Erin finish 22nd. It was definitely worth waking early for to see the two Emma's as they are now known race so well but after the finish it was quickly back to bed to make the most of the remaining hours of darkness. Surprisingly it remained dark until 10:30am.....

Since this time, not alot has been achieved, other than sitting on the bed with the latop in hand, writing emails and blogs. I'm obviously back in bourges with the boys and the weather is fine.

On Saturday we made the five minute journey down into the centre of town to have a looksee at the Cathedral for which Bourges is famous. It was a fantastic experience and i have some great photos from the visit. We went with Shazza's eldest daughter as she was once a tour guide for the Cathedral and she showed us around. We also went on a tour of the crypt belo the cathedral with a woman who was possibly the fastest talker i have ever heard. The fact that she was taking in French did not really matter as even if she were speaking slow i wouldn't have understood. It did not help that Jono could not understand her as he usually acts as our translator and was unable to do so on this occasion. We were given a little panflet in english which explained the parts of the crypt however, so we pretty much just walked around and had a look for ourselves while the woman spoketo the group.

It rained most of Sunday and an hour and a half of this was spent running at a forest that the boys had found nearby. It was nice to run in the rain and it wasn't too cold out. After this, there was not much else to accomplish for the remainder of the day other than wait for the rain to clear so that we could go for a pedal in the afternoon, so Jono and I ventured down to the local Supermarket/Department store to buy some much needed goodies as you have read above. A clothes organiser, a pillow, some drinking glasses and a few little goodies.

Most of the major French supermarket chains are great in that their stores cotain both a supermarket and also a department store. The are all aout the size of Jeff's shed however, so it is important to allocate sufficient time to make your way around the whole store as i is a good time waster. You mastbe careful however not to program too much training after such an outing as the legs can be left feeling a little weary. Not so for the store worker however who get around during their shift on rollerblades. deadly serious!!!

It was funny as were walking along one of the aisles whe Jono brought up the topic af how you could be dropped at the front door of this place with nothing more than a wad full of pineapples, and within an hour or two (dependent of your efficiency) you could be ready to move into your previously unfurnished apartment.

We came to the conclusion that you could buy everything that you would need to live comfortably under the roof of this one store. So we came up with a plan as to how if we were dropped at the front door in nothing more than our undies and a wad of cash we would be able to purchase ayting that we needed to set up in Bourges. We thought it appropriate to be at least wearing our underwear as withou them, one; we probably wouldn;t be allowed to enter the store and two; we wouldn't have anywhere to store our cash...

Obviously the most important thing to accomplish first is to purchase some clothes. Easy done, straight to menswear where you can find everything from the most fashionable attire to the most practical attire such as business shirts and slacks to start our new job. With shoes just next door we are fully covered and ready to continue shopping within a matter of minutes.

Next is the very important task of choosing the right sized television for our new apartment. Of course it needs to fit in with the decor and space available in our apartment..... but as we have never seen the apartment in the flesh the 238cm plasma just looks too good to refuse. It will be nicely complementd by some surround sound speakers, a new laptop, an ipod with dock, some trendy CD's and of course a Nintendo Wii.

Bedding is also important, as comfort will be essential in our new apartment and sleep will be at a premium given our hectic schedule. Sheets, Pillows, storage, shoe racks, cloths horse, tablecloths, placemats, all accomplished here.

Pots and pans can be found at the opposite end of the department section, as well as cutlery, crockery and glassware. This will all look really nice on our new dining suite purchased from area 4.

Directly across from area four, it was hard not to notice the sports section. Given that our apartment is positioned at the bottom of the complex and aparently contains a nice little courtyard, we thought it appropriate to grap a Huffy Basketball ring and also a totem tennis pole. This will surely keep us occupied during time from our busy schedule.

As we make our way down to the grocery section to complete our first big shop to fill the cupboards we come across the pet section. Not just your run of the mill Safeway/Woolies pet section either. Other than selling the animals themselves there is just about anything that a pet could ever want. We don't actually have a pet but hey, there's plently of strays walking around france, to be on the safe side we'll take some dog and cat food. And a big fluffy kennel, just incase we pick up a pony or something.

the easier but must time consuming part is of course grabbing the first lot of groceries. But when you've got an aisle dedicated to "products of the world", things are made so much easier. Especially as we hoe down on our third block of Cadbury dairly milk but the time we hit the frozen goods section. Once finished with the groceries it is importnat to get everything back to the aartment, but with Carrefour's fantastic home delivery service we will be living in luxury by this afternoon. And of course, no need to hitch a rde with the delivery truck once we purchase our brand new Petrol Powered Scooters for the unbelievablt price of just 999 euros.

Dessert Heaven

Well i'm sitting here on my bed during what is commonly known as black hour and thought that writing a blog to my most favouritest friends and fans would help to fill in the time. Black hour runs from 6:30 until 7:30, which is the hour before dinnertime here at Les Platanes. During "Black Hour", no food is to be consumed. It's not unlike when you were a child and your mother wouldn't let you eat anything before dinner so that you wouldn't spoil your dinner, but different....

Anyways, back to the point. I've got an hour to kill before dinner and nothing more than a keyboard and two pieces of chewing gum to get me through. So what better way to pass the time than to talk about the one thing that i have black-listed for the next 55 minutes, food..... In particular, desserts.

Here at Les Platanes Hotel & Restaurant dinner is served at promptly 7:30pm every night. We are provided with a buffet meal each night with a variety of combinations dependent on the night of the week. A big favourite for myself and most of the others in Monday night where we are treated to Beef Lasagne and Vegetarian Quiche, easily the two best plates er4ved up all week. Monday is closely followed however by Friday with a spread of vegetarian lasagne and curry chicken. Wednesday is A la Carte night, which is an absolute cracker but cannot be compared to or with any other night of the week. Thursday night's mains are not too great however Thursday is also Crepe night. Crepes are served up after dinner with Nutella and Jam and are a big favourite among the crew.

But on every other night of the week, following dinner we have the choice of dessert from the A la Carte menu. WOW!!!!

It is sometimes so hard to choose between the delectable sweets that are Les Platanes desserts that some nights you just have to go and have a lie down and have a sleep and give dessert a miss all together. But on the nights that you do happen to choose a mouth-watering treat to reward yourself for a hard day's training, you must be careful that your head does not simply explode such is the experience.

Now, you of course have your old favourites on the menu such as your Ice Cream (assorted flavours) of which you can have one, two or three scoops. It must be said however that the Vanilla ice cream in France is absolutely amazing and is made with real vanilla bean, which you can see. A few rungs above the old Peter's original. Other flavours include chocolate, pistachio, strawberry, lemon............ blah, blah, blah.

You then have other oldies but goodies like you Chocolate Mousse (definitely a winner), Tarte de Pomme (apple tart), crepes and a few others. But i have short listed the favourites of the group to give you all an insight into everybody's tastes.

Although not up there with the absolute favourites of the bunch, the Creme Caramel definitely holds it own within the top echelon of after dinner delicacies. Unlike, your packet job from Safeway or Coles the Platanes Creme Caramel is so smooth that it almost slips down your throat without you even getting to taste the amazing flavour that it harnesses. Served upside down on a plate and covered in liquid gold, the Creme Caramel is a sure fire pleaser without being over the top.

Well respected among the group, it has a small group of avid fans which include The bossman Bill Davoren, Tyler B, Johnny P and occasionally the Rhode Train.

There are two Half Colours awards for the short-listed desserts of 2008 and they are:

Served on a base of not crunchy, yet not soggy pastry, and topped with a plethora of lazed pear pieces, the Tarte de Tarne (of which we are not sure of the spelling) is served with a side of Vanilla ice-cream and whipped cream. The mere sight of this dessert has sent some of the female members of the team into hot flushes, and with the right amount of delicate spoonmanship, the Tarte de Tarne can be meticulously dissected until the last enchanting mouthful. With a bevy of followers and a few passionate devotees this dessert is easily one of the most popular and is fully worthy of its half colour status.

Tarte de Tarne enthusiasts include J Hall, Kung Fu, Dan the Man Uden, Neon Leon and occasionally the Rhode Train.

Relatively new to the Triathlon Australia table having just been discovered within the last week or so the Tarte aux Nois has skyrocketed to Half Colour status, and for good reason. The assortment of nuts encased in a butter caramel goo on a bed of crunchy biscuit base is so mouth-watering that the tiny slither often served has caused many a customer being left so utterly satisfied, yet wanting more.

It is not an uncommon sight to see many a good athlete fall from grace and have to be escorted from the dinner table in tears after 3 or 4 servings of what is now recognised as possibly the most popular dessert. And if not the most popular, defintely "flavour of the month".

It took a brave soul to ask the extremely unilingual waiter what other tarts were available on the menu one night last week, and had it not happened then we would all be none the wiser to this entrancing after dinner sensation. Upon the response of the clumsy waiter known simply as "Lurch", nobody really knew what it was, but J Hall was the man to take up the challenge, as his Tarte de Tarne was seemingly not satisfying enough. With Kung Fu soon to follow suit an impartial judgement could be made, not that J Hall is seen as an unworthy judge (as he has most certainly proved himself in the art of after-dinner destruction since arriving to Les Platanes), but rather that having already consumed a Tarte de Tarne it was thought that it would be more decipher the subtle flavours hidden within the unknown tart.

But as was to be expected, the new found dessert came up trumps. And within the ensuing days, like seagulls we all flocked to the "nutty tart" as it developed arguably the biggest following seen on the TA table. As word spread, everybody wanted their piece of the "Nutty Tart".

Obsessive and besotted have become words associated with the Tarte aux Nois disciples. The hall of shame reads as follows:

J Hall, Buttons Densham, The Fu, Sticksy, Tyler B, Luigi, Johnny P, Dan the Man, Matty the psych. And occasionally the Rhode Train.

With Full Colours being the highest award handed out for the short-listed desserts of 2008 it makes sense that as the author of this blog i have the final say. For this reason i have chosen my favourite dessert on the menu, the Creme Brulee.

Having arrived to Les Platanes never tasting such a dessert in my life i was quickly assured that the Creme Brulee was easily the best tasting dessert on the menu, but also the best Creme Brulee in the whole world. A big call i know!

Despite the ranting and raving, i was slow on the uptake and it took me a few nights of settling in before i built up the courage to order the CB. I was like a kid in a candy store waiting for my plate to arrive. The anxiety had filled my body and it all became a little too much when i had to leave the table for a nervous wee. No unlike those prior to a big race. This may have been the best ting to happen to my though, as when i arrive back to my chair..... there it was in all of it's splendour.

My roomate Brendan had developed a close connection to this particular dessert and during long meaningful chats in our bedroom he had described to me the first mouthful to be almost orgasmic. Wary of his comments and not wanting to embarrass i took t the first spoonful very carefully.... slowly letting the flavour release itself into my tastebuds.

It was nothing short of amazing, and i was almost ready to stop there such was my satisfaction. that was until Brendan assured me that the Creme Brulee was sooooo good that you are actually surprised again and again, mouthful after mouthful. From the first to the last. AMAZING!!! The onslaught of flavour never ends until the very last mouthful is finished.

He also believes that it is important to leave sufficient time between each mouthful to fully appreciate the wonder that is taking place between the contents of your spoon and your tastebuds.

In spite of this, diners are advised that the Creme Brulee must be used sparingly as its mystical power is so great that too many will make you very fat.

It must be noted that the CB is only for the most committed of dessert diners. The following people are uncompromising in their pursuit of pleasure and should be commended for their dedication to the cause.

Grug (AKA Luigi), Johnny P, Sticksy, Kung Fu, Tyler B, Neon Leon and more than occasionally the Rhode Train...

Alpe d'Huez Triathlon

Well, yesterday was the day of the iconic Alpe d'Huez Triathlon and as i had mentioned earlier on a previous blog i was entered and looking forward to the big race. Now that it is finished it is safe to say that i am glad that it is all over.

My performance yesterday was not quite what i had planned, however neither was the weather. It was a fantastic experience and a very long day which saw Jono, myself and physio Leon leaving Aix les Bains at 8am to travel the two or so hours to the top of Ad'H. The drive was quite easy and uneventful and when we got to the bottom of the climb we dropped Leon off so that he could ride up the hill and meet us at the top. It was handy to drivethe course first as there was fat chance that i was going to ride it before the race.

The nature of the race meant that there would be two transition areas, one at the swim exit which was held in a lake about 17km from the bottom of the climb. The lake itself was used to create hydro-electricity and was only open to swimming for the Triathlon week. Every other day of he year it is forbidden to swim in the lake whic is a shame as it was quite a spectacular scene. However, the knowledge of the area and skill of the local adolecents jumping off the breakwall into the water seemed to disprove this statement.

Jono and i got to the top of the climb where transition 2 was and also the finsh and registration areas. I registered and got my race pack which included a brand new XL bike rag and my race numbers. After this we realised that we had quite a deal of time to kill, so we found a nice little patisserie with some nice deck chairs and oder some nice little baguettes and cans of diet coke which came with a nice little price tag. Jono had warned me that Alpe d'Huez was expensive but i found 25 bucks for two ham and cheese rolls and two cans of coke a little steep, not unlike the gradient of the hill i was to climb only a few hours later.

After some time, we found the mental strength to peel ourselves off the deck chairs and make the drive back down to th race start at the lake in Vaujany. It was starting to get hot and i tried to stay out of the water as much as possible. After a short bike warm-up i made my way down to the transition area where i got to stand in a line for the better part of half an hour. although this did give me time to do all of those important things that i had neglected previously, such as putting on my race numbers and taping my TORQ nutrition to the top tube of my bike. It also gave e a good opportunity to sweat out half of the fluid in my body. I think by the time i got to rack my bike i was down to about 52kg. They had announced over the PA that we were not allowed to do a swim warm-up prior to race start as the electricity company had not turned off the hydro and they were affraid that we might get sucked into the turbines. This statement was also soon disproved as i joined the other 100 or so athletes who had already entered the water and begun their swim warm-ups. It was refreshing to eventually get into the water as the outside air temp must have been nudging the high 30's. The water was a chilly 16 degrees although there were definitely areas in the lake that were less then this and sitting tagnet on the start line for what seemed like about 20 minutes as the Frenchies tried to get everybody behind the start line i got quite cod. Eventually after the race officials had already handed out a few yellow cards to competitors for not staying behind the imaginary start line, some intelligent individual realised that the chances of everyone starting behind the imaginary line were next to nil and started the race. The fact that there were half a dozen or so aussies pushing the imaginary line closer and closer to the first turning buoy did not help much, but the Franch race officials are always completely over the top and set in their ways. However it seems the athletes won on this day.

I can only assume that the starting gun or horn or whistle or whatever had gone as just about everybody to the left of me began to swim. This was my cue to go and i was off. I had a great start and had gapped everybody in my vicinity by about 50 metres and was swimming fast. But not as fast as the guy on my right who i saw when i glanced over at about the 200m mark. I quickly moved over to try to cove rhe five metre gap that he had on me but he was really moving and by the first turning bouy i was yet to brisge the gap. It was here to i decided i would really smash the next 50 metres to close the gap and eventually i reached his feet by the second turning bouy. On the way in to the swim exit i tried to sit in his wash and conserve energy as there was little chance that i would have been able to swim any faster than he was going and a few times he caught me napping and gapped me. I would put in soem more and by the time we reached the exit of the swim i was back on his feet. I took a quick glance when getting out of the water to see that we had a pretty big gap on the rest of the field. By the time i left transition after passing the swim leader i could not see anybody else enter from the water.

I felt really good for the first part of the bike and by 2km where Jono and Leon were standing i had put almost 30 seconds into the other bloke. I rode really well to the bottom of the climb, and although myheart rate was already quite high me legs felt pretty good. I could not see anybody behind me, but that may have had sething to do with the ambulance which was following me the whole way.

But at the bottom of the hill that all changed. As the gradient increased, so did my heart rate. I'm was't sure why i had been so high in the early part of the race ut attributed it to the heat. By now it was seriously hot and . At the beginning of the climb i was passed by a guy who was absolutely flying. He came past me that quickly that i was adament that he could not sustain his pace. Soon after he slowed and i as able to keep a gap of about fifty metres. My HR was nudging 180 by this stage and i was really feeling the heat and wondering whether i would make it around the 21 switch-back corners to the summit. At times the cars would come past and sit in front of you until they could move off and at one point when five or so cars came past and sat in front of me the heat was immense and i went into a real state. It was terribly uncomfortable and the tipping of the boiled water from my drink bottle did not help much either. I soon realised that i was going to struggle, given that i am not all that great in hot conditions and just tried to keep a steady state without going over the top. A couple more guys obviously found the going a litle easier than myself and passed me on the way to the summit. they caught the guy in front and made a group of three which is when i lost most of my time to them. They were obviously working well together, but i just did not have the legs to go with them on this day.

I came off the bike in 5th with the hope of still running well. The hope faded after about 100m metres though and it was a tough, tough run. I was in a state where i was teetering on going into the red zone and really had to try and relax and stay composed. this is hard when racing and going uphill for the first two kilometres. I got slower as the run went onand was happy to finally make it to the finish, where i drank about 5 litres of luke warm fluid in the recovery area. I was so at this stage and was wishing that i was back down at the 16 degree lake where i had been about 2 hours earlier. On the way home i had a look at my bike computer to see that the average temperature on the bike was 39 degrees with a maximum of 43. I'm not sure how accurate this is but if even a few degrees out it gives you an idea of how hot it was.

I was pretty disappointed with the result as i was really looking forward to doing well inthis race, but thats that way things go i guess. The conditions were not really great for me, but i was still happy with my effort and thought i was going well until i began to overheat. I was really happy with my swim and also the beginning of the bike and feel that if it had been a normal race with a normal bike course i probably would have done OK, but it was not........ as i found out.

Living in aix Les Bains

I've been given the remainder of the day off training as i have the big Alpe d'Huez race on Thursday so i thought i'd sitdown on the bed and catch you all up on what's been going on here in France.

I arrived here after my last Spanish race in San Sebastian. The race was OK for me however i think that i had reached the end of my tether and exploded on the run to eventually finish third. It was encouraging however to know that although i exploded beyond all comprehension i was still able to pump out a mid 36 minute run. I was afraid that i would fall into the 40 minute run bracket, or even worse "the dreaded 39's'. I was a little dizzy at the finish and was glad that the race was finally over. The training on my own, every session, everyday seemed to have taken a little more out of me than i had anticipated. But third was still a good result on the day with a strong field and i was still able to walkk away with a decent handful of Euros.

After the race Kepa and Ana and little Mikel's family all took me to a local Cidery for a fantastic lunch. I tried some pretty cool stuff which included snails and we also drunk cider straight from the barrels. It was a nice finish to my time in the asque Country with all of the friends that i had made. Needless to say that afer 2 and a half months without a drop of alcohol, after a few ciders i as well on my way. Luckily Kepa and Ana were on had to drive the Beamer back to Europcar. From here we went over the French border into Biarritz, where i would catch my flight the following morning to Lyon airport. It was an early flight and i was up early to get to the airport on time. The airport was only about 2km away so there was little chance, even for me of missing my flight. The flight to Lyon was easy and i was soon onto the bus to Aix les Bains. It was direct from Lyon which was very handy as i was pretty tired from the previous long day in the sun and of course a cider or two...

Before i knew it i was in aix and read to go again. Well, not really as i had another race on that weekend. This was the third of my Grand Prix races in Beauvais so the boss had given me the remainder of the week as easy training to prepare and recover for the race. The grand Prix was super fast again and i was definitely feeling the previous 6 weeks of racing. I was there until the run but just did not have the spark in the legs required to match it with those guys.

I was once again happy to get back to Aix on the Monday after spending the night with Jono and Nicko back in Bourges after travelling home with the team. It was easier to go back with the team on Sunday and ten just catch the train or two or three on Monday to get back to Aix. And also a lot cheaper.

Once back in Aix, i was happy to hear the boss tell me that i had an easy week in store to recover from al of my racing. This was meant mainly sleeping and eating with of course a little bit of training. This left me in good stead for another solid block of training as i was not scheduled to do any races for a few weeks. Alp d'Huez will be my first since arriving back from Beauvais.

Training has been great since as the surroundings here are absolutely amazing. Aix le Bains sits on a large lake in the middle of two mountains. The water is crystal clear most of the time and looks blue, really blue. There are also no carp swimming in this lake, only mermaids and naked old women.

The riding is quite special really and caters to all types of workloads. Given that i am racing up AdH on Thursday i have been doing quite a few solid climbs to prepare. Last Saturday i climber the Col du Grand Colombiere at 1501m. It was about 15km of cimbing with some really tough steep sections. It took me just over an hour. Then on Saturday just gone myself and Physio Leon went up the Mont du Chat which pretty much sits opposite to Aix on the other side of the lake. It was a much steeper climb and although shorter in time and distance, much much more difficult than Colombiere. It sits at about 1340m and considering that Aix is at about 200m it goes up rather quickly. My 23 cog wasn't really ideal and i will definitely be seeking out a 25 for the race.

We mainly run down at the local Hippodrome (horse racing track). It has a nice track which runs around the outside and also around the Golf Course which sits next to it. You can also run on the track itself and to top it off there is a 330m grass running track there too. Not bad at all.

You can also run straight from the Hotel as just about everywhere there are tracks of some description.There is also a place at the top of the lake where we go running for our long runs. Its about a 20m drive.

Swimming is done in a 50m outdoor and also 25m indoor pool atthe local aquatic centre. The view from the pool is quite spectacular with Mountain situated on either side. The indoor pool is quite an experience as most of the time when we swim there it is either a weekend or really busy as it is school holidays here. Firstly we have to put the lane ropes in and then kick out all of the kids swimming in the way. there just happy to be there so swimming in our way doesn't really bother them. Thatis until you grab them by the head and dunk their heads under the water. They soon work out that it is not such a great idea to try and swim underneath the lane.

The other when we were putting in the laneropes, somebody knocked my kickboard and pool buoy into the pool and within seconds they were snaffled up by a pair of young frogs. It didn''t occur to them that the equipment belonged to anyone in particular, but rather that it was thrown into the pool purely for their enjoyment. A quick head dunk and a knock on the scone and my gear was back in my posession ready to start the swim session.

Well, that jsut about covers all of the training that goes on in Aix, but i'll be sure to get some photos up of the area so you can all see. Hope all is well back home in aus, despite the cold weather. I hear that its almost as cold as Summer in Vancouver. Grrrrr!!

My computer arrives

After thinking that the computer that Paul sent to me some two weeks ago had taken the reverse route of Gary's itinerary, it finally arrived yesterday. I had been waiting somewhat patiently, and a whole lot impatiently for it to arrive since Monday and as my roomate Brendan will attest to, by Friday morning i almost felt like lying down on the ground, kicking and punching and having a big cry.

That was until Friday afternoon when i was resigned to the fact that the computer would not arrive today and then i would be waiting for another long weekend the beloved computer that i was yet to see. Upon returning from a trip to the local shops i was in utter disbelief to see a package sitting on the table with my name on it. Within seconds i had scaled the 37 stairs to the second level and entered my room. Feeling like a fat 10 year old kid on Easter Sunday i ripped at the packaging to reveal more packaging, and then more packaging and then more packaging. Shit! By this time i was so exciting and anxious that i had to take a time out and go and have a wee.

After composing myself on the loo for a short while i was bale to finish the unpacking on the remaining four layers of packaging and get down to the good stuff. A big thanku for George for proving some much needed additional padding in the form of a few blocks of Cadbury. Its hard to see how the laptop would've made it all the way to France in one piece if not for the careful placement of the 84 and a half glasses of full cream dairy milk. Thanks Mum.

A big thanku to Paul as well for loading on all of the software for me to be able to start playing as soon as the computer was unwrapped. Thanks Dad.

There are some cool nifty gadgets on the new beast, including a finger swiper to unlock the computer. This way no one can get into my files and steal my ripper material. It also has a built in camera so i can talk on Skype and show everyone my awesome dirty porn moustache. Oh yeah, i have a dirty porno moustache at the moment. I started growing it the day i left and now it is almost visible to the naked eye. Maybe by November i will be ready to take on The Watson....

Anyways, i just wanted to touch base and tell you all about my wicked new toy. I can now write my blogs without having to steal other peoples computers and update my website (which i have no idea of how to do) which is a great bonus at the moment as between training and eating and sleeping and F&F, there is not a lot to do. That was until now............

Please Note: any comments posted referring to my perusing of Pornographic material on my new laptop will be removed immediately. That is unless you know any quality sites... cheers

Gary's Gone

Well, i've been in Aix les Bains for nearly two weeks now and a few days we all experienced a little bit of sadness whn it was time for Gary to go home.

Gary's ongoing injury problems proved a little too much and the decision was made that it would be better for gary and his recovery that he travel back to Australia and begin his rehab there. As many of you would know, Gary and I both returned home from aix early last year with our arms wrapped in plaster so for this to happen is very disappointing for him. It is also very disappointing for the rest of us here as he is a great mate to us all and we all wish him the best of luck with his recovery.

Upon deciding to send Gary back to Aus it was up to Loges to organise some flights so that Gar could return home as soon as possible to make the most of the beautiful sunny Canberra winter. There was abitof a problem however, in that Australia is the host of World youth week. After much researxh into available flights Gar was informed of his route home to Australia. It seemed that the influx of young people into the country for youth week as well as the arrival of the Pope mean that there were very few available seats. For this reason Gary's return route back to Australia commenced on Sunday morning and Paul and George can expect to see him at Tullamarine in about Mid August. Probably best for Paul and George however, as they can prepare 25 Hove for Gary's arrival.

Note to Paul and George: Jamie's room will remain as Jamie's room. Jamie believes that Gary will be well suited to rooming in the study as he may have trouble sleeping next to the pool filter.

If Paul and George area little worried about Gary's whereabouts during his extended travels, you needn't be as i have outlined his travel arrangement's in the itinerary below.

Mode of Travel: Horse driven Cart (be aware of excess luggage charges with additional bike bag)

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Arrive Olten-Zofingen regional airport

Own Travel arrangements to Winterthur International Airport

Arrive Minsk Airport

Compulsory quarantine period

Minsk International airport

Own arrangements to Moscow Trans Siberian Railway station

Note: Passengers are advised to leave extra travel time to account for any of the following:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fend for oneself until daybreak, own arrangements to Commercial Port of Vladivostok (camel charters run 24hrs out of Vladivostok City Centre and can be payed for in most international currencies)

Arrive in Kangnung Regional fishing port, South Korea

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Board Royal Flying doctor’s flight from Darwin to Perth, via Gibb River, Turkey Creek, Nicholson, Halls Creek, Fitxroy Crossing, Broome, Port Headland, Paraburdoo, Newman, Carnarvon, Geraldton, Dongara and Eneabba.

Own arrangements to Sydney International Airport

Lekeitio Race Report

This is one of the ones that i had already written but i'll go through it all again for both the satisfaction of all of you and also for my own.

It was a bloody hot day in the basque country, as it had been all week as the throngs of Euskadi's headed to the local beaches to make the most beautiful weather and summer solstice. Sitting quietly in his room in downtown Mundaka was a young man awaiting his time in the sunshine later that afternoon. Although late race starts were not custom in his homelad, the young chap had become rather used to the 4:00pm time slot, and the benefits that came with that particular race commencement, such as rising out of bed after 10am.

This had become a regular time of uprising for the young lad during his extended stay with his very accomodating hosts and as he rose out of a deep deep slumber and made his way to the breakfast table, thoughts were running through his head of the day that lay ahead. It was important with such a late start that the young man do at least some exercise prior to travelling the 45 minutes or so to the local coastal town of Lekeitio, so he put on his Sunday best riding gear and made his way out for an easy spin to Gernika.

Although still early he could feel the heat in the sun on his arms and legs as he rode the undulating route to his destination. n the way he could see the crowds building along coast and finding their own special spot on the golden sand. Upon returning from his ride the gentleman settled down into his routine of "F&F" (food and F$#% all) for the next few hours or so. He had become very good at F&F over the past 4 weeks and was confident that should he ever be met with a spare couple of hours at any time during the day that he would be more than capable of filling in the time.

After completing his F&F routine for the better part of 2 hours it was time for the young lad to complete the important pre-race rituals hich included the cleaning of the bike, the arranging of the race equipment, the packing of the race equipment and the last and most important riual; making a deposit or two or three.

As he was out in the sun for another period of time, making sure the bike was clean, he coul once again feel the intense heat beating down on his naked body. tan lines seemed to have gotten the better of him with his busy training schedule and this seemed the most appropriate to remove such an unsightly scene.

Before long, it was time to travel to trael to the race and as he glidedgracefully into the Beamer he could feel the sun of all things beating down on his naked body. Correction, at this stage he was infact clothed... Anyways, the drive to the venue was uneventful. The route taken on this particular day was a little longer than usual at the advice of his co-driver and most accomodating of hosts. In his estimation, there would be a great deal of people heading to Lekeitio on this day, both for the race and also to bask in the blistering heat eminating from the sun. The same sun from before.

His esteemed co-driver was of course correct in his guesstimation of the increase in population on the small coastal town which was literally bursting at the seams. Car parks were at a premium and after a short discussion it was agreed upon by all to park in fron of the semi-trailer a little out of town. The fact that the beamer was now standing in the way of the semi-trailer's only exit path was of no concern to the co-driver whatsoever, so it was agreed upon that beamer would stay and hopefully the truck would too.

Race prepartion was no different for the youngster once he had arrived at the race site and as he had previously raced at the site and was aware of the course ahead of him. After ferociously staring down his competitors he made his way down to the swim start in his Taiwanese rubber suit. To his amazement, the sun was very hot on this day and his artificial outer coating was making for an uncomfortable walk down to he shore. Kind of like when you follow through a little bit when you're running and it all goes a bit squishy...

The women were first to make tracks so the lad made good use of the twenty minutes before his race start by toeing the start line in his rubber suit and thus reducing his body weight by a good five kilograms as he was standing in the direct sunlight and the sun was extremely hot. He was a little nervous and contemplated doing a little pre-race wee in the rubber suit but intelligently opted against the idea as a previous incident had once left him with a bit of a rash. The heat of the sun would also cause some discomfort.

The gun went and the young lad was off in pursuit of the fnish tape and with it another Txapela. His start was executed well and although he was still closely followed by a pair of competitors after the intial 200m, he continued to hold a strong pace and was able to pull away from his pursuiants. At the conclusion of the swim leg the yougster had put a gap between himself and the next nearest competitor of around 25 seconds.

After talking to the boss during the week about the plan of attack during the race, he was adviced by the honorable leader that the outward leg of the bike portion was the most important and that he should give it all to this point in an attempt to extend his lead. He did as was instructed and at the turnaround he had increased his lead to 1:15 on a group of five chasers with a further 45 seconds back to the man they call "Mikel".

Th return leg of the cycle was a little differen however as the young man was feeling the effects of his effort on theway out and the 4km climb on the way back into town filled his legs with a little thing that athletes like to call "pain". But he was aware that he was putting some serious time into the chase group and even if he dropped his pace a little he would at least be able to hold the gap at around the same time. Upon returning into town and dsmountng his vehicle he quickly slipped into his runners and was off onto the run leg. He had increased his lead to somewhere in the vicinity of 1:30.

The run was a litle uncomfortable with the outward 2.5km mainy uphill, and as tere were some serious runners chasing from behind he kept the pace up to the top of the hill. After turning and begnning the run back to the finish he counted his lead to be around 45 cat and dogs and was confident that ths would be enough to see him to the finish line in first place, especialy given the downhill aspect of the return journey. Coming in towards the finish, the excited young chap made the most of the large crowd and soaked up the adoration of the fans crossing the line sporting a mighty big grin under the intense heat of the sun.

After finishing, it seemed that he had taken maybe a little too much time with the crowd as to his surprise the second place competitor came in a close 8 seconds behind. Oops.

Nonetheless, the young fella had finished what he set out to acheive and was happy that all of the hard work in training had paid off again.

Disaster!!!

It's nothing like last year and i will be staying here in France, but a few days ago my computer died a sudden death and i have lost a few blogs which i was yet to put up. I apologise to everyone, and foremost to my Dad and he was a little anxious about the lack of information i was feeding to you all so i will be spending the next couple of days recalling all of the things that happened in the last few weeks and writing them all agan. This is disappointing as we all know that it's just not as good the second time around.

Good news however, is that i will be getting a new laptop sent over and i can get back into the groove. Hopefully that will all happen soon and then i will be able to post regularly. Paul Lock has also updated my website as you all will have seen by now i am guessing and now i am able to make changes to the site myself, from any cmputer in the world. WOW!!! Now all i have to do is work out how to do it.....

I have moved on from Spain now and am currently in Aix les Bains with the other Tri Australia guys training for various World Cups and also for the Olympics. There was some sad news today in that Gary is not OK and will be heading home in a couple of days. He has a sore hip and requires an immediate amputation of his left leg. His right leg and also his middle leg will be left as is.

Gary will be sorely missed in Aix and we wish him a speedy recovery. For the record, he has aggrivated a previous injury and needs some time off running. He will be heading home to stay Paul and George for a few months to recover on the Ninch.

Anyway, this was jsut a quickie to let you know that although i currently have no computer i will be doing my best in the next couple of days to get some bloggage coming your way. And i will also try and do some cool things to my website. This will most probably result in my ruining everything already on there, but i will still try.

Donosti Race Report

Although the result was the same with a win this morning in Donosti, the way in which it came was vastly different. I had spent a hard week training on my own and I knew that come the weekend that I would probably be pretty tired. Still, to come away with a victory I was really pleased with myself and showed that although I was fatigued I was still able to get across the line first, which is the important thing.

Due to the early start (10:00am), Kepa being the morning person that he is decided than rather get up at the ridiculously early time of 6:30, we would get a room in Donosti and get up at more reasonable hour (but still too early) of 7:30 and this would give us plenty of time to drive the 5 minutes down to the race.

The previous day was spent doing a little bit of training in the morning and then going to watch the local long-distance race in Zarautz. The race was 2.5/80/20 and many of the guys who I raced last weekend were racing as well as Hektor’s brother Eneko who finished second to Macca at Wilflower. It was a great race to watch and the scenery was quite spectacular. Although the standing up on the concrete was probably not the best for the legs the day before the race.

Race morning rolled around and after fitting in spurts of sleep between Kepa’s snoring spells I was ready to go…..

Breakfast came in and was also probably not the best before the race. A lovely selection of pastries and some coffee. But there was nothing else there so I stomached a few sweet bakery goods and was ready to go……

The sky was overcast and the roads were covered in water as it had rained a bit during the night. I didn’t hear any of it so I must have slept not too badly after all. I had done this race last year so I was familiar with the course and transition and where I could grab a free shower afterwards should I need one. The local sports club for the healthy and wealthy was a great place for Schussy and I last year as we helped ourselves to the changerooms and a nice warm shower.

I set up in transition after registration and there were a few drops of rain. It was nothing new to me given that I have been in the Basque country for a few weeks now and actually remembered what rain is like. But it soon stopped for the race start and we were off.

If I were to rank my start on a scale of one to ten, it would probably be found in the lower half (that’s below five keaysy) as I dived into the water and my goggles came off. Also somehow (and I have no idea how) my wetsuit leg found itself up around my knee and was catching water for the whole swim leg. Not to worry. As I put my goggles on I was surrounded by guys and it took me a while to work my way to the front. When I eventually did there were a couple of guys who stayed with me and we came to shore as a threesome (I can see Guilley giggling already……..threesome, haha). Last year I came out with a few guys nipping at my heels and was able to get away with a quick transition, but this year was not the same. We went out onto the bike together as a threesome (haha) and it was at the beginning that I tried to break away.

Unable to do so as the legs were feeling “not so willing” I decided that I would stay with these guys for the ride and see what happens on the run. About 14km into the bike one of them tried to attack up the hill and I was left to chase as the other lagged behind. I was able to close the gap which was lucky and then left the guy who attacked out in front for a while for being a dick. Upon entering T2 I was left on the front by the others which was OK as the legs were beginning to come good, or so I thought. I had a pretty good transition and was out in first.

I got out onto the run and the legs were obviously fatigued. There was no spring in the step like there was last week and I knew that it would be a bit of a battle today. I didn’t want to go out too hard and settled into a comfortable rhythm. Behind I could hear the other two guys breathing a fair bit heavier than I which is always a good sign so I kept the pace where I felt comfortable. For the whole 2.5km out to the turnaround I could hear two set of footsteps behind and it was not until the turn that I could see who was sitting where. To my surprise, the guy who I thought would be behind me was actually in third and looked to be struggling.

After the turnaround I upped the pace a little bit at a time and soon the third guy had begun to drop. It was at about the 3.5km mark that the guy in second made a move up to my shoulder. I increased the pace as I wanted to stay in front but he had another go and gapped me by a few metres. He was obviously putting in so I closed the gap and sat in behind for a while. There were runners coming the other way as the course was out and back and as I was attempting to sit on the shoulder he chopped me about 4 or 5 times as he swerved from side to side. On one side towards the oncoming athletes, and on the other towards the curb. I dropped back about a metre to avoid tripping, at which point he made another move. At this stage there was probably about 900m metres to go. He put in a surge and was off. His lead got to about 5 metres before I held it and then slowly began to reel him in again. It was not very fun. The next part of the course was a slight downhill section of about 100m and as we were going down I was able to catch right back up to him. He wasn’t running too well on the down part so this is where I attacked, with probably 500m to go. I just went as hard as I could to gap him as quickly as possible, and it hurt…… a lot. By the time I had looked back, with about 300m to go I had a lead of approximately 20m. From here I kept the pace as high as I could as my body was filled with the burn.

Luckily I was able to hang on to the finish and take the tape again, with second only a few seconds behind.

It was a hard race and I found it much harder than last weekend. But hopefully after an easier week in training I will be back up to my best for next weekends two races. It should make for an interesting blog anyway. Till then

Oh yeah, well done to Gary for winning the European Cup in

Hungary

on Saturday. A top effort Gary!!!

Cooking with Kepa

Kepa probably not the best cook I’ve ever met. Probably not the worst either…..but not far off. Which is why I was shocked when I returned from my ride the other day to find Kepa attempting to bake a cake. I had no real idea why it was that Kepa felt inclined to perform such a task, but that was not the point.

I thought that maybe it was that he wanted to expand his number of signature dishes. At the moment, Kepa’s signature dish count stands at three.

Kepa likes to cook by the KISS theory, and although the three dishes are different in their own little way, there is an underlying similarity.

Dish 1 – Pizza. It must be noted however that Kepa also makes the pizza dough from scratch and then adds the ingredients on top (funny that). Those ingredients are tomato sauce, ham and cheese.

Dish 2 – Spanish omelette. This is definitely one that I have taken a liking to. After frying off some diced potatoes in a vat, I mean pan of olive oil, you take them out and then add them to a number of beaten eggs. Once mixed you add the potatoes and eggs back into the frying pan and then add the ingredients you would like to put into your omelette prior to turning to cook the other side. Kepa finds that the best ingredients are ham and cheese.

Dish 3 – San Jacobo. This dish involves grabbing a few ingredients, covering them in some bread crumbs and then whacking them into the frying pan with some olive oil. We had these the other night and the ingredients that we used were ham and cheese.

Anyways, back to the story. I was surprised to see Kepa making his cake and when I asked him as to why it was that he was making a cake he simply told me that he had never done it before and wanted to try. Fair enough.

It did soon become obvious to me that Kepa was not telling a lie. He had never made a cake before…. The thing that surprised me the most however was that he was also making the cake from scratch and not using a packet job. The cake was a chocolate sponge cake with strawberries and white chocolate icing on top. I thought maybe a little ambitious for a first try but you never know, so it was full steam ahead. You go Kepa!!

The first part of the recipe was pretty simple. Just get all of the dry ingredients and mix them into a mixing bowl and then add the eggs. IF by chance you don’t happen to have a mixing bowl then a ceramic salad bowl will do just fine. Also, if you have nothing to measure the 125g of flour required for the cake mix, then just grab a spoon and scoop as many spoonfuls of flour into the bowl as you think makes 125g. This is probably about 5 or 6, or 7 or maybe 8. It all depends on the size of the spoon and the height of the heap on the spoon of each spoonful. Easy.

Once you’ve cleaned up the mess off the bench from the overflow of the salad bowl, simply add the remainder of the wet ingredients (melted dark chocolate, milk etc) and beat manually. If you can’t be fagged beating the mix by hand then just grab the handheld mixer and use that instead. Easy

After the mixture is complete, all that needs to be done is to put it into your baking tin and place into the oven at the required temperature for the required time. The preferable baking tin would be a round one, but if you haven’t got one of those then a square tin will do. If you don’t have a square tin, actually if you don’t have any baking tin at all, then just grab the ceramic baking dish that Rhodesy used for last night’s lasagne. Then just line the dish with baking paper and put the mixture inside. By the off chance that the cupboard doesn’t actually have any baking paper in it, just line the inside of the dish with some margarine… using your finger.

The baking time provides the perfect opportunity to prepare the remainder of the ingredients to finish off the cake. In this case, the cream with strawberries and the white chocolate icing.

The first step would be to whip the cream until it is nice and fluffy so that it will provide a good centre layer for the cake. So all you have to do here is beat the using the handheld mixer. If it is believed that the cream is not sweet tasting enough, then just add some sugar to the cream whilst beating. It’s not like the cake is going to be sweet enough with all that chocolate in it anyway. Or the strawberry jam that your about to put in for that matter.

That’s right kiddies, no strawberries in the fridge means that this chocolate sponge cake with strawberries and cream ain’t gonna have any strawberries in it all. But that’s OK, because our fridge has two different types of strawberry jam to choose from. Wow, what a decision.

After a while I came to the realisation that the jam would actually make a good alternative and that not having any strawberries is not the end of the world. All you have to do it spread the jam onto the underside of the top piece of cake, then add the cream and put some more jam onto the topside of the bottom piece of cake. But we’re not quite at that stage yet. First we have to cut the sponge in half.

After removing the cake from the oven and allowing to cool, you have to remove the cake from the tin, I mean dish and cut in half horizontally to create to even halves.

If for some reason, the cake doesn’t come out of the dish as easily as it may have had you used baking paper rather than butter then just scrape it out as best you can and try to keep it in one piece.

Once the cake, or what you could salvage of it is out of the dish then simply cut it horizontally in half. If one is not experienced, then one should not try to attempt this difficult manoeuvre and rather cut the cake in half vertically. It may not provide you with two even halves but this can be covered up later with some icing.

Now you have your two halves, then you can fill the centre with the whipped cream and jam. But as mentioned before if you have no strawberries then just substitute them for strawberry jam. And as the recipe states that the strawberries should be diced up and mixed into the cream, then surely the jam should be mixed into the too…. Along with the sugar that you added earlier?

Now that you’ve put your somewhat taller than usual cake together, then it is time to add the icing on top. To make you the icing, you need to first melt the white chocolate. After this is done, you just add the other ingredients and mix, and then leave to cool. If you run out of cream for the icing mix, then just add milk….?

If once the milk is added in substitute for the cream, you may find that the icing mix has become a little runny. But luckily the icing mix has some cream in it, so all you have to do is beat the mix with the mixer and that will make the cream thick, which will make the icing perfect, right?

When the icing resembles the consistency of spring water, it is probably time to scrap it and start again, or top the cake with Nutella instead. When you are told that Nutella is probably isn’t the best idea. Just wait until tomorrow to buy some more white chocolate and start again.

After last night’s attempt at the icing. If you can’t be fagged doing it all again just melt the chocolate in the microwave and then spread on top of the cake. Note: 1 minute on full power in the microwave is probably a bit too much. After scraping around the burnt and crystallised bit of chocolate, salvage what you can and spread over the top of the cake. Once this is done, leave in the fridge for a while so that the chocolate becomes as hard as a rock and makes cutting the cake into pieces near on impossible.

Ondarroa Race Report

The day started slowly for me as I struggled to get myself out of bed in the morning. This did not really matter much, considering that my race was starting at 4pm that afternoon. But come 10am I thought it was probably about time that I get up.

Kepa and Ana were going down to Gernika to buy a bike for his brother, so this left me with some time to do important race day things like “the cleaning of the bike”, “the shaving of the legs” and the “shaving of the face” (for the photos). Such things are usually reserved for the day prior to a race, however given the late start time, I needed something to fill in those extremely boring hours before an afternoon race. I also wanted to dispel the myths that shaving before a race should not be done as it requires energy for the regrowth of the hair. I believe I dispelled this theory. The other myth I would have liked to have dispelled was the myth where “one should not be intimate with another before a race”, as all energy should be saved for the race. Nut as there was nobody on hand at the time, this myth will have to be busted another day.

I had planned to arrive at the race by 2:30 for the 4pm start, but as is normal for me we arrived a little later than I had hoped for. On the way we had to pick up one of Kepa’s friends from the town just down the road. Then we had to pack the car, and then repack the car, and then pack the car again. Also the road that we would normally would have taken to the race was closed and an alternative needed to be taken. All of the above resulted in our later than expected arrival time.

By the time I did finally arrive, I had a little less time to do the normal pre-race things in transition, and a small warm-up. This was probably good as I it left me little time to think about the race ahead.

There were a couple of guys who I had to look out for. The first was Hektor Llanos. Hektor and his brother Eneko are well known in triathlon circles and Eneko this year finished second to Macca at Wildflower 70.3. Kepa told me the day before the race that Hektor would be racing, as before this he was not on the start list. The second was Mikel. I don’t know Mikel’s last name as it is too hard to pronounce, and even spell for that matter.

Anyway, Mikel is the guy that I rode with earlier last week and wanted to try and smash me on every hill. He is also the guy that used to ride professionally and is quite handy on the bike. But as I said earlier, he is not much of a swimmer, although he is improving.

Just before the race it looked as though it could rain a little as the clouds came over and the wind picked up. The swim was a beach start and not a bad one for me. The swim course was unusual as we swam in a small protected beach and then into the port where the fishing ships are docked, pretty cool actually. T=I had a great swim and exited in first with a lead on the next guy of 45 seconds. Hektor was over a minute behind, and Mikel about 3 and a half. This was pretty good for him and he was definitely within striking distance.

My transition was probably the worst of my life. All seemed to be going well when my wetsuit came off in a flash, but it was the race belt that found me unstack. I just could clip it together and lost about 10 seconds trying to do so. My helmet was not much better. But once I got onto the road, I thought that I was out of trouble. That was until I found myself sliding across the bitumen…. The day before the race I had travelled in the car to ride over the course so that I knew where I would be going and what I had to look out for. I also forgot my bike shoes which meant that I could actually ride the course, but give the Beamer a good run through some of the trickier sections of the course. However, the intricacies such as the transition exit and direction and roads out of town were not researched as well. About 50 metres after getting onto my bike I was screaming down the road only to find that there was a hairpin turn and a girl directing me to make the turn, quickly. Of course I was going a little fast and before I knew it I was on my side.

I was actually pretty lucky that I hadn’t got my feet into my shoes yet as I just slid a little bit and they stayed in the pedals. I was also wet which made the slide a little better. After a few expletives and a quick check of the body, I was off with barely a scratch on me. A did have a small knick on my big toe but managed to swell the bleeding and continue the race. Then it was onto the bike where hopefully my luck would change.

The bike was tough and probably the toughest I have done. I was only one loop of 40km and travelled along the coastal road to the next town for about 12km. It was very undulating and it looked as though the road was not used much by cars anymore. The grass was growing over the road and there were a lot of patches of dirt and sand on some of the corners. I had the lead motorcycle with me and they were telling me where all of the dangerous corners were which was good. It was just a pity that they weren’t there to tell me about the very first one.

I rode really hard along this stretch as I knew it was where I could grab a few seconds. There was to be a turnaround section at about 20km where I could see where the others were, but other than that I would have to wait. That was until Kepa drove past in some dudes car yelling time splits out the window. Gold!!!

My lead was at 1:15 which was more than I had after the swim. This was good. By the time I had reached the turnaround point I was 1:20 in the lead. The lead was not increasing as I had hoped. The two chasers were Hektor and another guy and they were riding well together. Behind them was Mikel and I had a lead over him of 3 minutes by the 20 km mark. It was decreasing, but not at a rapid rate which was encouraging. Coming up was the toughest part of the course. A 3km climb up to a peak called Milloi. The best thing was that after this climb it was mostly downhill for the remainder of the bike. This climb is also the one that will be in the Lekeitio race, so I had done it last year and this would also serve as good practice for the race in a couple of weeks time. A few more drive-by’s from Kepa told me that the lead was stagnate at around the 1:20 mark. I needed, or wanted more time. Once I hit the top of the climb I hammered down as fast as I could possibly go. From the bottom I had about 8km where I could just put the hammer down and go for it. So I did.

The terrain however was not quite as easy as I had remembered from the previous day’s drive and the headwind was also making things a little harder than expected. Anyways, I just went as hard as I could and hope that the other guys were not going as fast as me. By the time I got into transition from bike to run I was well and truly out by the time the other were coming in. This was good! At the end of the bike I had a lead of about 1:50. I thought that this would be enough when I took off on the run and felt really strong. This was a good feeling given that I had just ridden my ring off for a pretty hard 40km and I had good rhythm.

The run was a three loop course, and as the km boards were ticking over I was surprised to see that the 10km one was situated about 700m from the finish line. Great, another long run… But by the time I came around for the second lap I could see Hektor on the opposite side of the river and he had not made up any time. Very good! The run was pretty cool in that the outward leg was on one side of the river that runs through the town and then after about a kilometre and a half you crossed over to the other side. After the turning point at the far end of the course you travelled through the centre of the town. All the towns are pretty cool with really narrow streets and about five story buildings on either side, so running through them is good fun and cool when the sun is out. Might is say that the sun is rarely out in the basque country though. Anyways, back to the race. The end of the lap runs up to the transition and over the bridge to start again. It was here that I was able to see where the competition was. So, after the first lap the margin was much the same. After the second lap I had lost a little bit of time but I had backed off a little as there was no way that they were going to catch me. Not today anyway as my lead was about 1:30 still. The last lap was pretty cruisy and I lost a lot of time. But that’s OK. I crossed the line 37 seconds ahead of Hektor, and about 1:20 ahead of mikkel.

Once the results were up I was able to see that I only lost 40 seconds to Mikel on the bike. This was awesome and made me very happy. But I was happiest that I would receive a txapela for my win. The overall male and female winners in the basque country win things called txapela’s. They are giant Beret’s and have the race and date and stuff embroided in the top. It’s pretty cool and will definitely be making the trip home to Aus. Unlike the absolutely enormous trophies they love to give out here. Another two are now sitting on the mantle at Kepa’s place.

I’ve got a big couple of weeks coming up in terms of racing, with a sprint race in Donostia this Sunday. This is the race that I won last year, so it will be good to get back and have another go. No txapela on offer though.

The following weekend is the biggy with two sprint races in two days. I will be racing in Lekeitio on the Saturday afternoon at 4pm, and then making the journey back to

France

to race in Paris the next day. This is the second grand prix race for my French team. I had hoped to miss this one and stay here in the Basque country but one as Nicko has not been very well of late his is unable to race and I will have to travel back up to compete.

After the race in Lekeitio I have to travel up to the first town inside the Spanish/French border and then get on the overnight train which goes to Paris. It runs through the night and I can get a bed which will be alright as I can have a sleep on the way and then get up when I arrive in Paris the following morning. That is the theory anyway. Hopefully it all works out, but I can safely say that I think I’ll be a little tired afterwards.

Sestao Race Report

I’m sure some of you have been waiting for my race report from the weekend’s race at Sestao which was stated on my web page to have taken place on Sunday 1^st June.

There is however a reason that you have not seen the race report until now, and that is that the race did not actually take place.

It all started on about 2:00pm on Saturday when the rain began to fall. I had had a quiet nap on the couch and was waiting for the rain to stop so that I could go for a cruisy ride before the race to get myself ready for the following morning. By the time it was dark at about 10 o’clock, the rain continued to fall with varying degrees of force. As you could imagine, by this time I had decided that the ride had been put on the backburner and may be better suited to early the next morning before the race. It was a good idea in theory, but when I awoke at 7am on Sunday morning to find that the rain was still falling, I thought it best to save the ride until the race. The rain had fallen steadily all night and a quick look to the heavens showed that there looked to be no end in sight.

By just after 9 it was time to go and the bolt to the car under the umbrella (why run when u have an umbrella….?) was not a good sign for the day ahead.

It was about a 45 minute drive to the race from Mundaka and we had to travel over a local mountain, Solube, which stands at about 430m. It was rather a treacherous drive in the now pouring rain and there were parts in the road that were covered in rolling sheets of water running of the slope of the hill. It was not uncommon to have what looked like minature waterfalls on every switchback or tight corner where the vegetation met the road. I was happy that I was in the car however and not on my bike. Around one corner we came to almost a complete stop behind the car in front. After a slow few metres we saw the warning signs, resulting in the subsequent decrease in speed. It looked as though a good portion of the soil on one side of the road had been washed by the water onto the road. I quickly put the Beamer into AWD mode (AWD does not come standard in the 1 series) and we were just able to scrape through. Just to make sure it would be safe to cross I insisted that Kepa get out with a large stick and test the depth of the waters and dangerous terrain that we were about to pass through.

With the river crossing behind us it was onto the open road and in almost no time at all we had arrived in Sestao. With navigator Kepa in the passenger seat, we negotiated the narrow streets, waterlogged from the nights rain. The roads looked mighty wet and there were some quite tight corners in the town which Kepa informed me were part of the bike course. Also a lot of painted lines and some speed humps.

The race was such that there were to be two different transition areas for the race and as we passed through what was supposed to be the second of them we were not really surprised to see nothing that would resemble a Triathlon transition area. Just a children’s park with some colourful play equipment and some puddles. This was not a good sign and it was not long later that we found a couple of guys who informed us that the race had been cancelled. Nevertheless, we may our way down to the race site to get the official word. Which of course we got…

Upon arriving down at the race site where the swim was in the harbour we were greeted by what looked like Kananook creek on a good day. The water in the small harbour was an unusual colour and didn’t look very inviting at all. The race organiser had told us that due to a lot of debris (tree branches, in fact) in the water, the swim would be unsafe and the race could not go ahead. I found this a little hard to believe considering that we were in an industrial area on the side of a small town and there were no trees in site.

Despite this, there could have been a number of reasons that the race could be called off. The water quality was obviously a little suspect, the roads were obviously a little slippery and the race organisers could obviously not be arsed setting up the race in the rain. I only make this last point as on arrival to the race there were no tents, no sign of a transition area, no swim buoys and no officials. This was little shit as there was another race on in the Basque country on the same day. It was in San Sebastian and was an Olympic distance. But the boss had made the decision to do this race as the San Sebastian race would be my second OD race in a row, which another to come the following weekend. Too much racing. And despite the good prize money available it was a safe bet to do this race and have a good chance of taking home the cash. But it was not to be. Bummer dudes!!

It was a pretty crappy drive home as the rain continued to fall, and fall, and fall. I was still yet to do my ride and as I waited and waited all afternoon, by six o’clock I I’d had enough and was out the door. It rained for about half an hour and then the rain stopped. But not long after it trained again. Not quite the day I was looking for or had been hoping for. No race and 2 hours in the pouring rain,

Maybe this weekend in Ondarroa will be better. It’s another Olympic Distance race and hopefully the weather will hold out. The bike course looks to be pretty tough as most bike legs are around here with a 400m climb somewhere in the middle. Training is going well, if not a little hard on my lonesome, but will definitely be worth it with some good results. Stay tuned.

Back to France

I know I’m backtracking a little here but whilst in Bourges there were a whole lot of things going on and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. The effects of coming down from altitude I think. So anyway, I have a few things that I need to tell you all about whilst I was in Bourges before my first Grand Prix race and also afterwards, before I cam e back to

Spain

TEZZA AND SHAZZA

Thierry is the bloke who picked me up from the airport. Poor Tezza had to wait for an extra two hours as my flight was delayed, but you’ll hear about that later. He is the club secretary, I think and is half of the pair known as Tezza and Shazza. It turns out that Tezza got his name from Fu and Jono G a few years back when they decided that everyone needed to have an “aussie” name. This is how Thierry became Tezza. I sort of lost the ball a bit when I met Tezza’s wife, Martine. Apparently the boys were unable to think of a decent aussie name that was close to Martine so they thought that something that went well with Tezza would be appropriate, hence the name Shazza.

Both have taken a liking to their new found Aussie names and Tezza even has “Tezza” embroidered into his club uniform.

Tezza and Shazza have only been married for a few years and each have two children. Tezza has two boys, and you guessed it, Shazza has two girls. They are a regular Brady Bunch, however they have never the seen the show the theme song sort of went over their heads. They live close to the middle of Boiurges in a cool three storey town house and at times all four kids are there, and at others there are no kids at all. I did manage to meet all of the children in my time in Bourges though and they are all really nice and speak different levels of English.

The family is the heart of the club and both Thierry and Martine do a hell of a lot of work for the team and also the club. There are a lot of junior members and I was able to gather that it is a great achievement to have a team in the First division in

France

. It seems that if they are not at work, then they are doing something involve with the club, yet they always have plenty of time for us Aussie boys should we need anything.

In the week after the race, Tezza had gone off on business and all of the kids were at their respective parents houses. This left Shazza at home all alone (except for Jimmy Attard who was the new adopted son) so Jon, Nicko and myself all went over for dinner, every night. This was handy as Shazza has a much better kitchen than ours and actually has an oven that you can use to cook in, rather than just to make toasted sandwiches in.

We were there Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and all took turns of cooking. I cooked the famous Rhodesy’s Lasagne which went down a treat as always… and on the final night before I left for Madrid Shazza cooked us all waffles. They were awesome and went down a treat with some Nutella and ice-cream. Thanks Shazza

JONO AND NICKO’S BITCHING

I’m pretty sure I told you all earlier that Jono and Nicko are cousins, but for the sake of this blog I feel that the point needs to be reiterated. However, I feel it would be more appropriate if they were in fact sisters instead.

With only a couple of years separating their age, it does not take Einstein to realise that the boys have spent a fair bit of their lives together. Both grew up in the same town, both do triathlon, and from the stories, both have spent time at each other place for extended periods at one time or another during their childhoods.

This although making them very close and good mates, also makes that behave like little girls a lot of the time with many a petty argument at the dining table, in the kitchen, in the lounge room, in the car, at the pool, and just about any other place that we went to.

Nah, it’s not that bad. But there is a fair bit of bickering that goes on during the day I just wanted an avenue to rip into them on my blog. So here it is boys!!! Or should I say girls…?

I can only imagine the tears that have been shed since my departure from the house in Bourges with no mediator to bring calm to the seemingly endless girly bitching that took place in my presence. I can only hope that both are still there upon my return and that one has not pulled the other’s hair, or dug their nails into the other’s arms, or called the other a slut, or kicked and bitch slapped the other in order to get their way.

In my opinion, our supermarket budget is big enough that we can have both flavours of biscuits boys….

FLYING WITH EASYJET

Just like the age old Valvoline saying “Oils ain’t Oils”, comes the latest, “easyjet ain’t easy”.

By the time I had worked out where I would be going and when I would be travelling after my time in Font Romeu, most of the flights available on the large commercial European airlines were far too expensive.

I had heard that there were quite a number of cheap airline operating in Europe so I looked up some of them and was able find a flight on easyjet. It was reasonably priced and the pricing system was rather amusing, I thought anyway.

The base price gives you a ticket only. From here you need to add the amount of baggage you want to travel with. Each bag is charged at 7.5 euros and you can pretty much have as many bags as you like, but if your baggage weight exceeds 20kg then you must pay for additional weight. You can also choose to have insurance for the flight which was about another 9 euros, speedy boarding which gets you onto the plane first for your choice of seat (there are no allocated seats), and also a charge to eliminate your carbon offset. Being the environmentalist that I am and also the fact that if I payed for the carbon offset, then the girl at the desk may be a little more lenient on the weight of my baggage I chose to fork out for the extra 2 euros. Go Green.

You can also travel with a bike on Easyjet flights but that will set you back another 25 euros. Not bad considering Spanish Airline

Iberia

now charge 150 euros per bike on any flight. The good thing about this is that for your 25 euros you also get an additional 12kg of luggage allowance.

Loges was driving Brendan down to catch his flight to Paris as well as he had to meet up with his French Team for their season launch. Such things are custom for the more economically advantaged teams, but not really something that Tri Sud 18 is really able to afford. Maybe next year. Anyways, Fu was going down to Paris as well so I booked my flight a copuple of hours after his so that I could share the lift down to the airport in Barcelona. I had quite a few hours to kill in fact and spent most of them eating chocolate Prince biscuits and playing playstation on the ground, with the occasional stand and walk to relieve my numb bottom and walk off the calories that I was consuming at regular intervals.

After a few hours of this I thought it were about time to get ready to check in. The check in time was schedule as it is with all Easyjet flights, at 2 hours before the flight is scheduled to leave. I gave myself an extra 15mins or so as I thought if I get there a little early with my bike I might be able to beat the rush. I thought wrong…..

Upon entering the check in area for the “cheap airlines” I was greeted by a few hundred other passengers who obviously had the same idea as myself. The worst thing was that the lines for the flights were so long that they had reached the end of the designated area and began to curve around in an arc into the middle of the walkway. It was almost impossible to tell which line went where and who was flying with who. The next hour and a half was a very interesting, with people firstly trying to establish which line that they were to meant to be standing in. After realising that they were just like everybody else in the line and had to stand a good hour wait from the counter, they spent most of this time trying to weasel their way up the line to minimise the time that they had to wait. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally reached the point in the line where it became straight and I could see the counter in front of me. There may have been another fifty people in front of me but I could see the counter and was on the home stretch, or so I thought. A good 45 mins later I had finally made it to the front of the line. From here I only had to negotiate to get my bike on the place and I could be off to the gate lounge. This only took another 10 minutes which I thought was pretty good as it was obvious that the staff were under the pump. Easyjet don’t actually have their own check-in employees and rather employ the services of the staff at the airport to do the job for them. So somehow, I don’t really think that the staff of “flightcare” really give a shit whether my bike bag weighs 40kg or not. Good that.

After negotiating the throngs of soon to be travellers (maybe….) I was able to get the trolley and the bike to the oversize luggage door, maybe never to be seen again. And then I made my way up to the gate lounge as my flight was scheduled to depart in about a half hour. All I can say is thank god for my PSP.

After two hours of delays we were directed downstairs to hop onto a bus where we were driven out onto the tarmac and boarded our plane via the stairs. It seemed that the four flights that came into our gate lounge whilst we were waiting had occupied the skywalk. But before you knew it…….. was two hours after we were supposed to leave, we were off to Paris. I was soon out like a light and awoke close to landing thinking of how poor Tezza would have been waiting for an extra two hours for me.

I got off the flight and met Tezza who was waiting patiently for me. We waiting at the carousel for my bike not to arrive and then went and found somebody who could retrieve it for me. I was happy that Tezza was there as he speaks good French (funny that) and was able to get the bike from out the back somewhere. Winner!!! Don’t know what I would have done if he wasn’t there.

SWIMMING IN BOURGES

One of the biggest problems that an athlete is faced with when travelling in Europe is definitely finding pool space to train in. Most pools, although they are very nice and clean do not offer lane hire for a small group of athletes and offer only public swim lanes. Not the greatest when you are trying pump out a threshold set and dodging Granny’s sidestroke legs or the Praying Mantis arms made famous by Mr Paul Rhodes.

We were lucky however that Tri Sud had hooked up with the local swimming club and we were able to swim in the squad after paying the season’s membership. There are a couple of pools that the club swims in, both about 10mins drive from where we live in town. The coach is a cool guy and although he doesn’t speak English, he made a big effort to let both Nicko and myself know what was going. Of course the bucket was there to translate for us which he did magnificently as always. Go Bucket!!

I was surprised to find however that the despite the club being given lane hire for the pool, that there were about 15 athletes and only 2 skinny little lanes. This was going to be good open water training. The lane ropes were the ones with the little plastic bubbles on the cord and other than separate us swimmers from Granny and her chopper legs, did little to swell the turbulence created by myself and the other 7 athletes in my lane.

Credit must go to the guys who are part of the swimming club for letting us come to train with them. It was definitely an experience and I know that if I was swimming back at home with that many people I would get shitty if three skinny foreigners came and took my lane space. I suppose that the fact that we are only skinny means that we don’t take up as much space in the lane. They also seem to be used to used to swimming with so many people which seems absolutely ridiculous when there are 5 or 6 public swimmers occupying the remainder of the lanes. It also seems ridiculous when at the minute that the clock ticks over to the hour, all swimmers have to get out of the pool. It doesn’t matter that there’s nobody to fill the lanes once we get out as the lifeguards all seem to be tools and lazy ones at that. For one session we had to start at 8am and had an hour to swim in one lane. There were 12 people swimming one lane!! And then when time was up we all had to get out. After getting out of the pool, I looked over to find that there was not a soul in the pool. No public swimmers at all. They had all gotten out and there looked to be nobody around to get in. Ridiculous and definitely an experience that makes me grateful for the pool availability we have back home. Suddenly, the old Hastings Pelican Park doesn’t seem so bad.

Dunkerque Race Report

Dunkerque was the site of the first French Grand Prix on the 22^nd May. My French team is Tri Sud 18. Sud means south in French and the number 18 represents the region that my team comes from. All of the number plates in

France

have the region number on them so when you are driving along the motorway you can see where all of the people have come from.

Anyway, back to the race. We are competing in Division 1 and the start lists usually read the who’s who of European Triathlon, with a couple of Aussie’s and a few others thrown in. It was always important for me to swim well and when on the start line I was confident from my swimming Font Romeu. The teams are called out one by one depending on where they are ranked from the previous race. In this case as it was the first race of the year, the ranking went on last years finish results for the season. Tri Sud 18 finished in 12^th position so by the time we got to choose our position on the pontoon there were already 11 teams and 55 athletes in their positions. This meant that there were not too many more spots to choose from and as each team must start together your starting position can be important.

I took off and has quite a good start, but after about 100m I was swallowed by the bunch and caught in the middle of easily the roughest swim I had encountered in my racing career. I just did not have the speed to go with the lead guys and although I am strong over the whole 750m by the time you get caught up in the washing machine it counts for very little. At the first buoy I had no idea where I was and just went around with everybody else. On the back straight I was able to position myself to get a look at where I was sitting in the race, and to my surprise I was still close to the front. I could see that there was a small group away and I was in the second line of the chasing group. I felt strong and thought the I would be able to move forward to the front of this group, but this is where I made a bad error. Instead of trying to swim through the group I opted to try and swim around them. I soon found out after a dew zig zags and whacks to the face that this was not going to happen. Instead of moving forward, I moved backward and ended up in a far worse position than I began in. I was pushed to the outside of the group and was unable to fight my way back in. Shit!

I swam hard to the exit and was banking on a solid transition to get me onto the front chase group. That small breakaway group in the swim numbered four and the were already off onto the bike and would eventually stay away for the entirety of the bike leg. My transition was reasonable and I was able to get onto the back of the front group. There was about 20 guys in total and thought that if we were to get off with a good lead then I would be looking at at least a top 20 finish….

Although this was not to be. There’s a guy who races in Brendan’s team (Poissy) who’s sole job is to pull all of his team members up into the lead group of the race. He is payed quite a bit of money to do and from what I can gather he’s pretty bloody good at it. His name is Charlie, or at least that is what everybody calls him and although he is not the greatest swimmer, he is an absolute machine on the bike. Before you knew it Charlie had pulled up about another 15-20 guys who otherwise would not have made the front group.

The course was pretty tight on the bike but a whole heap of fun. As it was my first race I wanted to use it to learn about how the racing works in

France

and what goes on. From what I could see, you pretty much have to swim your arse off, ride as hard as you can and then get off and sprint for 5 k’s. Easy. I felt pretty comfortable on the bike and rarely had to see the front as Charlie and one or two others were doing most of the work. I moved myself up into the front to avoid trouble on the challenging course, which turned out to be a good move as there was a fall on the 4^th lap of 5. I’m not sure how many guys went down but as always it was loud and there was a lot of yelling. From this point on the bike was just the same as it was before the crash, fast. The guys out the front had become a three as one of the younger French guys dropped off and they must have been riding incredibly hard to stay out the fron on their own. But by the time the bike leg was completed, we had almost caught them.

Into transition number 2 and one of the ridiculously stupid French officials, (of which there are many) decided that to make sure that so everybody got off their bike before the dismount line he would stand in the middle of the road. Not on did this make the area a whole lot more dangerous, but it halved the space that everybody had to get off their bikes. Twit! Other than almost get himself killed he did little else as a few riders including myself nimbly swerved around the dickhead and dismount a good 3 or 4 metres past the line. Ha ha. I came out of T2 with probably the best transition of my life and was in 3^rd place from about 10^th when I dismounted. I was sprinting just about as fast as I could go to get clear and ended up passing one of the Russian blokes who was in the breakaway pack. I later realised that I maybe should have been a little more conservative. I felt I ran well, but there were just so many fast guys in the race and most of them regular World Cup starters. The run was also a little long which did not really help me and I finished in 31^st place, just over 1 minute behind the eventual winner, Tony Moulai of

France

I was happy with how I raced but of course would have like to have finished a little higher up the leader board. I’ll definitely be looking for a breakaway in the other races to better my chances of a good finish. Our team finished 11^th for the day which management was very pleased with. We had moved up one place which is encouraging and I think that we can do better in the upcoming races. Especially once Gary comes to race. All in all, a great experience and I can’t wait for the next one.

Madrid Race Report

After arriving into Madrid on the Thursday night, it was quite a long time to wait until my race on Saturday, considering that I was not racing until 6:30pm on Saturday. Friday was spent doing a little bit of training with the other guys (Fu, Erin and Gary) and we went to the local pool for a swim. Upon opening my swim bag I was not surprised to see that I had forgotten my bathers. Luckily, I decided to wear my boardies down to the pool despite the 10 degree temperature outside and these served as a sufficient alternative to the speedos.

The drag effect was a little greater than the old dick togs and I don’t think that the boardies will be seen in the Olympic arena any time soon. Nevertheless, I was able to knock out just over 3kms in the boardies and held some pretty impressive times. I thought so anyway. I must have looked funny to see me swimming around in the Insight specials surrounded by a whole heap of World class triathletes. Especially given the fact that the I thought that my entrance into the pool should be in accordance with the attire that I was sporting. My cannon ball bomb went down a treat with the locals.

After some more waiting around, followed by some more waiting around, followed by some more waiting around it was time for dinner…….. on Friday. Shit, still 24 hours to go.

The morning of the race finally rolled around and I was up early to go for a light ride. A ride of the course seemed appropriate so I made my way down to Casa de Campo, the park in the middle of town where the race site is. I was stoke to see my first hooker at the entrance to the race site. I have always known that they were there and last year that’s all that the guys were talking about, but I had never actually seen one. As Gary and I had conversed earlier, it’s so funny to see as it is so cliché and commonplace. Just like you would see in the movies. Leaning into the car window which a booty big enough to fill the MCG hanging out the rear. Then, before you know it their into the car and off to find a sufficient sized bush at the top of the hill.

I was lucky enough to get a light rub the morning of my race from Lauren, the Triathlon Australian. This was good as it left my legs feeling cherry ripe and also filled in 45 mins of waiting. I tried to have a nanna afterwards but I could not sleep and Gary and Fu knocked on my door and invited me to lunch. They are such lovely boys.

After lunch it was back to the hotel to clean my bike and get ready for the race. Who would have thought that the race would roll around so quickly? After a quick clean it was already time to go down to the race.

I registered about an hour before kick off and this left me with a whole lot of time to do some more nothing. But I was well accustomed to this by now and it was not an issue. The fact that the start was delayed by almost half an hour left me with even more time to do nothing, but finally the starter’s horn sounded and I was off.

I had chosen to start at the very far right of the field as last year I copped a bit of a hiding at the start of this race. This may have had something to do with being one of three Australians in the field…. Well this year I was the only one and was surrounded by a few Spaniards. 84 in fact. I felt it safe to keep away from the crash and bash and was comfortable with my start position. It was also helped by a couple of the guys that I was standing near to. Jono said that they literally fell into the water off the pontoon. I had a great start and before you kew it I was in clear water. I took a good line to the first buoy where I was met by 3 other guys who had started at the other end of the pontoon. This was not in the plan but I sat in behind them for the remainder of the first lap to conserve some energy. At the beginning of the second lap I pushed to the front with the aim of gapping the guys behind and leading out of the swim. I managed to do so but after the first buoy I took some crappy lines (circular ones) and pretty much lost my advantage. I led out in front of four others and had a small lead into the first transition.

T1 was good and I was onto the bike quickly. The bike leg consisted of 8*5km laps with quite a nasty hill on each of the laps. A little way up the hill I saw Jono. He told me that there were a group of 2 guys close behind and another 2 behind them. I decided to sit up on the hill and wait but by the top there was only one guy by himself and the others were gone. He had not made up any ground and looked to be hurting. It was at this point that I decided to go it alone. It would prove to be a tough bike leg on my own but I was really happy with how I rode. Jono’s time checks continued to increase with each lap and I thought that if I could ride well, then maybe I could just cruise the run. When I got off the bike I had a lead of about 2:35 on a group of four guys. This was great and I was able to run well within myself for the 10km. Which was lucky because after riding solo I my legs were in no mood to run fast. I still had almost 2 minutes lead with 1 lap of the 4 lap run course remaining, so I was able to really back off on the final lap. My end winning margin was about 40 seconds. There were two guys racing for second place behind me and they caught up a lot of ground on the last lap.

But all in all it was a great race for me. I ran past the grandstand in front of the finish line which was full of people cheering and this was a great feeling. I took the tape and also my 4kg trophy with me. It was a little while to wait for the presentation and it was bloody freezing. I was happy to get back to the hotel and into the shower to warm up again.

My new Home

Friday 23rd May

I know that I’ve not written to you all in a very long time, but its been a busy week. I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Madrid on the spare bed. I have two. I can only hope that all of you aren’t feeling so neglected that you have stopped looking on my blog.

In the past week I have managed to travel from Font Romeu into Barcelona, then I flew from Barcelona to Paris where I was greeted by my French team’s secretary and token family club man, Thierry (his Australian name is Tezza). From there I travelled with Tezza to Bourges, where I met up with fellow Australian’s/Irishmen Jono and Nicko. Their names are Jonathan Grady and Stephen Nicholson. They are cousins.

After two days in Bourges, we travelled up to the very top of

France

to Dunkerque, the site of the first French Grand Prix. It was about a 5 hour drive, but somehow we managed to make it into 7. Not thast I was terribly bothered by this as I have become quite adapt at sleeping whilst driving and flying. This is a newly found skill and a very good to have, as driving in a car for 7 hours is shit boring.

Please Note: I am not actually the person driving whilst I am asleep. This would be very dangerous. Especially given that I am not very good at driving on the other side of the road.

After racing in Dunkerque on the Sunday arvo, we made the journey back to Bourges and arrived home after midnight. We managed to cut the drive down to about 6 hours on the return journey, which was an improved. Once again I was not too bothered as I had my good friend “Pete the PSP” to keep me company. He is a good fella. However, sitting in a car for 6 hours after racing earlier in the afternoon is not seen as an ideal recovery and may resulted in some rather sore legs.

Please Note: sitting in a car for 6 hours after racing earlier in the afternoon is not seen as an ideal recovery and may resulted in some rather sore legs. It is not advised.

After returning to Bourges on Sunday night I spent the rest of the week listening to Jono and Nicko bitch like little girls. That was until Thursday (AKA yesterday) when Jono drove me back to the airport in Paris to fly to Madrid. I had planned to catch the train to the airport but the Frenchies had decided to have a worker’s strike, which left us with no other option that to drive. This was a major pain in the arse, which you will find out about later, as I had booked the flight from Charles De Gaulle airport as It was easier to get to via train. This was another hour drive longer than if I had have booked to fly out of ORLY airport. But as I said, you will hear about this later.

After spending the good part of two and a half hours waiting to check in my luggage, I finally made it onto the plane and was off to Madrid. Once at the airport I was to try and find the other guys who were flying in from Font. Needless to say that this did not happen. After the best part of 2 hours I made the decision to try to get to the hotel on my lonesome. I eventually made it and was off to bed.

This morning I met up with the guys and did some training. And now I am here on my bed writing to you all. I race tomorrow afternoon at 6:45pm. The weather is forecast to be wet and not very warm. We’ll see what happens.

Jamie Rhodes - Professional Triathlete

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE: Part 3

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE: Part 2

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE: Part1

Bourges Again

Dessert Heaven

Alpe d'Huez Triathlon

Living in aix Les Bains

My computer arrives

Gary's Gone

Lekeitio Race Report

Disaster!!!

Donosti Race Report

Cooking with Kepa

Ondarroa Race Report

Sestao Race Report

Back to France

TEZZA AND SHAZZA

JONO AND NICKO’S BITCHING

FLYING WITH EASYJET

SWIMMING IN BOURGES

Dunkerque Race Report

Madrid Race Report

My new Home

Friday 23rd May

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