South of France - Monaco, Nice, Antibes and Cannes

On Monday Brad came down to Lyon to start our summer vacation.
The plan for the first 6 days from there was full on as we were both having a week off the bike because its cycling nationals over here and of course foreigners can't race. We had decided to do a whirlwind trip of the South of France

On Tuesday Brad and I took the TGV fast train from Lyon to Nice. Its about a 4 hour train ride that cuts through the middle of France and then follows the coast from Marseilles up to Nice. The plan was to stay in Antibes. Antibes sits half way between Cannes and Nice and was to be our base for the next 3 days.


Brad managed to find a camp ground that was 50m from the waterfront, 50 meters from the train stop and most importantly wasn't expensive.

On the Wednesday we headed to Monaco. From everything you hear and see, this is the place to go. Everything is on a grand scale and within 5 minutes of arriving there we saw 2 Porsches and a Ferrari. The place is most famous for its wealth, its marina and the Formula One.....the later had been on just 2 weeks ago.


The view looking down on the city


One of the boat marinas

Our plan was to do a city tour as its such a hilly place. They have noddy trains that give English commentary so this seemed the easiest option. From here we walked to some of the key attractions. One place that was on the must do list was the Oceanographic Aquarium. This is both a museum and a aquarium and was run by Jacques Cousteau for 30 years. They had some really crazy fish in this place.


The museum is built on the cliff side


Transparent fish


Moray Eel

For the afternoon we continued to walk around more of the city and the marinas. This place is really hilly and you end up doing a lot of walking

It got so hot in the afternoon that we decided to take a swim in the sea. The water there is clear and pretty amazing. Nothing says class than 2 people from NZ just going for a lazy swim in their boxers.... Oh well


We went swimming just around from this place on a little beach

On the way back from Monaco we stopped in at Nice for dinner and to have a look around. This is really the hub of the Cote D'Azur region and one of the most recognised places. Our thoughts however were its a little overrated to the other places we visited. The beach was horrible and the shops were like any western city

On Thursday we headed down to Cannes. This place is most famous for the Movie festival so it was worth a stop through the cinema area to see the red carpet. I had done a fair bit of reading before we went and we decided to take the ferry over to the island of St Marguerite. The beaches here were supposed to be less crowded (summer time and school holidays here) and free (most nice beaches in the Cote D'Azur are not free and can cost up to 30 euro a day pp). This area didn't disappoint and we found a pretty cool inlet that had only a few people. One of the funniest stories from our trip was when 2 french girls turned up and decided to do their own modeling shoot in the water. Priceless....and we were in tears watching (yes, photos below)


Cannes red carpet


Island of Saint Marguerite


Me noticing the girls.....they are in the background and you need to zoom


One of the many modeling pics, they other girl has the camera around the corner. Sorry we missed the pic of the moody head turn....while lying the water but believe us when we say it was some funny shit.


Again more walking. I think we racked up close to 10k a day

Back in Cannes we did some more sight seeing, monuments, castles and churches. Leaving Cannes we managed to get the wrong train. We got on the direct train to Nice and not the local stop train. This meant another trip to Nice so we decided to stay and have dinner and another look around. The great thing about France is the train conductors are useless and you can ride the trains for free quite often. I think out of the 8 or so times we took the local train we never got asked for tickets

This is part one to our trip. I will write the next 3 cities in the next day. Hopefully that is a small insight in to what we did and saw. There is so much you could write about. I also have a post below with a link to the whole album from the trip.

photos Summer holiday, south france

click on the photo and you can see the whole album^^

Le Tour des Pays de Savoie

Finally I am doing a write up for this.......It was a bit of a mixed bag.
Well I went into this with some great form and was a little unsure how I would go as it was a classed as a UCI 2.2 and the only other UCI 2.2 i have done was the Rhone alps isere tour, and that was effing hard.

So the prologue was cool as it was the same course as the Criterium Dauphine a couple weeks ago. It started in the evening and it poured with rain and being on a short technical course staying upright on my bike was my biggest priority, as I thought it would be better to lose a little time not taking the risk rather than risking it and crashing and lossing alot of time. I ended up losing 40 seconds to the winner so not the greatest.

Stage 1 was flat for 80ish km then 2 mountains to finish it off. I expected a small break to get away on the flat and I thought the peloton would be controlled by some of the bigger teams, but this didnt end up happening and a massive split of 30 odd guys got off the front and I didnt make it. Up the first mountain the peloton set a real hard pace which was good and it whittled it down to about a bunch of 30 and we pulled back a few guys that had dropped of the back of the break. On the last climb at the bottom the yellow jersey attacked and he took about 3 or 4 with him, I went after but was a bit late to react and didnt have the kick to hook on to them so I was stuck between them and bunch for a bit so ended up sitting up for behind. We pretty much stayed together most the way up and with about ten in the group and we werent getting much closser to the front break away so near the top their were a lot of attacks and we all split up a bit. It was then downhill to the finish and i ended up in 28th was a bit gutted as if there was no break i could have made top 15.

stage 2 I was confident of a good finish and feeling good after the day before. It was a super hard stage with 3 mountains and was just over the border in Italy which was cool. First climb a break of about ten got away and the peloton just had a steady tempo. Coming up to the 2nd climb I attacked from the peloton with 2 other guys and we bridged up to the front, also a group of 7ish behind us made it across. So was a fairly large group of us in the front and the motorbike was saying we had 4 minutes over the peloton. Basically as soon as I had made it across to the front there were constant attacks which wasn't ideal as I had already worked my ass off to bridge up, so it really cooked my legs and by the time we were 1/4 the way up the 2nd climb I completely blew to pieces, hit the wall as they say. I think it was also due to not eating enough early on in the stage which was a stupid mistake. I crawled to the finish and literally zig zaged my way up the climbs trying to shove as much food down my throat as possible. finished 40th i think.... I was pretty disappointed.

stage 3 I was hoping I could salvage my tour but it wasn't to be I just hadn't recovered well enough from my torture the day before and the legs were like lead and I couldn't get my heart rate over 85percent. Was just suffering in the bunch and ended up dropping and finishing a few minutes down.
In the end I was 32nd on GC

Even though I had the form I made some stupid mistakes that cost me.

I have just had a sweeeet holiday down in the south of France so that has made up for any disapointment. will have a post on it in the coming days!!!!!!!!

quick update

So I have been rushing around a bit since I got back from the tour with brad arriving and now leaving to go down south today so I have had no time to do a race report from the weekend....... so will have to do it next week when i'm back home. But basically it was good and bad had a good first stage and then didn't eat enough the next and completely blew... so tune in next week for the full story.

race preview- Le Tour des Pays de Savoie

Just thought I would put a little info up on this tour I have this week starting thursday. If you have been reading my blog lately you might have noticed I have mentioned it a lot as it is a big goal for me and I'm really looking forward to it and I think will be a real hard test for me................

here's the link for the website of the race
http://tourdespaysdesavoie.com/page/presentation.html

and here's some profiles of the stages
http://tourdespaysdesavoie.com/images/cartes/2011_profil_1.jpg
http://tourdespaysdesavoie.com/images/cartes/2011_profil_2.jpg
http://tourdespaysdesavoie.com/images/cartes/2011_profil_3.jpg

A weekend in the alps- Time Megève Mont Blanc

So this weekend me and Pierre (A french guy on the team) Headed to Megève, a small town in the alps. We were doing a 'cyclo sportif' race which is basically open for any one to race, from your weekend warriors to professionals. I would compare it to something like round Taupo back home except a million times harder with a total of 3500meters climbing elevation in 130km over 3 mountain passes. The main reason we were doing this race was for preparation for the Tour des Pays de Savoie next week as the race went over some of the same mountains I will ride over in the race next week.

We stayed in the house of an ex-rider of Team Vulco who now rides for a pro team Saur Sojasun. He had a really nice place with amazing views of the surrounding mountains, and also a great view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the alps at 4810m. So our race started on Sunday at 8.30am which was a massive change as I usually race around 2pm..also due to some poor organisation and probably my average french speaking skills, nobody had organised me any race wheels and all I had was my frame (usually we turn up to a race with just our bike frame and the team provides all our race wheels) so I ended up having to race with some shitty 2kg training wheels and a 23tooth cassette (I'm used to a 25 or 27 tooth) which was less than ideal for the hilliest race iv ever done.

All excuses aside I tried not to think about it to much. The start of the race was flat for the first 15km and with the large amount of un-skilled riders it was one of the dodgiest 15km iv ever done, so was gald when we reached the first mountain and the front bunched thinned down to 20odd riders and about 10 pro guys from FDJ, AG2R, Saur Sojasun and Bretagne-Schuller. But the pace really picked up for the 2nd mountain and a group of 6 split of the front and I wasn't able to stay with them on the steep sections as my 23 wasn't cutting it so I had to slip back to the 2nd group. It seemed everyone in the 2nd group was stuffed by the 3rd mountain there was only me and an AG2R guy by midway up and then the group up the road. It basically didn't change much from there and I came in 9th which I was fairly pleased with, all things considered. And all seems to be on track for the biggie next week at the Tour des Pays de Savoie!


Megève, France ^^

(mostly) Non cycling related post

Well this week has been the first week since iv been in France where i have had no racing but it hasnt meant I have had an easy week, I have racked up close to 30 hours on the velo so has been full on. But anyway enough about cycling I thought this week instead of a cycling related post id try a non cycling related one.

So with a free weekend Martins and I decided to have a night out on Friday in Lyon and experience the night life of one of the biggest cities in France. We met Chris, an English guy who is part of the team and lives in Lyon, to show us around so we knew where the good places to go. Was a really good night, and is always good for us cyclist to have a bit of a blow out ..... we ended up getting home at 6.30am and I'll leave it at that.

Also I have been busy organizing a summer trip to the Cote d'Azur region in the south of France with a good mate of mine Brad Tilby (well actually he has done all the organizing) who is bike racing in Holland this season. So on June 20th he is coming down to Lyon and then we catching the train down to Cannes where we are camping for 3 nights and will be also visiting Nice and Monaco. Then Friday we are heading down to Marseille for the day, then we are going to Montpellier for the night as its heaps cheaper than Marseille. We will stay in Montpellier till Sunday then its back home! So heaps to do in a little amount of time.




And also if you have noticed on the side of my blog I have joined Twitter and become a bit of a twitter geek, so click the follow me button and see a bit more of what I'm up to.