Having Fun in the Pyrenees

What's cool about living in Europe is that you can wake up in the Morning in Loverly Germany... get in your car... drive (at 160+kph)... eat huge amounts of chocolate and coke... stop at service stations full of rude Frenchies, fat sunburnt Pommes and toilets covered in 1000's of pubic hairs... and in the Evening you're in the French Pyrenees... Sweet as Bro! :-)

Yep took a trip to Font Romeau to hang out with some Pro Triathlete guys... do a bit of Physio, Training, eating Big Breakfasts (No Petite Dejeuner here!) and drinking Red Wine at altitude... mmmm... yum!

Font Romeau is a nice little French Ski Town at about 2000m Altitude so it's full of athletes from all over the World who come up here to make their blood thick with Haemoglobin... for performance enhancement. (This is a complex topic but one worth a chat about in a future Blog so keep your eyes open).

Always a leisurely start to the day... Smell the coffee... Chew the fat... Chew croissants and watch the sun come up over the mountains :-)... could you pass me the Nutella bitte?

Before Joining up with some of the ITU Boyz (Kris Gemmell, Laurent Vidal and James Elvery).

To chew the fat a bit more while cycling up and down the Mountains.

And then a bit of a run in the afternoon.

It never ceases to amaze me how slow pro guys train compared to how fast they can go when racing. Especially when I see how fast many agegroup athletes train. OK when they want to the Pro's will go fast in training... but it's not common, especially at altitude. Once we were going up a climb that took about an hour to get up... I was going up at an easy to steady pace, HR 130... and yet I was still going up faster than Kris and Laurent... they were REALLY having an easy day... but it's all training you know.

Swimming was hard at 2000m... you go to take a breath and it seems as if you didn't inhale anything. In the end I just stopped taking a breath that often as it didn't seem worth it?!?! Lot's of Paddle and Band work!

Even had time to Watch The Tour... be rude not to seeing as they were going over the same Mountains we were training on.

Man these guys's go fast up hill???

But not so much these (Sprinter) guys... Go Cavendish... Go GB!

And as for these guys... well we just like to stand around posing.

From the Pyranees I took another little 1200 km road trip to end up in Antwerp to see Dirk and a few of my Coachees race the 70.3 race there. What an awesome city... beautiful old buildings, narrow streets all lined with bars and cafes... and the race was right in the middle of it.

The run was 4 laps around the city which meant I could nip between the streets to pop up on another part of the course... There was no place for my coachees to hide, as coachy would be just around the corner waiting for them again with some positive words of encouragement of course. Great work to John and Regis though for knocking over 20 minutes off their time from last year :-)

And of course to Dirk on the podium in 3rd place.

Staying Belgium, in the Ardennes Forest where there happens to be a few Sherman Tanks still knocking about.

Antwerp 70.3 Triathlon. Pee Pee Bucket.... a great idea though imagine how much pee is in that bucket?? I wouldn't like to be the one to have to get rid of it??

Some gentle encouragement to Dirk! Nice work in getting 3rd place man.

Beautiful finish line in Antwerp. Euro's are never worried about having races right in the middle of their biggest Cities... they can't get enough of it!

Post race Belge Beers... Belgium beer is defo the best in the World... so tasty and full of Vitamin B! Thanks to John and Maureen for the awesome feed!!

Oh yes... just before I go I HAVE done a race myself! The Mittle Mosul Tri, Olympic Distance. It was over a month ago now... 2 weeks after pooping out at Challenge Kraichgau so I was keen to test whether I had any fitness and to see if Kraichgau was just a bad day?

The race was like going back to Old Skool racing... pick a race somewhere random... drive there the morning of the race having never even been to the venue before... Just rock up and give it some shit! :-)

Unlike in NZ where they take their races pretty seriously and have to train on the course for at least a year before they feel ready enough to race it.

Training on the course does have it's advantages however (of course!), especially on German courses... that go through tiny cobbled streets... and as this one did up and over a lovelry big climb... twice.

I'd had a good swim and was riding with the lead group (Including Marky P)

It came as a bit of a shock to me when the guys I was riding with knew that the best line through this one section was on the pavement... sheeet how was I to know as I clattered over the cobbles doing my best to avoid the 'Street Furniture'!?!?!?

Oh yes it was pissing down as well... which made going down the hill very tricky... I didn't have the correct wheels for braking in the wet and basically at 60K an hour my bike doesn't like... or in fact can't stop. The first time down the hill I nearly came off... papped my pants I did! The 2nd time I went down real slow but in doing so I lost the leaders... Scheisse!
My run felt good and in the end I managed to run myself into 4th place, (Mark was 2nd) would of been a good race if we'd come off the bike together. But still I was definitely happy with my fitness... and hopefully the work I have done over the last few weeks is enough to do a decent job at Challenge Copenhagen... now just two weeks away :-)

Bring it on Mom!

WESTYxxx

Me with my race face on going up a hill in The Mittel Mosul Tri.