I am freshly back in my Spanish apartment with the first race of the season successfully behind me. The race was Etoile de Besseges in southern France, which is a pretty typical kick-off to the race season. By typical I mean, it's not yet even springtime so the weather is predictably unpredictable. The racing style is consistently attacking, being that we are in France and that's how French races are most easily and accurately characterized. It's still early February, so the range of peoples' fitness is all over the place - some guys are coming from the peak of summer in the southern hemisphere, while pasty others folks are obviously just stepping over the top-tube for the first time in a long time. Ahhh, France in February! The race itself had a bit of everything as well, which is a nice introduction to the season as it's something of a microcosm of things to come. As mentioned, the unpredictable weather ranged from sunny and (sort of) warm to gale-force winds to an absolutely deluge one day. The terrain was a relatively gentle reintroduction to the race season, as all five stages were between 140 to 150 kilometers, which is short by most standards. Speaking of terrain, the roads basically undulated without too much of a vicious shock to the system, although the "mountain day" (...or merely hilly day if you live in the heart of the Alps) didn't seem to have much in the flat department. Speaking of that day, I found myself in the breakway of the day for much of that stage 4. It was a surprise to me since A) the breakaway was established in the first five or so kilometers and B) the group consisted of eleven riders! This is a surprise since the previous two days saw the breakaway succeed around kilometer seventy and each break was capped at just three riders. We motored along at a healthy clip until we reached the fifteen kilometer KOM mid-way through the race. The time gap to the peloton was dropping dramatically and soon after the descent, we were a group of sixty riders barreling to the finish. Things looked very promising for the Cervélo TestTeam as we had five in this front group, including Dominique Rollin who had been consistently sprinting in the top five. Fast forward to the final 300 meter where we approached a roundabout. The course marshal indicated that we could go either way around the circle, so the CTT leadout went left with about 1/3 of the peloton, 2/3 went right, and unfortunately those of us in the "left" category were promptly stopped by the crowd and barriers - of which, we were on the wrong side. Lots of drama ensued as riders were relegated, blood pressure rose, but ultimately it's the riders' responsibility to have read the race bible beforehand and know that we had to go right when approaching the final roundabout ...even if I can't read a French race bible. C'est la vie! After a strong day on the bike for me on day four, and with sunny skies predicted for the final day, I was looking forward to capping yesterday's race with another strong ride. However, I was rudely awoken by my previous night's dinner screaming that it needed to be vacated from my body immediately around 3:30am. Five more bathroom trips ensued in similar oral-evacuation fashion, thereby relegating me to the category of useless on day five. I literally raced one or two kilometers before emptying the contents of my stomach yet again and calling it quits. So just as I started this blog entry, I'm pleased to say that I am happily at home recovering from this first race of the season and thankfully the 24 hour bug has passed it's 24 hour marker. Thanks for checking in and I'll try my best to do a consistent job updating this site. For other outlets, feel free to check in here, here, and here.