Tri en France: Le maillot jaune

Warning: I'm on the keyboard in the center which makes for tough typing. French keyboards are weird. This will not likely be a long entry.

My ankle is doing better, BUT not great. I decided it was good enough to ride yesterday which it WAS except I was having some serious issues clipping out of the pedals for SOME reason so the extra force it took to get my cleat out wasn't exactly helpful to the ankle. In the end it was on a 45 minute ride and some guy yelled at me out his window, though I'm not really sure why or what he said. It's a lot easier dealing with that in France because I literally have no idea what they're saying and I just tell myself they don't know how to deal with people on road bikes (because they don't) and move on to the open shoulders of big old scary roads.

Despite the fact that my ankle is a little better it's still not the greatest and I'd rather not push it since I've got an 8-ish mile race at the end of October that I need to get back to training for ASAP. So that 45 minute ride has been all my exercise this week aside from some corework and girly push-ups (because I can't put that much weight on my ankle, and let's be real I can't attempt one-legged push-ups... not that cool). So you know, if you can't do a sport, why not read about it?

Thus, I have come close to the end of Lance Armstrong's bio It's Not About the Bike. You know, I'm disappointed in the fact that when I finish this book, I will put it down and say "Wow, that guy is a jerk. Talented, but a jerk." You would think someone's autobiography about how they had cancer and suffered through sustaining life would make you sympathize in some way. I have never seen/heard such a prime example of using people and treating them like absolute crap. I'm shocked that he admits acting the way he did/does, unapologetic and only somewhat appreciative to the people who patiently worked with and for him along the way. I think there are a lot of really abrasive aspects to Armstrong that grate on readers of this book. Overall it has been an interesting read, but I have to say I'm not proud that Lance Armstrong is an American athlete. I'm not proud that he holds 7 wins in the Tour de France. Especially after the EPO allegations which his teammates, whom he considers his close friends in this book, confirmed this year, I don't think I would ever wear a single article of Livestrong or Mellow Johnny merchandise.

Tri en France: out of commission. Tune in next week

Sometimes you sprain your ankle while trail running and they tell you you can't run again for 15 days and then laugh at you when you ask if you can swim.
Then they give you a big ugly and generally unnecessary brace.
Guh. Until I break free from injury jail...

Tri en France: Monster hills, road work, and round abouts

This is a short one about my second ride in France. There's a ton of road work, so once again I spent about 25 minutes just trying to figure out how to get to a main route. Finally I found another cyclist!! Literally the FIRST other cyclist I've seen on my rides, and the second I've seen in general. (By cyclist I mean someone on a road or TT bike clearly treating it like a sport). This was a good idea (as it usually is in unfamiliar territory), but I lost site of him after I got stuck at a light while he beasted it up a hill. Still, it took me over some REALLY BEAUTIFUL pavement and took me to somewhere I knew, so I took the EXACT route as yesterday, but kept going and following signs to Angers.

I'm getting better at taking round abouts. I've learned to stay WAY on the outside and have faith that the cars will not kill me because that ruins their day AND mine. I definitely felt a lot less scared for my life. On the way out, this ride felt great, and I was cruising along for the middle portion at 20-22 mph. Then the scenery started to become beautiful and I was pushing up a LONNNGG but not too steep hill at about 14 mph, chilling with some goats. All of a sudden there was this HUGE downhill. I mean huge. Then I looked ahead and its sister CLIMB was staring me in the face.... after my nice long climb there. That was NOT happening, but I was already screaming down the hill, geared out, going 32 and BRAKING. Immediately after the end of the downhill, this identical climb was going to happen and I knew I could not make that climb, turn around, and then do it again, so I decided to pull over in the approximate 2 meters of flat road that I had and wait for the traffic to clear so I could turn around. Mind you... I had just geared out and had problems getting my bike to go slow enough to stop. Once on the other side of the road, I picked up my rear wheel and shifted to the easiest gear. I told myself "this is going to suck, but just push through it."

So once their was a break in traffic, I got on and started climbing at 9 mph. Yeah. Cool. I got so far into it and for the first time in my life on a ride I had to get off and walk the hill. It was just insane. My heart rate was through the roof and though my legs were hanging in there, my HR was not. haha

If anything, I will get some serious hill experience in this country. The day when I stop freaking out on that down hill and make it through those hills twice, I will be once powerful cyclist. That day, however, is not today.

Tri en France: Rocco's first Ride

Today Rocco and I set out for our first adventure. I debated taking a camera and then decided not to because I didn't really intend to stop.

I had done some googling and I figured that the best thing to do was ride along the Loire. So the first thing I set out to do was find the Loire. CHECK. Then I was getting confused about whether I was supposed to ride east or west, but I knew the Loire was south of my house and the Atlantic was west so I went east. I think.

First I found this awesome deserted road. I mean, it was neither completely deserted nor totally awesome. It was a little chopped up and had some sand on it that made me nervous about handling, but if anything went wrong it was unlikely that I'd hit a car because there were about 5 for... 5 miles. Some parts were very cool because I rode through some forest and later under some tiny little bridges. Eeek.

But as most good things do, it came to an end and I was back on a busy road riding through some random city. There are lots of signs that have bikes with slashes through them which to me means I can't ride there.... but then there are bike lanes on the other side of them...? I don't really know, but I generally stick to the bike lanes and ignore the signs because they confuse me and it doesn't seem like anyone ELSE pays attention to them.

After that I decided to follow some signs towards Angers. Then I ended up on a highway.... which is apparently allowed in this country? Cycling on highways... uhh ok. Nonetheless, it freaked me out so I got off after a few minutes and found a round about where I could turn around and follow signs back to Nantes. (This is about 40 minutes out.)

So I'm back on a very busy street (though not a highway) following signs back to Nantes, and apparently my nice convoluted route out could be literally cut in half, because I was home in 20 minutes. Soon enough, I began to realize that was completely necessary because as soon as I got off the bike my abs were throbbing in pain. It was one of the worst little "episodes" of ab pain I've gone through, but as we know I get those. I'm starting to just get used to them at this point and I really think they're just from fatigue.

Tri en France: My new baby boy

Everyone, this is Rocco!

Rocco is Sheila's new baby brother. He came home today weighing approximately 10,5 kg. We're so happy to have him in the family!

Rocco and Sheila are very similar. Rocco has Shimano 2300 components like ShiShi, but his frame is a little bigger (51 cm) and his wheels are a little smaller 650x23c.

He had a rough first ride this morning First we had to take him back to Decathlon because his chain was rubbing against the front derailleur in the big chain ring (not when he was cross-chained... just in general) so that wasn't okay. In broken French I explained this to the nice bike-doctor and he's all better now. Then we had to ride through construction and bumps, but he's a tough little guy.

Rocco lives in the private bike storage space under my apartment which we share with a few other people. Hopefully they're not baby bike thieves. At the very least, Rocco has a nice big lock to keep him (and his front quick-release wheel safe).

I think we'll be going on our first ride tomorrow afternoon!!! EXCITING STUFF!

Tri en France: speeeeeddd work

Today I joined the Université de Nantes triathlon club for their weekly workout. I told my host grandma that I expected it to be only guys because I never see women running here. She wasn't so sure and thought there'd be some girls... When I first got there, I sat on the track and there were a handful of girls. I waited and waited and then asked a girl "Etes-vous ici pour le traithlon?" No. They were there for "athletisme" which is essentially track practice, but she pointed me to the building where she thought they met last time. So I walked down the hill and asked "Etes-vous triathletes?" and sure enough, this skinny blonde guy was like "Yeah...." and then I presented myself, in French, and they were like "Ok..." so I stood there. I was REALLY hoping we'd go in the building to find spin bikes ready for our use.

Then the coach came, decked out in Dextro ITU world championship pants and a Portugal "triathlo" vest. He started shaking all the guys hands, and I had been told that generally upon first meeting people, they shake hands in France. But then he came to me, the sole girl, and COMPLETELY ignored the hand I half offered. Only in France do girls kiss their coach upon meeting him. I think if I tried to kiss coach Brett he would've jumped backwards about 10 feet. lol (Ok, well strictly speaking the french "bisou" is not a kiss, you essentially touch cheeks. No ACTUAL kisses. Still...) Then he asked if we were ready to go, and we all headed back up to the track. BOOOOOOO. I need to do SOMETHING other than running.

As we marched up the hill, me and 11 guys, I laughed quietly to myself at being right. We stood up there awkwardly and just as he told us to start our "chauvement" (warm up) ANOTHER CHICK CAME... although she looked pretty masculine to me. I found out late she races TT and has never done a triathlon.

After the chauvement, we did "edjucatifs" which YOU GUESSED IT are DRILLS. Funny story: they called skips "la petite fille contente" which yes, means happy little girl and if your "petite fille" was "trés contente" you lifted your knees higher. French people are nuts.

I held in there on the warm up and the drills, but then came the workout and I suddenly realized that I might as well have been working out with the men's cross country team. First we did 4x (200 m fast + 1' active rest + 300 m fast) RI = 35", then 5x (300m) RI= 1', then 3x (200m fast + 100m easy). OH HEY SPEED WORK. We started and OFF WENT THE GUYS. I watched them round the track and thought "holy crap... they can't be serious." Then I remembered the coach saying "the goal is to work hard at your level" and looked down at my watch. 7:30 pace and hurting. Ooohhhh yeaaah. So then while they all whipped around the track I kept pushing all my hard reps to hit between 7:30 and 8 min pace (per mile, this is). It was rough. Very rough. The last rep of the 300m with 1 min rest I was ALL BY MYSELF (although ahead of the other chick!).

At the end of the workout, the coach asked who had a TT bike at their disposal and at least 9 people raised their hands (remember, with me there are 12). After practice I asked the coach where I could find a used road bike and he was essentially like "yeahhhh idk."

In the end, I really like the coach and he actually gave me pointers between reps. The guys, well, they're guys. They're not really interested in that random American girl who is bringing up the rear. The other girl is nice but seems a little weird... idk. Maybe I'm being quick to judge but she runs really strangely (although pretty fast) and wore the oddest outfit to practice.

I'll keep going because, hey, what the heck, it's speed work on a track for the next 13 weeks and I really am a fan of the coach and I think I can get something out of it. It's no NU tri though <3 Haha I think it's funny that we worry about only having 60 members in our school of 8,000 when there are 34,000 people at this school and they have 12 people on their team. I'm telling you - French people don't work out.

*correction: I have found out that VTT means velo toutes tourrain aka mountain bikes... but perhaps it ALSO means trial du temps. Ugh. FRENCH

Tri en France: French directions

I posted this on Facebook because I'm just really excited, but I bought two books about cycling through this region of France.

One is a book full of "round trip" circular routes of sight-seeing and the other is an 18-stage trip from one side of the region to the other. I'll definitely do the last two of the 18 stages once I get a bike (one is from Nantes, one is to Nantes, so I'll have to try that backwards). None of the trips are all that long. The longest will be (I think) 56 km one way, so that will be one ambitious 70-mile day.

I'm going to the Université de Nantes triathlon team practice on Wednesday. haha eek! That will be interesting being like "hi, I'm American and I'm clueless..." Maybe they'll sell me a bike. If no one wants to be my friend, maybe I'll just go swim laps in the piscine by myself.

Tri en France: The daily run

On the first day I got here I told my host grandma I was a triathlete. I mean, how many things can you really tell people when you only speak their language pretty simply. Well, actually, yesterday I was talking to her about how scared I was of open water swimming and how much it freaked me out the first time and how much I hated Lake Michigan.... but that's beside the point.

ALORS, she immediately said "Oh yeah, all the French people run along the water here. You run out of here, take the second left, descend and then run right forever." (Except, you know, en Français.) However, the next day I was whisked off to Vannes (two hours away from Nantes) for orientation, where I ran twice. Then I came back and to my malheureusement the sun doesn't rise until 7:45 and I had school/orientation/French class everyday from 9-6 so that wasn't really working but FINALLY FINALLY yesterday I had some time between the end of school and dinner to courir. I was exhausted because I had just spent 2 hours talking a "historical tour of Nantes" by foot and I'm sorry but walking/standing is just so much more painful than running or, well, a different pain. It's bad pain. Still, I knew how bad I wanted to go, so I mustered up my last ounce of energy and went.

Oh. My.
I pushed myself to just exceed an hour yesterday and then went back again to take pictures this morning. You will now get the electronic tour of my run.

#1: This is the start of my run, right by a boat house for crew teams. The flash made it look brighter, but this was actually right around sunrise.

#2: This is the entrance to the trail that runs along the river.

#3: The start of the boardwalk aka the BEST part of the run.

#4a: The boardwalk. Don't be fooled. That thing on the right is a moss-covered platform and NOT the shore. You literally cannot see the shore, only the trees and folliage that lead up to it. It's breathtaking.

#4b: There are little gates in the boardwalk. I think they're to prevent cyclists from using it, but they're super cool and work on their handling skills by zig-zagging through them. Then there is a little hill which I find absolutely hilarious because I don't understand why it's there.

#5: The view of the land to the right of the boardwalk. You know, HUGE French houses. Whatever.

#6: A little entry for boats. Yesterday I saw two huge white swans, you know, just chilling.

#7: A covered entrance as you get back on the trail.

#8: The view across the river from the trail. More BIG French houses.

#9: There are lots of patches of wildflowers when the trail is a little more paved and park like. I love them. They often then run into little footbridges. Je les adore!

#10: This is the BIG SCARY IMPOSING hill that leads up to my house. Nothing worse then ending a run with a big scary hill. I'm proud to say I ran up it yesterday! Yeah that's right, knee drive. lol It was rough and I'm pretty sure my heart rate was like 192 once I finally hit the top. This may not look so big, but don't be fooled, this is literally one of the hardest, steepest climbs I've ever experienced on foot and it's deceptively long. I chickened out this morning though. Whoops. But tomorrow afternoon... it's happening!

I also found out (word to the wise), in France I have to have Civil Responsibility Insurance (l'assurance de responsibilité civile) to ride a bike. If I get in an accident, someone can ask for my insurance soooooo that's a little red tape I wasn't expecting. I went to the insurance company today but the line was too long and they closed in 45 minutes. Of course, since France is old and European, they aren't open again until Monday... so guess that's what I'll be doing next Monday at 10 a.m.

I hope you enjoyed your tour of my run that has literally left me speechless. If I get out a little further I hit a park with a garden, but I would've had to run for about 30 minutes out to find that and my legs were beaten up this morning. I hope I can get some pictures soon though and also... BIKE RIDES? THROUGH FRANCE?
I hope.
I also hope you enjoyed your subliminal French lesson. Did you even notice it happening?

Tri en France: Running in the dark

I've been in France for 5 days and have run 2 times. I cannot WAIT until I buy a bike and, to my surprise, I am actually looking forward to receiving my student ID for Universite de Nantes so I can use the damn pool.

This morning I set out for a nice 6.5 kilometers in the dark. I couldn't sleep so gave up around 5:45 and headed downstairs, but it was still dark and rainy out. I tried waiting for the sun to rise or the rain to stop, but by 6:30 I still wasn't having in luck so I decided to suck it up and go.

WELL first I was completely freaked out by this crazy French guy who was cursing and banging on the glass at the bus stop (as if the rain and complete darkness wasn't enough). Luckily for this run I was able to find a nice little pedestrian path to take so that was fun.

I feel like the people in this program identify me as the triathlete/theater major who wakes up at the crack of dawn to run. When we talk in French, the people who don't know me as well ask me "as-tu couru ce matin? Ah, oui? Combien de temps?" Ah well.

Plus, two days ago we biked around an island and I met another cyclist on the trip. We had some fun tearing down hills on cruisers. My friend couldn't figure out how to shift and his legs were killing him. While attempting to help him, I dropped his chain (such a pro...) but at least I was able to fix it. Plus, it was comfortably familiar to be covered in bike grease. :]

I was looking in my little guide book and it looks like I can bike from castle to castle in the loire valley. Get EXCITED?! Pictures of castles and bikes? oh my.

b-b-b-b-bonk

Well, I promised a race report.

I have some bad news. This girl died pretty hardcore at the Muncie Labor Day Triathlon aka Conference Championships. Whoops.

My swim was awful. It was one of those things that was awful and you have no idea what precisely made it so awful. You know?

Well, I got out of the water extremely disappointed, but went through T1 telling me to put it behind me and work on the bike. I did work until I stopped being able to work. I'll spare you all the gritty details but I knew bad things were imminent if I continued on to the run. I mean, I was already in some pretty bad pain and experiencing some extreme fatigue. After T2, I voluntarily DNF'ed. It sucked, but it happens.

I talked to my coach, and Brad and Kendyl (who also raced). It was a rough race for all of us. Kendyl was extremely fatigued on the run after it started hitting her on the bike and Brad crashed over his handle bars at the start of the bike leg around a guy who flatted in front of him. My hypothesis (which my coach agrees with) is that skipping workouts from hurting my foot and being unmotivated to swim in addition to the two days of hardcore moving I did helping my roommate move into his new apartment really fatigued me and broke me down. I suffered through our national championship race with that kind of fatigue and it wasn't worth it to me to continue the same way.

Anyway, OFF TO FRANCE FOR A NEW EDITION!