Summer in France

After finishing the BC it was travel time again and onto Paris for leg 2 of my round the world ticket. The racing has also switched gear, with my first MTBO races outside Australia for more than 2 years. The French 5-day was held in Fontainebleau, site of the first world championships for the sport. The terrain is quite flat and sandy with a nice and complex track network to get this little rusty brain back into orienteering mode. I'm staying in an awsome huge old french house with some friends from NZ and some of their family. This place has about 10 bedrooms and I might not have found them all yet. I've managed to misplace my camera cable, so until it is found you'll just have to close your eyes and imagine.

Days 1 and 2 I used to try and settle back down and try and go as smoothly as possible in preparation for days 3 and 4 which were doubling as World Ranking Events. After a solid 2nd and 5th places for the first 2 days, I slipped it into 5th gear and despite a couple of mistakes managed to win both the important WRE days. Day 5 was a bit of a come down, with tired legs and motivation on the way down I did just the minimum to hang on to win the overall title for the 5 days, for which I got a very spiffy maillot jeune and a not so spiffy maillot verte (more fluro verte really!) for the fastest sprint betweent the last control and the finish line!

The race finished on Bastille Day which was good planning on the organisers behalf, as we could join in the festivities on the french national day. The following day was designated rest day for the Tour and us, so a trip to the nearby Disneyland was done. Was a bit of a rip off, but now I can say i've been to one. After all the saddle time on the MTB in the past week, it was good to get back on the roadie for some solid miles. The town of the stage start for the final stage of the tour is about 50km from here, so I pedalled across there to take a few pics. Now when Cadel leads them out of Etampe on the 27th still in yellow I can say that i'd ridden across the same ground ;)