27 june Bordeaux Fete le vin

Hello! We are back! Yesterday was our long ride day, so today we did a recovery ride and off we went to the Sunday 'Pasat Malam' style market by the pier. We will always go there just before they are about to close the shop, so that we get the best '1 for 1' deals. BUT...today, we waited and waited and waited for them to lelong, and they never did!! In the end, we just bought some small pastry and went to the Wine Fest!

This Bordeaux Fete Le Vin (wine festival) takes place every 2 years, and we are lucky enough to be around when it happened this time round. So we bought wine passes that allows us to taste the wine, although we know nuts about wine tasting..

It was really an eye-opener, as we see the crowd and people appreciating wine, or maybe pretending to appreciate wine, like us. There were also many foreigners that came here specially for this event. The main attraction for us was not the wine, but the food stalls! There were ice cream, cheese, meat, pastries etc etc.

Anyway we had a great time and till then, Sante!


Big posters all around the festival.


Good food!


Tim's favourite! CHEESES!


Calvin's favourite! ICE CREAM!


People queuing up for wine sampling.






Nice weather!



Santé to our friends in Singapore!


Calvin got really really red after some wine! or was it the hot chick that poured the wine for him.....hmmmm...he claims that it was the hot weather....yea right...






Ok...this bread is massive, half my body length, maybe can last for a month...


And when Calvin gets bored and feels 'strong' at night...


GRRRRR..... Calvin! You got to make an effort! Don't snore!!!



Calvin! I will shoot you if you snore again!!!!



Sleep.....yes...well protected from the mosquitoes=) Bonne Nuit!

TDF and J and J on 3rd July!

Salut!

The past week have been an eventful one. I went to Paris to visit my brother-in-law, so I have to leave poor Calvin behind=)! It was also a good break for me (still brought my bike there to train though, can't live without it) as my quads are not getting any better, so am going to see a physio this wednesday. Calvin did some good training and raced on Sunday, a CAT 2/3 road race and finished in the peleton, well done! Now we are not afraid of CAT2/3 already, only CAT 1 can make us taste copper and eat bartape.

Fortunately for us, this few months that we are here are packed with lots of stuff! In May, there was the Giro d'italia, then June Coupe du Monde 2010 and next week will be the Le Tour! So we have lots to keep us occupied besides training.

Calvin went to Switzerland today in hope of being able to extend his stay in France. Apparently, they didn't stamp the passport! All the trouble for nothing, poor Calvin, at least he got to see Switzerland's Geneva.

We will be racing this weekend, no information yet, and Damien 'papa' might bring us to the pyrenees for some hard man's training! Can't wait and hope my leg gets better then.

Also J and J are set to arrive on the 3rd of July, next Saturday, nice, now we can go for group ride, and also group watching of Le Tour.

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift."-Steve Prefontaine

Bon Courage to those racing on Sunday, looking forward for the National Champion Jersey to come to France, ha!!

Eventful past week!

Bonjour everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates. We went to marche on sunday. Every Sunday, stores will be set up along the quay, selling food, just like a Pasat Malam, but more expensive version. They will sell things like bread, pastries, fruits, veg, cheese, meat, pizza, spanish food, cheese, just to name a few. So we usually go there after training, when they are about to pack up and close and wants to clear their stuff at cheap prices or better still 1 for 1 deals! We don't usually get to go to this marche because we normally have races on Sundays, so we often look forward to "no-race-sundays" which are very hard to come by.


Best Section of the marche! :)


HUNGRY!

Damien 'papa' was going to leave for Asia again for business and so he brought us to his parents place to barbeque for us. How nice! This was on thursday 3/6 and he had to leave on monday 7/6. So after our uber long ride on thursday, like 6 hours, we had a feast! Nice! Food never fails to amaze us.


Damien papa in action

On Saturday 5/6, Damien called us after our training and told us that he was coming to pick us to bring us to a Triathlon race near the Atlantic Ocean!! It was cool to watch a TRI race overseas and there were 2 french PROs who owned the field. Many triathletes pulled out as the waves were so strong they couldn't make it out to the U-turn point in the ocean!






The Ocean is beautiful! Reminds me of the Great Ocean Road in Australia.

We also found a new supermarket nearer to our appartment and on the way there, we saw these buildings that look really familiar.


HDB in Bordeaux?


Look like HDB flats in Woodlands.

And some other stuff from lazing/walking around=).


Lazy park day


Wine from Medoc anyone? Apparently the best wine comes from there.

We had no race last week (7/6 - 13/6), but did a solid block of training. We will update again at the end of this week!

Time to collect the Dossards* again!

We always look forward to the weekends as it is usually time to collect the *number tags and race. Yesterday was a race at Braud St Louis, a town North of Bordeaux, about 45mins drive away. We will usually wait for Sylvain, the vice-president of the club to come and pick us up if the race site is not a rideable distance away.
Waiting for Sylvain outside our apartment.

Startlist for the race.

Collecting Dossards.



Team car with our POLYGONs above.

Calvin and his OGK helmet, good thing we got LIMAR now.

Packing up to go home.

Post ride recovery, and food too.


The race was CAT 2 and 3, 20 laps of 4.9km, not too fast but the selection was decided from the first lap. The wind was strong, and that made catching the breakaway really hard. We stayed on in the group, made and covered many efforts that to try to bridge to the break but it was impossible. On the 2nd last lap, there was this corner where a cyclist collided INTO Calvin and caused him to crash. His helmet cracked, but fortunately nothing was broken. We will be looking forward to our next race next Friday, which will be a night Criterium. Exciting!

More on us...

What do we hope to achieve out of the training stint in France?
For this training stint in France, we hope to get as much race experience as possible and also if possible, get some good results. Apart from that, we would like to get valuable insights on how the french cyclists train and improve ourselves. We will be training with the French cycling club CAM de Bordeaux, and hope to also learn more of the french culture, and to speak their language.

On training, for the first week in France, we didn't have our bicycles as they were delayed. So we spend some time getting orientated. We went to the velodrome for the first time to do a short session to get the legs spinning again. It was a really good experience as the velodrome was a world class one with 45 deg banks, and the bikes we rented were fixed gear, so it took some getting use to. On the next day, our bikes arrived, so we did long tempo rides during the week to get the body and legs going again.

The training/competition here is definitely different from that in Singapore and SEA. The competition level here is definitely higher, especially with more different conditions and terrains, such as longer and steeper climbs. The riders here are also very strong and motivated.

Who are the people you have met?
So far, the people we've only come into contact with a few people who have really been selfless and helped us alot. Sylvain - co president of CAM de Bordeaux, Vincent - his dad, Damian - our mentor,he looks after us here, almost like our guardian, and also our apparel sponsor F2P, some guys from the cycling club who we don;t really know yet. We find it abit difficult to communicate with them sometimes because we could barely speak french and they don't really speak English except for Damien who speaks perfect English and Sylvain.

How living there is different and probably the cycling culture?
Food, climate, cycling paths everywhere, more cycling friendly city, and more people here commute on bikes than in Singapore. We were especially surprised to see so many female commuters on bikes, and some were even wearing high heels!

There will be a Criterium next weekend. Basically there'll be races on most weekends and we'll keep everyone posted!

Au Revoir.

SIM CIRCLE

As promised, here is more of SIM SIM=)

Cold!

Last Saturday, we went racing at this town called Saint Astier. It was 2 races in a day; 8.5km time trial in the morning and 106km road race in the afternoon. We were very excited as it was our first race together, as the previous week Calvin went to race while I rested at home due to a bad knee. The town was an hour drive from Bordeaux.

For the time trial, it was a hilly time trial with a long steep climb towards the end. Calvin got 84th and I got 85th position out of 88 respectively, about 3 minutes down from the leader. The difference in standard is big!!! For the road race, we got dropped on a steep climb, was really hard on, full gas racing for us. What we need now is more training and racing to get those legs going! We will persevere and get there...we will.

Some happy pics..enjoy..


Very nice team car!


Chef Lim in action.



Briefing before the race. The guy with the paper in his hand is Sylvain, co-president of club and the little boy is his son, Antoine.



Tim with Antonie.



I am going to attack calvin today!



Calvin with Antonie.



Full battle order, it was 6 degrees today. So cold....before the happy ride.