Somewhere in between Dave Zabriskie dropping it at the tour, and me being back at uni this week, the Tour has finished. Ended. Finito.
Terribly sad, as it is, it means for us Aussies we can finally get some sleep! Oh, and Cadel won, god bless his furrowed little brow.
No, on a serious note, this has been a momentous win for Australia; cycling fan or not, Cadel comrade or caluminator. Soon perhaps people will even stop trying to run us off the road!
For photos of a more attractive tour rider, click here. Thankyou CyclingNews, it's better than nudie websites for sure!
In other news, I have decided to do some 'training' for the Flight Centre Cycle Epic this year. Training includes doing more than one ride in the lead up to the event that is longer than three hours. Yep, I am sure I will be flying... I don't know what it is about me and endurance events, but I don't seem to have a lot of faith in myself with them, that combined with the lack of training time.
Last year I had a ripper run of a few really quality races; Canungra 6hr, Mt Perry; I felt like I was suddenly 'getting' the endurance thing. And then...nope.
Anyway, with emphasis on quality and hills rather than sacrificing my education for training time, I'm sure it will all go exactly to plan;
•start hard, feel good
•hour two realise that it's not XC and even though I have been feeling great I may have been exerting myself a tad too much
•run into a few rocks and get a bit pissed off with myself
•a few expletives here
•eat a lot of food, drink a lot of water and come good again about 3hr 30 in
•ride pretty well to the finish if I eat enough gooey stuff.
What's going to get me through? Well, having recently been lucky enough to pick up some Cyclinic Torq sponsorship, I can tell you now that the Torq Gels are the shinizzle.
Seriously! I did a whole four hours the other day, and when I was feeling well shagged after 2000 vertical metres of climbing (glutton for punishment?), I thought I was beyond baked, but popped a Banoffee flavoured Torq gel down the hatch and BAM! Powering home.
Anyway, it's kind of funny considering I have been riding for about a month since a chunk of time off, that I am actually excited about this tough as nuts Epic race. That may be all I need to make the difference. We'll see.
Btw: The vegan challenge lasted (mostly, except for maybe two serves of cheese...) for the whole of le Tour. I am now eating bits of cheese but still off all other dairy products and breathing easier because of it—WIN!