French Icing

Limoux, France: In the south of France, the heart of the cycling world. It feels good to be in a place that seems to be designed for the bike. The next six weeks of my life will revolve around two things: the bike and the fuel needed to run the engine. And southern France makes some good fuel. Great bread every morning, warm out of the stone ovens, fresh market meats every day. Sounds like the perfect training environment right? Well, there is always a catch.

The first three days of riding here have been amazing. The hills climb forever and the descents are a perfect reward, for a hungry cyclist. Makes you want to ride all day. But nothing is perfect. The temperature for the first few days was cool, but let’s be honest, it was way better than any other options I had. Then yesterday, we set out on a crisp morning, early, around 9:30, and the temperature couldn’t have been more than 5 degrees. We decided to go up 500 m in the first 40 min. A nice gradual climb, and from my experience here last year I was licking my lips for the descent on the other side. But as we climbed, my training partners and I began to notice some white in the hills.

“Probably just a heavy frost.”

I mean, we are from Cow Town, so snow is in our blood by now, so we keep climbing. The frost turns to snow and ice. No problem. The wind picks up just as we hit the summit. We decide to continue down the other side figuring the impending storm will blow over and turning around now means heading into a chilling head wind. Down we go.

It gets colder and colder as we ride… the next half hour we descend then shiver our way along the valley longing for our next climb. And it came. Another 45 min at a medium pace. That gets us warm. Now the 2 and 1/2 hours home but the storm is whipping up.

The white out and wind blow right into our faces. We are all itching for our turn at the front so we can hammer into the wind and stay warm. By the time we get home through 2 hours of sopping snow my face is numb, my hands are numb, feet too and I have both started and stopped shivering. That can’t be good. 4 and 1/2 hours after we left we pull in. A little short of our training goal but we got an extra 45 in our first day so it worked out.

But, I am in France, it will get warmer and I will be racing across the Spanish border soon. The season is coming and I feel like I have started hammering towards it. France is such a great reminder of why cycling is such a great sport. The perfect preamble to a great season.


Just wait for the story about the ancient abattoir we had to clean out, coming soon.