Race 9: 18eme Triathlon International Du Mans, Le Mans 1500m/40km/10km. 9th July 2006 The story of this race is far more about the journey there than the race itself. It began at the Rennes train station, where Adam and I purchased two rather expensive train tickets to Le Mans. We boarded the train with our bikes and thought all was ok, until one of the train conductors saw and told us the bikes had to come off. Was he joking? We started telling him a rational reason for having the bikes, and showed him the race entry information, but he kept cutting us off and repeating “NO VELO”. Stage two, I pulled out the train timetable that has indicated which trains allow bikes to be carried on board, there was no train for the whole Sunday. I showed him and yelled back “find us a train and we will take it”. He replied with his old favourite “no velo”, really pissing me off. I then swore at him and told him he would have to drag me off. He then went into train conductor overdrive, used more English, and said “ok I call the police, that’s it I call the police”. I told him that’s a good idea, as I couldn’t imagine getting arrested for trying to get a bike on a train for a 1 hour journey. The time till departure was now about 5 minutes. Adam had given up trying to rationalise with the guy, and had found a second conductor, who had heard the commotion and was assessing the situation. He offered a better solution, another train we could catch. Adam took his bike off the train and told me to do the same. I reluctantly wheeled my bike off the train and less than one minute later the train shot off. Our new helpful conductor showed us the train we could catch. We now had to go to Laval then catch another train to Le Mans. The train from Laval departed at about the same time our race was scheduled to commence!!!!!!!!!! Nooooo. We thanked him for the help (??) and proceeded back the ticket counter for a refund. I called one of the guys on the team, Gwen Dupas. We knew he was driving there, but he has a super small car, too small for bikes, I thought this option was better than walking. When he answered his phone he was not far from Le Mans and was a little shocked we were in Rennes still. He then told me the team bus should be available (we had been told it was still on another trip). I called Bertrand Helluix, one of the team managers and explained what had happened, and asked about the bus. He told me to leave it with him and so I hung up. We eventually reached the front of the huge ticket line and explained to the girl we were kicked off the train could we have our money back. Well the answer to that was no. And the logic behind this phenomenal decision was that the train had already left. Adam and I entered our second argument with the SCNF train staff. This time I wasn’t going to loose. She offered us just under half our money back, still some $50 short of what we had payed, and said there was nothing she could do. Madness. She was now looking behind us for the next person in line, like the matter was over. Now lets just recap the events so far; We now had far less if not no time to get to Le Mans, and were, at this point $100 worse off. I demanded to speak to someone else and she did this came back with the same answer so I sent her off again. This time she said nothing when she returned, scribbled something on the tickets and handed back all our money. Hooray, finally a fair decision. Being Sunday no car rental place was open and getting a taxi was out of the question, so we were pretty much out of options. Then my phone rings and it is Raph, our team manager. He tells us the bus is free and he can meet us at the Cesson clubrooms with the key in 20 minutes. We were of on our bikes in a flash. With this fantastic news we were laughing and cursing the train line and recapping our story, all the while riding as quick as we could to the club some 10 km away. We met Raph as planned and got the key. He told us we had to leave right away if we were to make the race of off we drove. We arrived at the race 40 minutes before the start thanks to some great navigation from Adam and some disregard to the speed limits.

Everything from here went according to plan for me but not for Adam. It was an Olympic distance race on the outskirts of the town famous for the 24hour car race. I was third out the water about 30 seconds behind Adam and Benoit Buchard. I rode the first 5 km very hard, caught them and then hung back, letting Benoit set the pace. Nearing the end of the first of two laps Adam was shown a black card for drafting. He was pretty close but it was a pretty harsh decision. I took off after this, fearing the same fate and worrying the chasers were gaining. I went super hard for most of the second lap and with about 5km to go the TV motorbike told me I had 1 minute lead. The run was solid but not super hard and I did what I needed to win the race, finishing about 50 seconds ahead of the next finisher. Adam was required to do a penalty lap on the run, but when he passed the area and asked the officials they said nothing so he just ran on. He finished third and went up on the podium, got his trophy and flowers, posed for the newspaper and was then disqualified. Our team members were very disappointed as we had clearly won, and now missed our on the team money. Result from race 9: 1st

Race 10: Dinard Aquathon 700m/5km. 10th July 2006 The Following day I travelled with some of the team and a heap of other club members to a place called Dinard. Dinard is right on the North coast of Brittany and is a popular summer destination, famous for its historical houses and quirky beach tee pees that you can hire for the whole summer. I thought we were doing some aquathlon training, however learnt it was not training but a race. I made a number belt and ran with no top. It was only a small and a lot of fun. The swim was about 700m around some permanent buoys and the run was 3 laps making 5km along the promenade and up a steep hill to an old house. Very scenic. I felt pretty good considering I had raced in Le Mans 24 hours before and ended up winning. Rodolphe Boutier from Rennes triathlon was second and Pierre Guilloux from Cesson was third. Raph jokingly told me a while after that it is very important for a Cesson international to win this race as they have for a number of years. My prize for the race was a lovely Dinard jumper with some of the famous beach tee pees embroidered on it. Result from race 10: 1st with a jumper