i realise ive been slacking on the blogging side of like recently so ill fill u in on whats been goin on recently before i come bak to sunny england (or apparently not at the moment!)

well, the main news is im waiting to hear back from one of the best amateur teams in france to see if i have a confirmed place for next year. They are called Cotes D'Armor Maitre Jacques and are a Division 1 amateur team in brittany (the best team in brittany). They ride all the french cup races, several uci stage races and also some belgian espoir classics like U23 paris roubaix nd U23 liege bastogne liege. This doesnt mean that if i get a place that i will b riding all of these as the squad is 14/15 riders so only the strongest get to go. However, i think with some hard work over the winter i can be able to be amongst their top guys!! enough talkin about that as i dont even know if ill get on the team yet. The decision is on a mix of palmares, the impression they have gotten of me since i came here, and also i had to submit some effort testing results to them the other week. For this i did a ramp test, VO2 max test and a lactate threshold test. Im not to up on how my numbers compare but from a bit of research i seem to be doing just fine... well bloody good if i can say soo without sounding too big headed!! I did 480 watts on the ramp test, holding 500watts for a minute before exploding! I was told before the start that for an amateur 400-450 is a strong result and 500 is pro level... and my VO2 max was 78 which coach clive tells me is super! My power to weight ratio came out at 7.2 and i have heard that 7 is the magic number for top level cyclists so was pleased all round. Just hope the team are equally impressed.

If i dont get the result i want from that team, i have recieved an offer from a division 1 espoir team in Brest called "BrestIroiseCyclisme 2000" which is a level up from VS Quimper but a level down from Cotes D'armor, but they stil get some very good race starts so that is another option. And then of course there is always the belgium option... we shall see in the next few weeks.

Racing wise, im just ticking over now till the end of the season. No more elite races but do have 2 big amateur "en ligne" races which are place-to-place races left which it would be good to score well in. Plus im still pushing for a win out here! came 2nd last monday, the day after an elite stage race which i was quite pleased with as the fella that beat me is ex french champion and was on credit agricole a few years ago. not far...

I got my best result of the season in an elite stage race in the middle of august, called the Mi Aout Bretonne. There were full teams from VC La Pomme, Bretagne Armor Lux (brittany pro team), VC Roubaix (pros), all the top teams in france basically..! it was the first stage, 165km, on a rolling 14km ish circuit with a 500m hill at 1km to go before a false flat drag to the finish. It seemed flat out from the gun and i was happy to sit in and follow the wheels while breathing hard but a break still managed to get up the road and pull out a decent gap. luckily, a couple of the big teams missed the move so after controling it, they started to ride it back. Coming through 2 laps to go, there were still 7 or 8 out front from the original break and about a group of 10 going across. Coming through the finish i followed an attack and a couple more came with, we got a lil gap but then everybody kinda sat up so i went again and took one guy with me (from cotes d'armor funnily) we absolutely drilled it and gradually got across the 30odd second gap to the break, even after getting to about 4or5seconds behind then some1 infront attacked and they nearly rode away again!! This was the race winning break and the gap to the peloton soon opened up to over a minute... looking gud. However, not long after i hav got over, 5 guys clipped off and i was doin too gud a gud job of breathing out my arse to even try to follow! I gradually recovered, but the 5 were about 30 secs up the road goin for the win. At 6or7km to go was the K.O.M climb, and i attacked over the top of this. Managed to pull out a gap on my own but sat like the carrot infront of the donkey for ages!! Then i hit the hill at 1km to go and thort it was game up but when you know its balls to the wall, win or nothing, i seemed to find a little extra and got over the hill and headin to the finish still infront. One fella did clip off on the hill and got across in the last couple of hundred metres to get 6th but i just held on for 7th with the group sprint about 5metres behind!! I was absolutely fooked but soo pleased. for me in these races i have no chance in getting up there in a large sprint so by sitting in i would have been looking at a top 20 at best at the back of the break! This was one of the things that helped me get noticed by cotes d'armor.

Last couple of weeks now and then heading back on the 1st of october it looks like. Im looking forward to a rest now but im also looking forward to knuckling down to some more hard work as i know what i need to improve next year to be winning often over here.