The week of riding in France has been awersome and its sad to go but if I don't get out of here Im going become permanently attached to my bike seat. I've been staying at a town called Bourg-d-Oisans which is in a Valley surrounded by famouse climbs taken by the tour de france. The closest of these climbs is the very famous l'Alpe-d'Huez some 13km long rising 1300 height meters at an average of around 10%. Yep it's a bloody long climb which on my 2nd and final time trial I managed to get under the hour by mear seconds. Now lance in 2004 did 39 minutes. Gee im only 20mins off him. The scenery is sensational here with sheer rock races, snow covered mountain tops, fast flowing rivers, grassy hills and much much more. On some of the remote hill climbs the road turns through no lit tunnels that are just bored into the hill and if they happen to have any more than one turn in them its pitch black. You have to just hope like hell your headed in the right direction until you make a turn that has light at the end of it. I loved it but Dave was none to happy about it at all. At one stage I dropped my sunnies in the tunnel and only found them by sheer luck as I could not see a bloody thing. The longest ride I did was 80kms but that took over 4 hours as there were 2 mountains to ride. On another ride I only did 70km's but took way over 4 hours as I did l'Alpe-d'Huez from 2 directions plus another large climb giving me over 3000 meters climbed that day. On Fri Emma and I drove up to register for a French National mtb round. It was some 80kms drive away and at a ski village with cross country, down hill, four cross and trials being competed over the event. So basically it was going to be as big as our national championships. This however did not mean it was as well run as our nationals by any stretch of the imagination. The cross country racing was split over 2 days so my only chance of racing would be if I could race a class competing on the Sat when Emma's race was on. So I decided to be 31 for the event. It was all looking good at rego until they asked me for my doctors certificate proving that im fit to compete. This is compulsory for any non licenced riders wishing to race in France. So that was the end of that. No big problem, still went out to do the course and see what it was like. Basically it went up, up and up and then came down a pretty hairy rock shoot before turning up again. After another long climb you came down a rocky road, a tree root covered single track and some more rock shoots that led to a grassy section back to the finish area. All up it was 13km lap that had moments of fun and some teeth gritting. I was not too disappointed to not race after doing a lap as you would have to take some big risks on the descents and the chances of a flat tire were high. The course marking were pretty much non existent. There were sections marked my spray paint on rocks where you almost needed a compass to work out where they were going. So Sunday after a 80km early morning ride in some 10deg temperature up a climb that went for 20km's and took us to over 2000 meters above sea level, we all jumped into the car and headed for Emma's race. She got a shocking start in a female field of well over 50 riders. On the first climb she found herself with the last few riders but over the length of the race she got stronger and stronger eventually getting into the top 20 riders. I rekon it was all that strength riding with me that helped her. So with France no behind me I'm off to visit Anna's friend Lucy and her husband Sasha in Switzerland for a week. Will be very nice. Turns out im back here in the first week of August with Team Ghost for a world cup marathon. Don't know if I can race, but if I do im pretty aware there is some big climbs in the course. Bloody big climbs in fact.