discovering Life on the continent
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4/28/2021 1 Comment Life In French LockdownUnfortunately it will be another short blog this month. Not much has happened in my life this past month and there has definitely been no racing! On April 3rd France went into a national lock down and everything was put on hold once again, with this new lock down came the cancellation of sport events. Among them being Junior Paris-Roubaix, my main goal of the first half of the season and a race I have been preparing for for quite some time now. As i am sure you can imagine it was a pretty big blow for me so i took a week to reset and re focus my energy onto something further down the line. During this lock down I have been taking time to enjoy riding my bike as well as getting all of my necessary training in. For me this has meant incorporating a lot more MTB into my schedule. The trails around here aren't anything to shout about but that has been really good and actually really beneficial in terms of strengthening my collarbone and the surrounding muscles in a risk free environment The new lock down rules changed more than just the racing however, from April 3rd we were obliged to stay within a 10 km radius of where we lived which has meant lots of local laps to get the miles in. With that being said, here in the countryside the rules aren't monitored quite so severely as that of the city meaning we were still able to ride in groups as long as we were all within our 10 km zones. This caused what were meant to be steady training rides into full blown races around our local roads. Its always good to have some tear ups like that and it reminded me of the group rides back home with Lancashire road club where we would have a burn up back to the Cafe. Although, at this point i'm just craving the real thing, back in a peloton, the smell of burnt rubber on the descents and the chaotic bunch finishes. Seeing as schools were closed I have been left twiddling my thumbs in the masses of downtime I have so as an alternative I've took the opportunity to work with Yanis (my team/housemate) and his Father. Its been good fun learning about new things from making terraces to working in the vineyards! Alongside working me and Yanis have been having fun getting to grips with an air rifle and have laid out a little shooting range in his garden where we shoot at a can some 50 ft away. Its surprisingly a lot harder than I expected haha! I hope that my next blog will be a bit more action filled and by that point I should have my first race of the year under the belt at Classiques des Alpes UCI. It will be a tough race and is not my preferred terrain but i'm going to test my capabilities on the climbs and try and do as much for the team as possible, but who knows maybe I will surprise myself with a better result than what I'm expecting ........ Only time will tell ! Please feel free to drop me a message or leave a comment below if there's anything in particular that you would like me to talk about! Thanks for reading, Benjamin
1 Comment
JT
5/19/2021 09:38:06 am
Another great read, good luck for the upcoming races, look forward to seeing you on our burn ups in the UK. Stay safe JT ;-)
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