Podium in Agen

**

This weekend we headed to a "local" race in the town of Agen, two hours from were I live in Limoux.  The race was a criterium which consisted of a long straightaway, a right turn onto a narrow 300m "big ring" climb, another right turn onto a slight downhill, with a final right onto a winding downhill ramp, where a 180 waited at the bottom to take us back onto the long start/finish straightaway... a very fun course!  Since the race was not a French Cup or UCI race, it was a bit smaller than the 100's of riders we are now accustomed to, but we still had a large crowd of racers.

The organizers were welcoming of our American contingent: they gave us a callup to the front at the start line, proceeded to wish us luck (I think they were wishing us luck...my french is not so good...), and then we were off.  Our goal in this race was to be aggressive and initiate lots of attacks.  I went hard the first time up the hill to try to string things out early and then my teammates took turns launching attacks for the next couple laps.  Alison took a strong pull for one lap and when she let up the pace briefly, I jumped to start the next round of attacks.  I got a bit of a gap and one girl (in green) bridged to me bringing a fellow American, Megan, with her... 

We quickly started trading pulls and tried to open up the gap we started. Meanwhile, my teammates were controlling the peloton and preventing any attacks from catching us.  Being only 4 laps into a 40 lap race, we had a long long way to go!  After about 10 laps it was clear that the girl in green was not going to help us pull very much so Megan and I went hard up the hill and dropped her.  Then we were down to two of us... with lots and lots of laps to go... and many many climbs ahead!  Luckily, my teammates were doing a great job at controlling the attacking peloton and we continued to open up a gap on the field.  In the middle of the race, the winds picked up and the rain started coming down (even France gets bad weather every once in a while)... we still had 20 laps to go and I was convinced that the lap counter was taking a nap because the laps didn't seem to be going down very fast.  Megan and I were beginning to question why we started our break only 4 laps into the race.  But the break seemed to be strong so we just kept plugging along.

Finally, with 4 laps to go, the peloton was in sight ahead of us, but we decided to stay back and avoid mixing in with the crowd given the wet and slippery conditions. It was clear that our break was a success, but now the race was getting close to the end and soon working together would have to stop... After working for an hour and a half with a breakaway buddy it is hard to transition to racing against each other, but we both knew that one of us had to cross the line first for the win. We decided to keep up the teamwork until the final straightaway... we made sure that we both rounded the final slick 180 turn safely and then we raced to the finish line. Luck was on my side and I ended up with my first French victory!  The rest of the USA squad swept the top spots -- Alison broke away with 1 lap to go to finish solo for the final podium spot.  Sinead broke out her mad sprinting skills to win the field sprint and Lindsay (who claims to not be a sprinter) finished closely behind.  A great day for team USA.

The podium presentation was a lot of fun... we were all given trophies and flowers and showered with kisses (that is the French way... no handshakes).  I was also presented with a cool framed poster of the event.  Unfortunately, there is nothing corresponding to podium girls for the women's races... we had older men handing out the congratulations... it doesn't seem fair! But these were the men that helped make the race possible and gave us a very warm welcome to the venue -- I very much appreciated the great race that they put on!

~devon

**notice in the podium pic that we were not actually on the podium... my head went into the rafters when i stood on top... it was not made for tall people :)