Stuart Dillon, Richard Bulkley and I just completed 543km of cycling of the London Paris Tour over 3 days and here are a few notes about how we got on (yes that is Sean Kelly with us in the photo!)...

We had a fantastic few days of road racing over closed roads with a full support service of lead cars, 10s of motorbikes operating rolling road closures, mechanics and masseurs. There were around 150 riders in 3 groups from fun riders through to competitive road racers. We started in group 2 but after Stu and I eased to a 1-2 finish in that group's first hill climb competition we found the confidence to move up with the big boys of group 1 for the afternoon of the first day (well actually I had to nag and persuade Stu for about an hour before he gave in and agreed and then Richard jumped in the deep end too). Within a few kilometres of fast rolling with a much more disciplined peleton we had big smiles on our faces. It was quite unbelievable to take a look to see who was on your shoulder only to find it was Sean Kelly or Johan Museeuw. As we approached the end of the first day in Portsmouth Stu and I found ourselves on the front doing a big turn going uphill into a stiff wind. Stu just kept accelerating…  "Easy!   Stu Easy!!  Easy Stu!!!   Steady!!!" With Stu's impressive show of power it actually seemed that 2 cheeky triathletes with no road racing experience had earned some respect from the race hardened roadies. Maybe I was imagining it but I am sure there were a few comments going around about those triathlon boys in black and yellow.

A nights sleep on the Ferry to St Malo followed by 2 big breakfasts (we didn’t realise that breakfast was laid on in a restaurant by the Marie so had packed away a fully fry-up before getting off the boat!) and we were off again for a full day of competitions for sprint, climbing and general classification (GC) jerseys. Knowing we were clueless but keen to get stuck in anyway we decided that Stu was capable of a sprint to match anyone so the plan was for me to lead him out in the first sprint competition at 41km. The peleton speed built to about 55km/h with about a kilometre to go and I decided it was time to make our move. I lead Stu up the outside and around to the front of the peleton to the sound of a few sarcastic whoops from the top teams. Then with about 400m to go about 15 more followed our move and came around in front to leave us boxed in with no where to go. Grrr!! with about 200m to go I managed to upset a few people trying to fight a route out for Stu and within a few seconds he had launched after the leaders making up about 30m in the last 100m to get up to about 10th on the line. If only he had been given a decent lead out he could have been in with a chance! We thought we had learnt a lesson for the next sprint but what it turned out we had really learnt was that if you go deep into the red in the first 41km then your legs hurt a lot more for the next 163km!

Next came 25km of "yellow" section which was lost on us. All we knew was that suddenly the pace got crazy and we were hanging on for dear life. What we realised later was that in between these starting and finishing sets of yellow flags spaced 20 to 25km apart the competition for the yellow jersey was fought out. In this first yellow section rain had started to fall, riders were attacking off the front continuously and we were repeatedly having to drive our lactate soaked legs to the limit to close the gap on the riders in front. Amazingly we survived to the end with the front group of 15 or so riders and therefore managed to only loose a few seconds of GC time to the winners. At our lunch stop we packed away every calorie that we could to get ready for the afternoon's program of sprint, climbing and GC competition. It was all a blur as we quickly learnt road racing skills in order to hang on to the leaders over the continuously rolling and twisty route. The final rain soaked yellow section was furious but agonisingly a small group got off the front with a few km to go and our tired legs just could not close the gaps. I moved onto Sean Kelly’s wheel in the hope that he would conjure up some magic to bridge up to the leaders but even he had no answer. Still Stu and I were pretty pleased to have only lost a minute or 2 and to hear later from the experienced racers that they were surprised by the intensity and speed of the racing.

Massage, lots of food followed by a packed morning of a sprint, 2 climbs and 2 yellow sections. This was now about survival but at least we now had dry roads and some sunshine. We no longer had any thoughts of contesting for sprint and climbing points, everything had to be saved for the crazy intensity of the yellow sections. The first included many twisty little lanes with short sharp ups and downs. In this terrain being near the front was essential to avoid the energy sapping fast-slow yo-yo effect of being at the back. Again, we managed to loose just a few seconds to the leaders. All too quickly came the final yellow section, immediately after a climbing competition so that the peleton had no chance to re-group. The race splintered as Aussie ex professional Jerone Walters (who has previously mixed it with the likes of Stuart O'Grady and Robbie McEwen) set-off on a solo effort to haul back the time the climbers had taken. Stu and I found ourselves in a chasing group of around 8 working a chain gang to try and bridge to a group ahead. Though we made no progress we managed to limit our losses to around a minute. We had survived!

We enjoyed a relaxing lunch in the sun and apparently it was just going to be easy riding with no competitions for the final 100km+ to Paris. As we set off we had sunshine and a decent tailwind but within minutes my legs were screaming as we got stuck into probably the fastest 50km of riding I have ever completed. Now surely we had made it! Well actually the last 50km of slow riding with groups 1,2 and 3 united just went on too long. My bum had had enough of my saddle and I just wanted to get off but we got there in the end.

Great event, an amazing unforgettable experience. Next year we think we should get a proper team together and see if we can move from survival to actually competing for jerseys. So make sure you get in some big training miles and sign up: http://www.londres-paris.com/