Rennes

Sorry for my late report but I didn't get back to Swiss until yesterday evening, and was really tired from the travel, let alone the race.

As I said before the WIC race in Rennes is famous for rain. The town of Rennes is located on the Western side of France and all sorts of weather gets blown in off the Atlantic. We left very early Saturday morning from Zug. We caught the train to Basel where Reyon and I met up with the rest of the Athleticum team. From there we caught the TGV to Paris, the metro (subway) in Paris to another station, and then another TGV from there to Rennes.

This is the only marathon of the season where the ladies' race is held seperate from the men's. The ladies' race is 40km and started at 1400 and the men's is 53km and started at 1600. It was raining and then it wasn't all morning. It made wheel choice quite a gamble: run with the new Storm Surge wheels in the hope it would rain, but if it dried it would be tough to push them for 53km; or use the 'normal' dry weather wheels, the pink VT's, but if it rained it would turn the course into (pardon the pun) a skating rink. In the end, I settled on the gold Street Fight wheels. It was sort of like having a dollar each way.

The race started under cloudy skies. The race was very fast considering the narrow and technical course. On the second lap there was a huge crash on one of the narrow sections. I crashed here and was just standing up when I was taken down again from behind. Because it was early in the race and as a great show of sportsmanship, the bunch waited for everyone to get going again. Almost straight away it started raining. There was a U-turn and I crashed again just as the winning breakaway took off. While I was unlucky, my teammate Roger Schneider made it. Over the course of the next 20km, the breakaway group steadily built its lead. During this time, we encountered some of the worst conditions I've ever raced in: pouring rain and winds that were strong enough to blow you over. The guys in the breakaway started attacking each other to try and go solo to the finish. Towards the end Roger, my teammate, and Shane Dobbin from Sportvital Rollerblade attacked and got a gap. Meanwhile, in the bunch, I attacked with about 10km left.

In the end, Roger held of Shane for this first big win of the season and the second WIC win for Athleticum in 2 weeks. Massi Presti led home the rest of the breakaway, then I came in for 7th and then my team mate Reyon Kay won the pack sprint for 9th. So it was another good weekend for Athleticum with 3 in the top 10.

Since we've been back in Swiss, it's been cold and wet. I hope it clears soon because I was looking forward to getting some good training in without having races on at the moment. Our next WIC race is at the start of June in Incheon, Korea. Everyone wants a good result there because it's our sport's richest race. So there is that extra motivation.

Thanks for reading.

Scott.