Chantilly Castle, France – August 2012
Well lads with the well earned camping trip to France and the ferry into Cherbourg booked I spotted a race that happened to be in the 2nd week of the hols. So with ten days of sunbathing and wine drinking as preparation I was going to kick ass in this one! Weather was warm but mostly cloudy in the days before the race, we headed around the Normandy coast when disaster struck and we got a puncture, a lot of vino on board at this stage, fortunately this happened outside a bus garage and they helped but the spare was too worn but directed us to nearest euro car and after 3hrs and -300 euro we were on the road again.
Race HQ was in the beautiful chateau Chantilly an hour north of Paris, the large grounds housed a full stable , and race course lots of coaches and day trippers. We were allowed to park for the night for 5euro, great as my wave number 2 was 9:40am start. I resisted the urge to drink the cans of Galahad offered from my fellow competitor who camped next to us as he had very little English and with my tourist French there was lots of sign language going on….So I was up with the birds and just a short walk to register had to be done on the morning. Just as well there were some English speaking marshals around!! Not a great goody bag, no t- shirt, a razor and iron supplements… bit mean for 70 euro.
Swim was in a lovely walled lake nice and warm more like an outdoor pool. T shaped swim course. As the sun came out had the usual scramble for space at the start, finally got moving when what I can only describe as swim rage..I was whacked across the head from behind by some guy. In revenge I just grabbed his legs and held on before he kicked his way free… mad women i know! So swim over took a couple of attempts and some power lifting from the marshal to get me up onto pontoon no steps.
Ah now the bike my favourite ha ha, I think not. First part out of the castle had a rough stony surfaces then just before we got onto road a soft gravel that we were warned in the brief had many fallers last year, I climbed off and pushed the bike onto road. 2 loops mostly flat through a couple of small towns and cobble stones was hard to pick up speed, strong wind too, the look on the faces of the french marshal as I came around the corner and onto the wrong side of the road!! He kept waving and shouting. Lost yet another water bottle but got great at taking gels on the move, in fact I was enjoying it that much I missed last turn back to castle gates! Lost a couple minutes, no worries.
The run was tough through the forest, had to watch every step, hard surface 2 laps. Ii strolled through chatting to the many English taking part as its only an hour from Calais. I didn’t meet any Irish though was told there were a few. Think its safe to say I didn’t kill myself in this one… finished strong in 6th place in my age group I was happy to get on with my hols.
Written by: Irene O’Connor