I reached the boarding gate and to my absolute horror, I get told, ?Sorry. You?re too late to board.? Bugger.

So off I head back to the Air France counter to try and get on another flight. After a bit of this and that, they finally put me on a 12.30pm flight. So another 4hr wait in an airport. Not ideal but it could?ve been worse. By the time I finally got to the race hotel it was after 4pm and I was only able to squeeze in an hour ride. Needless to say, the morale plummeted.

By the way, this is a true story with no exaggerations.

Just to add salt to the already festering wound, the race was a right-off for me. I got dropped after 60kms. Bugger. Not one to completely give up, I turned around and rode back to the city. After a few extra turns I managed to clock up 150kms. Not ideal but it could?ve been worse?.

Yeh so that was
Cholet, my first race back since my operation. Beauty!

So now I?m en route to
Belgium. I have GP Waregem to race on Wednesday and E3 Prijs Vlaanderen on Saturday. Thankfully I was able to scrape the miniscule amount of morale I had left, up off the tarmac and do a 5? hr ride somewhere in the middle of
France yesterday. It certainly made me feel a lot better even though I got caught in freezing cold rain, briefly took a wrong turn on the way home, found my way again, flatted, couldn?t get the tubular off then couldn?t get the new tyre on, meanwhile my hands froze off trying?.But finally the rain stopped, I fixed the flat and I got back to the hotel?and I actually felt ok with it all.

Stay tuned?

Julz