Living with other cyclists
I get asked this a lot and if you live with a cyclist you will have an idea what I mean. Sometimes it can be pretty annoying and difficult, but thankfully we are all riders and we are used to it.
I'll start with the cupboards, it's mainly a lot of meat and salad. Fish, chicken, vegetables, fruit, yogurts and nuts. No chocolate though, maybe a little stash hidden under my bed but that’s it. I cant live without a treat at the end of a good training week! We don’t judge each other and no one will if you eat unhealthy, but we all like to keep on top of the diet and give ourselves the right fuel!
Luckily I have a room to myself for now and for me this is really important as I like to go into my own space and do my own thing rather than feel someone is watching me all the time, you know the feeling. But for me that’s a big part. I love getting back from training and getting a shower, then having a bit of time to myself, speaking to family, girlfriend, watching a movie etc. But for sure I love spending time with others and having the craic but sometimes I'm a bit of a loner.
The worst part of living with a cyclist is the bathroom, I like to think I'm one of the clean ones but as you know cyclist shave their legs etc and hairs can be everywhere and this can be very annoying! The smell is also sometimes quite bad in the bathroom, it smells like shit and febreze. I get longer at holding my breath everyday.
This team house is lovely though! Its got everything you could ask for, swimming pool, big kitchen, bathrooms, nice beds, just everything you need and more!
See how I mentioned the pool first! 16 degrees and the Irish kid leaps for it every time lol.
French progress
I came up with the idea the other day, but I am going to learn two new words everyday and I think that is going to help! Nobody in the team house speaks French also so we are doing French at the dinner table and we try to speak to each other. I like to think now I'm a pretty basic at French I'm not great and not bad but I can get through most causal conversations. But some French people will speak super fast and you feel like asking them to text you later.
Relationship with riders
Everyone in the house gets on really well! We have good laughs together and train a good bit together.
Yesterday I rode with Dusan, who is the team sprinter and the route we planned was pretty flat. If you know sprinters, they are a good bit heavier than climbers like me so on the flat they can push a lot more power with not much effort but on the climbs they suffer a lot more. So for me riding with him on the flat is VERY difficult I had normalised almost 300watts for the 4hrs!! CRACKED
People also ask what do you talk about for 4hours when you train with someone. It’s a good question really because surely for 4 hours you run out of stories. But here, when we do our long rides we have earphones with us and we put them in and when we feel like talking, we talk. I never feel the need I need to talk for the whole ride.
Yesterday what I mainly spoke about was "Dusan, can we please take it easy for a minute".
Mulu one off my other good friends in the house, he is from Ethiopia and he got to talk to his mother the other day for the first time in a long time! There is currently a war out there right now and they have no mobile service, wifi, nothing! I saw Mulu's mood change completely after he got speaking to his family for them 10 minutes! It was almost a relief. Its really nice to see and makes you think how lucky we really are!
Social Media
Now that I'm living in France just riding my bike pretty much I found my screen time has went up a lot! I'm not sure if you have watched the 'social dilemma' but it pretty much tells you your phone knows everything about you and now I am beginning to see that and it's a bit freaky for sure. The other day I was looking back on photos of the summer, spending time with friends and my phones mood changed to a more depressed way, like it showed photos of sad memes, tic tok's of sad things etc.
Dusan also mentioned we should buy a TV just for the bedroom so we can play the play station in the room, and 10mins later my phone is showing my lots of advertisements of TV's! Its freaky!
My thoughts
If I'm honest I'm missing home more this week, but it comes and goes. In Sierra Nevada I missed home for one week then I was fine and so and so on. There just isn't much happening this week and there is a high possibility my race will get cancelled next weekend with the new restrictions coming in soon.
Today we rode to see GP Marseille, it was 2 hours out and about 2 hours back. Was really nice to see some sort of normality again and I met my coach Maxime at the race and we rode back a bit together.
But moral is very high right now with the good weather coming in. Each week its going up 2 degrees! Nearly time to show some skin!
But for sure I miss the Irish coast road!
Thanks to everyone for reading, I've been blown away by the support in these!
Hope everyone has a good week :)
Kevin.