Nice_ prelude

the french riviara - c'est magnifique! with Cannes and Monaco just down the coast, its hard to tell but Nice is teh scrfuuy cousin. It all looks pretty grand to me, a real smooth euro vibe. i'm in the lovely old town, but to say its a lovely hotel would be a lie. there's a dog barking next door and teh sheets are pre-stained. a 5 euro breakfast consists of a coffee, croissant, bread roll and jam. (actually, i discover that's what the french eat for breakfast, and 5E is relativley cheap. suffice to say, i'm getting through a lot of powerbar!)but the proprietors are so freindly and typically french (think Allo Allo meets faulty Towers)and since its just me in teh t_iny room i have no complaionts or cats ineed to swing. dont know how they manage with that dog though....

spent a very pleasant day on thursday riding part of the bike course with Kevin McKinnon from Ironman.com;. We headed out over teh Col de Vence in order to pick up the last 60km of the bike route - i wanted to see the fast descent. Glad i did though now i'm proper feared up. we did go a little further than i'd planned, not sure of teh wisdom of that but it was such a beautiful ride, and the last 40km were al down hill. kevin had a bee fly into his pants coming down off teh Col. Hilarious - but potentially fatal, so i guess i shouldn't laugh. he agreed it'd make a cool obiturary column. A true gent, to save my legs , he offered me his rear wheel on the last stretch back into town along the esturay. turns out that this is how a lot of them race it on race day. there's sudenlya lot of talk about drafting in this race. I guess i'm contributing to that now! surprises me with all teh hills, but i suppose that they're not so steep and being in a bunch maybe makes the desecnts easier...
gonna make it tough for me to make any ground back up on the bike if that's true- but there's nothing that worring about that can help.

likewise the swim start, or teh state of my running legs after last weekend - all i can do is go rack my bike, go through my pre race prep and then get out there and do it!

allez allez