Wednesday 24 June 2009

Day 5 - Wednesday 24th - Gareth's Birthday

Three have become 5. Gareth Walker and Lynsey are now also in Nice though we haven't seen them yet. Lynsey had idea's today for Gareth's birthday, so he didn't come out to play.

6:30am Matt and I met in reception for a walk to the beach in new flip flops for a swim. The beach was quiet. Very quiet. There were at most 3 people in the water swimming and not many more moving around on the 3 miles worth of beach front. We headed down to the beach area nearest to the hotel and put our t-shirts and towels on the fencing that delinated the cafe that was hours away from opening. There was a chap milling about amongst the sun loungers in the cafe so I did wonder if our items would be removed from his fence. We walked into the water in our flip flops - so much easier. Then threw them onto the beach - needless to say the four of them spread out a little.

The water was easily warm enough again even that early in the morning not to need wetsuits and we swam 500m along the beach before turning to swim back. Once back to our entry point our flip flops were no longer scattered on the beach but had been neatly put with our items on the cafe fence. People can surprise you at times. The chap, who I presume was a night time security guard, came over to talk to us getting out and two other chaps who were arriving to start their swim. Whilst we were warm in the water, it definately wasn't warm in the air. Matt and I opted to miss the cold water shower on the beach and headed back to the hotel. Despite a warm shower I was still shivering throughout breakfast.

At 10am, Matt and I then went out for a repeat of the Col de Vence reccee ride of the Bike Course. It was still stunning today and we both returned home buzzing and feeling ready for Sunday.

On the route we stopped at the bike shop in Vence were we got chatting to a Norwegian family who were interested in our biking, skiing, running and Ironman exploits. We could have chatted for ages, but Matt I and I had a show down with a hill. The gauntlet from the shop was a 32minute ascent as their record. We did it in 40mins without pushing too hard. There was another rider out on the hill that went past us. He fairly flew past us and was clearly out for a hill rep session. He was descending past us, then caught us about half way then was descending when we got near the top. It was hot, yet he was wearing long sleeve top over a base layer and long legs on too. Suspect he beat the 32mins.

No comments: