When I asked my vivacious Charlesville-Ardennes teammate (also training partner, travel buddy and current roommate- good thing we get along!) Vicky Holland how she would describe the French Grand Prix races, she used three adjectives: fun, fast and furious. After doing my first Grand Prix this past weekend in Dunkerque, I can definitely vouch for her enthusiastic assessment of these sprint races. While the over 20 hours of travel, requiring buses, trains, planes and vans, in two days was pretty exhausting (all for a sprint distance race), I finally understand what the fuss is all about.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Grand Prix, the series consists of multiple sprint races around France. When you race, you do so for a team, which means that you receive assistance with travel, housing, uniforms and help at the race. The race itself becomes a team endeavor since your three highest ranked athletes score points. To have your team finish well in the race and in the overall series is of extreme pride to the club, so they have turned to recruiting foreign athletes over the years. My team, Charleville-Ardennes, had five girls racing this weekend: Brit Vicky, Aussie Emma Moffett, Frenchie Delphine Py-Bilot, German Anja Dittmer and me.
The race itself was very professionally done and required a high level of skill and ability to be able to be competitive. The field was strong and the short distance means that there is little margin for error. The Grand Prix has essentially served as a developmental training grounds for European, Australian and Kiwi triathletes for years. After doing one of these races, I can see why athletes from those countries tend to be the most skilled in ITU racing. Personally, I wish that I had done these races from the start of my triathlon career, as I am just now catching up on those aspects of triathlon. While there is growing support for draft-legal racing in the U.S., we are decades away from having races of this level in terms of professionalism and field strength.
As for my performance, I was pretty pleased to walk away with a 5th place finish behind some pretty stellar triathletes at my first Grand Prix. It felt incredibly short after years without doing any sprint races, but this sluggish Yank was able to hang in with the speedsters. I am really pleased that I was able to contribute to our team’s 2nd place finish (Charleville’s first ever podium finish!) behind powerhouse Poissy. While I’m not sure which Grand Prix races will fit into my schedule, I really hope that I’ll be able to don the Charleville uniform again! While it is too late for me to do these race for development, I can certainly use them to become a more refined triathlete. On that note, it is back to work in Davos. With some big races looming in the horizon, I have serious training to accomplish!
Au revoir,
Sarah
* The Charleville-Ardennes symbol is a wild boar- something that was a good source of entertainment for us. We briefly considered a porcine-themed team cheer. Originally I was going to title this post “Groin, groin!”, the sound that French pigs make, but I thought that it might get misconstrued.
