Aug 2007

Sunday 24th June. Ironman France. 3.8km swim. 180km bike ride. 42km run. 1500 competitors. If you’re thinking, “Geez, they could find 1500 people that actually volunteer to do that?” I don’t blame you. Still, triathlon is Michael’s passion and in the for-better-or-worse tradition, I supported him in his quest to get Ironman number five under his belt. Four a.m. was getting-up time. Four thirty was eating breakfast and drinking rocket-fuel coffee time. Four forty five was double-checking equipment and getting suited-up time. I remained supportive by lying in bed groaning and pulling pillows over my head. Then it was time to go. Pre-sunrise, the morning was perfectly still and you could feel the nervous energy emanating from of hundreds of super-fit (but potentially not quite of sound mind) endurance athletes zipping themselves into wetsuits, checking their bikes, making last-minute preparations. The starting gun broke the early stillness and they were off – the leaders would return in well over eight hours, while the tail-enders would cross the finish line seventeen hours later. Michael has written his own race report which he won’t let me add to the blog because he has gone all shy, but if you want to read about what it’s actually like to physically, and mentally, put yourself through an Ironman, let us know and we’ll forward it on. And as I simply stood on the sidelines cheering for almost 11 hours, my account is much less exciting and drama-filled. You’ll be glad to know that Mike did us all proud in Nice, with a finishing time of 10 hours, 55 minutes on a thirty-degree day, and he was still smiling at the end (or was that a grimace). And other than having to limp around for a week after, losing a few toenails, sustaining a couple of weeping welts on the back of his neck from wetsuit chaffing and having a really rather nasty case of sunburn, he pulled up very well. And what’s a few toenails between friends? So...any takers for next year?
After the swim (3.8km in...)
Heading out on the bike
Sunburn and neck welts and heat stroke, oh my!

Nearly three weeks in Nice. It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But it was true, although we did have to pinch ourselves a few times to make sure. The first ten or so days we stayed in a friend’s apartment with lovely big windows overlooking the port and hence, overlooking how the other half live. Wow. These weren’t simply boats. They were floating palaces – some chic and some, well, big. All day long, in and out they’d glide, flying the flags of Luxembourg, Monaco, Cayman Islands and other tax havens. Girls in bikinis lounging in the on-board roof-top jacuzzis, attentive crew busily washing decks and delivering drinks in their white polos and sharp chinos. We certainly weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. When we could tear ourselves away from this better-than-Neighbours soap opera occurring outside our front window, we explored the city and surrounds. The highlights? Touring a fragrance factory in perfume capital, Grasse (see, I was working, I swear!), swimming (fully clothed) among the nudies at Eze-sur-mer, a gorgeous, pebbly beach, discovering the cobbled streets of cute-as-a-button seaside town Villefranche, and roaming the narrow, winding passages of Nice’s atmospheric Old Town, or Vielle Ville. And the food…The French sure do know how to enjoy things when it comes to eating. Even a simple sandwich from a roadside kiosk to a takeaway salad from a servo is something of a gourmet delight. Fresh bread, good-quality butter, crunchy leaves and fresh vegetables made even our most basic meals memorable. We also sampled the local specialty, socca – a thick chickpea and olive oil savoury pancake. It became our snack of choice for that hungry time when it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Hard life. When we were sick of socca (yes it happens), and croissant-weary, we hit the fruit and veggie market in the town square. Every morning except Monday local producers display their wares on groaning trestle tables under brightly striped canopies. Plump, juicy red berries, ripe tomatoes, smelly sausages, even smellier cheeses, mountains of garlic and at least ten different types of potatoes all jostled for our attention, fringed by leafy herbs and zucchini flowers. And the beauty of our digs – a self-catering flat – meant we could cook with farm-fresh, dirt cheap ingredients nearly every night. We were totally giving Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay (only with marginally less swearing or saying pukka and lovely-jubbly). Nearly two weeks and a few extra kilos later, we had to bid farewell to Nice apartment and commenced location in a city hotel, Le Meurice, in preparation for Mike’s big race – Ironman France. Finally, the bike, still tagging after us along like a bad smell, was to have it’s day in the sun. Speaking of sun, the temperature hovered between 25 and 30 degrees for our entire stay. Sorry. I’d like to say it was cold and miserable, or that the food was nasty, or that we stayed in a rat-infested hovel and had a really bad time, but everything was pretty much perfect. Oh, except the parking and the driving, but a promise is a promise, so my lips are sealed on that particular subject.

The fruit and veggie market
Lovely Eze village
The view from our flat...hard life!

I think I’ve probably been banging on enough about driving in France. “Enough!”, I hear you wail. So, I’ll spare you the gory details. But let me just say this, before I press on with the interesting stuff. Nothing compares to navigating a car around Nice. Not only are the narrow roads packed, and traffic jams rife, the locals just park anywhere. Two, even three cars deep, on the median strip, underneath traffic light posts in the middle of intersections, anywhere they fancy. Scary when you first encounter the city, but after almost three weeks, more than slightly amusing. The whole thumbing of noses at authority was strangely refreshing. In fact, when it comes to road rules in Nice, it’s all very ‘laissez faire’. Coming from an area where parking inspectors arrive in mini-buses in the morning to slap fines on any vehicle remaining a few seconds too long in a space, we rather enjoyed this casual approach. Road works, omnipresent in France, also seem to be undertaken in Nice with this laid-back attitude. Lots of men standing around a small hole in the role chatting – obviously this requires the whole road to be blocked off, only increasing traffic-flow issues. But no one really seems to mind, and road rage is basically non-existent which, in the midst of all that craziness, is really rather nice and very sensible, too. Now, that’s it for my diatribes on French driving. Promise. And I think I ended it on quite a positive note really. Although having said that, the next time we go to Nice, we’ll most certainly be leaving the car behind…