Oh no! I broke Twitter!

Well, there you go, my five minutes of fame on Twitter are up. I broke it.

It's been getting slower and slower over the last couple of weeks - probably all those links I kept putting, to this blog - and now, today, it's taking on average five attempts each time before it will actually do anything.

It's a bit frustrating! So, probably about time I bowed out from it, then.

Hopefully we've gained a few more Schlecklanders, though, so I hope they stay around and join in making comments on the pics...

...talking of which, so this is what they mean when they talk about someone falling off the back of the peloton:

Ouch!

Quick check on Twitter:oh dear, still broken.

And I was halfway through a conversation with Anne (*waves to Anne*) as well.

Now she'll think that I'm very rude and ill-mannered....



Well, it's raining here in Schleckland, and hey, guess what, it's raining in Lux as well! So nice to think that Andy and Jakob and the others are suffering the same 'orrible weather that I am. Say, why don't we meet up for a cup of tea....  drat, I can't: (all together now) no passport.

Instead I shall look at the Howald Tunnel traffic cam - oh good, traffic moving well in both directions - and will ponder upon a comment on Twitter from Caroline concerning a news report in the Surrey Herald about a cyclist who said he "nearly fell off me bike" when he saw what he thought was a panther, while out on a training ride.

It wasn't me, honest!

OK, the thought of chasing cyclists - well, chasing one particular cyclist, before I went into Andyhab and Gave Up Having A Crush On Andy Schleck - has occurred to me, but I promise you, I was not in Surrey on the day in question.

Wait for the Tour of Britain, though, and then we'll see!

Actually, we are all "waiting" for the Tour of Britain - they aren't announcing the route until April (which is nearly here, hooray) and the website says that they are going to be looking for Volunteers for help in "fulfilling a variety of roles at start and finish venues, as well as at intermediate Sprints and King of the Mountains locations"

Well, that sounds fun - bagsy me the one with the wet sponge at the finish....

Huh, bet we wouldn't be allowed to pick what we did! I'd probably end up being the one clearing up the rubbish from the start area once they are under way, so I wouldn't be able to see any of what was going on.. and thanks to Anne for winning the competition to suggest the Worst Job Of A Cycle Race.

Back to Twitter to see if it's working yet; oh dear, things are getting worse.

I was wondering what to blog about this week, and LLB said "what about the Crit?" I thought there wasn't much point, as everyone has seen it, or read about it, by now: as you all know, we are a bit behind the times as we only get the weekends to catch up on all the cycling footage that has been recorded during the week, and after having none, none, none, for weeks, suddenly good old Eurosport has produced a whole pile of races to watch. Yay!

However, LLB said that maybe one or two of you might be interested in my particular "take" on a race (flattery will get you everywhere) and that furthermore, all the journalists etc are writing in retrospect, and again, some people might also be not quite up-to-date.

So, the Criterium International, then!  It's the 80th one: it generally happens every year, with a few gaps for World Wars and stuff like that: it occurs in Corsica, and even though it is not a UCI World Tour race, and therefore doesn't offer any Points which - we know all know - are essential for the Pro Teams to gain in order to keep their Pro Team status, it is still very popular. It's a race of three stages, over two days: confused? Yup, so were we.

Leopard Trek sent a top class team: Andy, Frankie, Jensi, Jakob, Little Fab, plus Maxime, Bruno and Anders.

Day One was the mountains: steep bits! Cobbles! Incredibly narrow roads! Views of the sea!

Jensi was a star, he stormed off  like a good 'un and enjoyed lots and lots of TV time: he's won it five times already, and the commentators frequently suggested that, at nearly 40, this would probably be his last season, although I really can't see why: he absolutely hammered along! Incidentally, apparently he used to spell his surname VOIGHT but he scared the "h" out of it.... oh, the old jokes are the best.

You could almost see on the faces of the other teams the phrase "with two Schlecks on the road, why are we even bothering to push  up the mountains?" and sure enough, towards the end, we had the enormous pleasure of seeing the Schleck Sandwich again: you know, Frankie attacks, everyone goes puff pant in his wake. Just as they get their breath back, Andy attacks: they all go puff pant after him. Then Frankie attacks: repeat until everyone not called Schleck is hanging over their handlebars thinking about throwing up.

So, this tactic worked, and Frankie shot off up the hill and won the first stage.  yay!

Day Two, first thing was the flat stage. Can't tell you anything about that, as it wasn't televised in the UK. I have no idea why! The coverage started mid-way through the ITT, and they didn't even refer to the morning's race, so we had no idea who had won it. Eventually there was a comment that the flat stage was a sprinters' stage, but the sprinters had all been exhausted by the mountain stage of Day One, so nothing much had happened.

OK we thought, let's have this exciting Time Trial, then.

Oh dear, those helmets.

So, we watched the various button mushrooms flying round the course: the footage started in time for us to see Andy's round: he made a terrible start, he was fiddling with his cleats (Kara, as was, I can hear you sniggering, stop it at once!)  (Not you, Kara Lara, the old one!) while the starter guy was doing the strange countdown sign language with his fingers.

Not quite as bad as the guy at Paris-Nice (was it?) who nearly missed his slot altogether, and was running his bike up the back of the ramp while the countdown was already starting... but it was obviously not a good start. He later said that he was having problems with his shoes, as we'd guessed: the cleats wouldn't clip in properly, and it took him something like 100 meters to get going properly.

Despite all this, and despite acknowledging that he's not (yet) a great Time Trialist, he was only 43 seconds off the leading time, which wasn't bad.

Of course, then the commentators started doing sums on their fingers: let's see, Frankie has a 14 second lead plus 10 seconds for winning Day One, and the guy in second place is 17 seconds down, but Andy just came in 43 seconds down, so Frankie will do the same (huh?) which makes him 7 seconds adrift.... etc etc. It was all just waffle to fill in the time.

Kiryienka (Movistar) was the guy to be beaten, and he did a pretty darn good TT: then at long last it was Frankie's turn, and that nice bright yellow jersey shot off the ramp.

Now, I'm not an expert, but I've watched an awful lot of pro cycling in the last few years, and I have been paying particular attention in the last year (for no particular reason at all, er hemandyschleck) and I can tell you that the difference between Frankie's TT and Andy's was really marked. Frankie looked so good! He kept his head up, his bike wasn't wobbling around as much as Andy's was, he was taking good lines round the corners, and I'm not at all surprised that Kim Anderson said "Frank did a very nice time trial today, I think it may have even been the best he has ever done.”And it was enough to win him the overall race, yay!

Not forgetting Jakob, whose TT took him to third place for the stage, so he got a podium finish too! Yay, Jakob!

Well, there you go, a thrilling week: Watched Crit, Broke Twitter. Oops. One final check to see if it's working: Oh dear, are they trying to tell me something?