Rest Day (Morzine)

We woke up this morning to some fckn bad news! What was supposed to be a relaxing day was about to get very stressful for a lot of people...

Overnight someone had broken into the bike storage room and stolen 10-15 bikes! Williams’ bike was amongst them... my heart was racing when I heard the news and rushed down to see if mine was still there. My custom built bike is pretty unreplaceable on any kind of short notice... not to mention the silly amount of money that it has steadily drained from my bank account over the last few months. Feel totally, totally gutted for the guys that are now without their bikes.

Someone must have watched a lot of serious kit rolling into the hotel (or received a tip off from the staff here) and rolled up with a van during the night, broken in through the back door and loaded them into a van.

Strangely a lot of the more expensive, high-end bikes (such as mine and Chris’ Cervelos, Phil’s Parlee and Rick’s Time) remained untouched. It seems that the thieves focused on brand names they recognised, so almost all the Specialized bikes got nicked along with some Felts.

Williams took it all pretty well I think and fortunately with Chris’ bike still here he can use that until Chris rejoins the group on Tuesday. Chris is bringing out a new bike for Mark when he gets out. Most of the morning has been trying to sort the logistics of this... At least he will be on a bike tomorrow.

Outside of that trauma, today has been a relaxing day and a chance to catch up on some sleep and admin (including a much needed trip to the laundrette). A swim in the pool and watching the football (thank god we are not in the country for the next two weeks, maybe all the fuss will have died down by the time we get back).

Morzine is absolutely rammed with hairy, smelly downhill mountain bikers this weekend as there appears to be some sort of convention or event going on.

Tomorrow is one of the four biggest days of the Tour and takes in a couple of huge climbs, an early night and an early start await us. I have done the majority of tomorrow’s route at various points previously and it is as beautiful as it is epic!

S