Keepers Tour: Eat Properly

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During last year’s Keepers Tour, the motor was fine for about two or three days until it suddenly sputtered and shut down completely on Wednesday. My basic problem, it appears, lies with my ongoing struggle with body dysmorphia; based on the quantity of calories rolling into the station on the Malteni train, I was loathe to lay into the vast spread of home-cooked meals our beloved Keepers Tour cook, Geneviéve, was churning out on a daily basis.

This would be idiotic for more reasons than the basic fact that I was depriving myself of second and third helpings of her incredible cooking. More critically, I was depriving my body of the nutrients it needed to rebuild after riding day after day on the pavé and bergs.

There is something about the stones and their way of knocking your bike against you over and over and over again that demands a bit more sustenance to mend the muscles than does your average Sunday roll up and down the local boulevard. This is not the time to whinge about waist lines – this is time to focus on building reserves and recuperation.

Herein lies the genius of the Pavé Cycling Classics boys William and Alex. William somehow tricked his mother-in-law Geneviéve into catering to us – two years running. I can imagine that coming into the experience blind last year, perhaps no one knew better. But that’s no excuse for this year; William must have done some serious sweet-talking in order to convince her to do it a second time. From what I know of him, I’m guessing he’s not above blackmail that involves grandchildren or bamboo shoots.

There is strength in numbers, of course, so this time around Geneviéve was smart enough not to take it on herself and somehow enlisted her best friend Odile as second-in-command. And in command they are. I used a bucket from the kitchen to clean my bike, upon which discovery they made some angry sounds and now I’m scared to make eye contact with them.

William’s cunning doesn’t end there though; he managed to cajole his lovely sister, Gemma, to agree to participate as well, though I assume the bartering of his children was involved in that negotiation as well.

Between these three ladies looking after us, we’re eating like kings and this time I’m all-in on the food. Tonight’s meal of lamb, pommes boulangére, and white beans in cream sauce didn’t stand a chance. I piled a mountain of it on my plate that made Odile do a double-take; when Geneviéve collected the plate after I crushed it, she made a gesture that said she was putting it back on the shelf straight away; no washing needed.

Moderation is not my strength. Maybe there’s a middle ground, but I’m never sure how to find those.

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33 Replies to “Keepers Tour: Eat Properly”

  1. Ah, le bon goût de cuisine domestique ! Save some for me and The Engine Thursday night.

  2. Looks and sounds fabulous. If you can’t blow a gasket at table after a day on the cobbles, when can you? And in France, with somebody’s mother cooking? Sweet Jesus.

  3. O, what envy. I eat of the wheat bread and organic peanut butter. The milk. You have planted more — yet more — reason to attend the KT 2014.

  4. and Geneviève claims not to speak English, so all that foul mouthed talk that would get one thrown out of any other house is somehow tolerated at the gite. It’s a win-win situation. 

  5. In that case, I recommend frequent and incorrect conjugations of the verb “foutre.” It’s only what you’ve got coming, you lucky sods.

  6. Great food, and great beer. Is that not the deep down, real reason, that we love this sport?

  7. Small confession: food is why I ride. I’ve had a lifelong special relationship with food, and only when I ride can I justify how I like to eat.

    Besides: good food is expensive. It’s not like I retired from a position as a wall street banker to take up cycling.

    Moar KT pics!

  8. Good old home cooking, Looks  & sounds like top quality pave  fuel to me. Living like kings and riding on the roads of legend .  On that note food is one of the most overlooked items out in my group rides that i can think of. One might even confuse it with lack of fittness in contrast to  lack of fuel your body needs to keep going. We’ve all been there at some point, when you’ve burned one to many matches and no way to light the candle. ( shit sandwich i tell ya) Now It’s part of my mental check off before i roll. Really think about it….. can you enjoy your recovery beverage when you’ve just spent triple over time in the pain cave. The pain cave it self is a bastard, let alone any over time one has incurred for lack of preparation. Justsaynen

    VLVV

  9. @Cyclops

    Holy shit! What is that scary rat-pig doing on your table? Every house in Idaho has a cast iron frying pan; dispatch that crime against nature at once!

    @Frank: You’re in France fer fuck’s sake, and you have a native cooking for you. I suggest that you apply the same measure of Rule #5 at table that you do en pavé. Eat to ride? Are you kidding? Ride to eat this week, boys, and feast like kings. Memento Mori…

  10. @Spun Up

    @Cyclops

    Holy shit! What is that scary rat-pig doing on your table? Every house in Idaho has a cast iron frying pan; dispatch that crime against nature at once!

    @Frank: You’re in France fer fuck’s sake, and you have a native cooking for you. I suggest that you apply the same measure of Rule #5 at table that you do en pavé. Eat to ride? Are you kidding? Ride to eat this week, boys, and feast like kings. Memento Mori…

    Or Belgium, don’t allow my obvious exhaustion and slight inebriation to distract from the larger, and obviously more prescient and insightful, point.

  11. Forgive my brevity; we’ve got to load up on food because we’re headed to Liege to ride with this guy today.

  12. @eightzero

    Small confession: food is why I ride. I’ve had a lifelong special relationship with food, and only when I ride can I justify how I like to eat.

    Besides: good food is expensive. It’s not like I retired from a position as a wall street banker to take up cycling.

    Moar KT pics!

    +1.

    I ride, I eat what I like, when I like. Inside this skinny body there is a ‘beefy’ guy waiting to burst out. The bike keeps that man at bay.

  13. I completely follow all of this sage advice…..but occassionally neglect to expend the calories first and therefore I am unlikely ever to hit 80kgs!

  14. I remember having no problem at all with going back for thirds of Genevieve’s cooking – especially the puddings. Nevertheless I still went hunger flat on the last sector before Roubaix,as you guy’s where mixing it up with the traffic and needed William to coax me home. Clean your bike with a bucket from the kitchen Frank! You should be peeling spuds for the rest of the tour..

  15. {sigh}.  Most of the time, I’m pretty happy with my job of teaching.  Great breaks, usually have the ability to sneak in a ride after school gets out, then work in the evening to prepare for the next day and grade — but still get in some daylight.  It forces me into a permanent Velominatus Budgetatus status, but I’m resigned to that, I guess…

    …but I will never be able to travel to the Spring Classics while I’m a teacher.  You just can’t take off mid-term like that.  And I’m okay with that, even, for the most part.  But then you’ve got to go and post shit like this and make me regret my career.

    Ah, hell.

  16. @cognition

    Je ne regrette rien old chap… nothing to do with career. I’m definitely not Budgetatus but I would have to be Velominatus Non Familias to be able to afford the cost AND the time.

  17. @cognition I feel your pain, it’s lambing time at the moment so no way I’m getting the time off… Jealousy is very much coarsing through me right now

  18. the food reminds me of my time in Pau. I had wild boar instead of lamb. frahnk l’m so jealous

  19. @zalamanda

    the food reminds me of my time in Pau. I had wild boar instead of lamb. frahnk l’m so jealous

    “Was that boar wild?”

    “Well it wasn’t very happy.”

  20. I’ve never been a believer in moderation. Pedal more – get faster, drink more – get drunker, eat more – err pedal more…circle of life, innit?

    That said a session scarfing cochinita pibil, heat level 10 at one of the local hostelleries last threw a 2 by 4 through the spokes this morning in no uncertain fashion.

    Hopefully the pain will have subsided by the journey home….Smash up some cobbles out there chaps!

  21. @iceman

    @cognition I feel your pain, it’s lambing time at the moment so no way I’m getting the time off… Jealousy is very much coarsing through me right now

    lambing time! A fellow frame then, no sheeps here though!

  22. Despite Geneviève & Odile’s best efforts to over feed us with endless five course meals, and a constant supply of Maltini beer (watch out for the spurting), the cycling on the Keepers Tour balanced everything out ands I’ve returned home weighing what I did when I left.

    They’ll have to try harder next time to fatten me up!

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