Cirque de Stewart

"He's cold, spike him back and grab the back board..."

A direct quotation from the crazy voice in my head, on a French morning in France, before a French race. My alarm clock shakes my bedroom like an earthquake, but I am still lying motionless.
It keeps on buzzing away until my eyelids surrender. I sloth over to the other side of the bed to pat my phone on its face to stop it from squealing. It becomes soothed.
My brain starts to boot up. It makes the exhausted but determined whir of a computer block manufactured in the 90s.

The sullen walk to the kitchen follows. My conscience's method to 'spike me back' now comes into light:
A big, black beautiful bag of premium 'Café Noir' lies vulnerably atop of the microwave, within pouring distance of the facilitating coffee machine. Brain's Windows '97 is fully booted up by now, fully capable of the precise technique of unfolding some filter paper into the drip-style coffee maker. Noir powder tumbles onto the filter paper, water is added to the container, the blessed invention is turned on and I wait pensively.
I am Scarface, with a slightly more manageable/less illegal addiction.

After 4 mugs of hot paradisiacal juice (ingested through my mouth not up my nose; I'm classier than Tony Montana), and a standard cyclist pre-race breakfast, I'm on it like a car bonnet. Pieces of cycling equipment are flung into the teamcar and it's pedal to the allocated speed limit, until we reach our destination.

At the race I am still bouncing from all that caffeine. I go to the sign on and throw my licence and magic piece of paper from Cycling Ireland which allows me to race in France, at the commisaire. They write my name down and I sign with an X, too buzzing to coordinate a complex signature.

Still, by 12 o'clock I am yet to have a conversation which I wholeheartedly understand. Even though I'm with an Irish counterpart, I'm still dribbling over the Café Noir.
I quickly set out to find out what the finishing circuits are like. A 4k lap with a headwind up a 4minute climb. Not ideal for getting away on your own, but what can be done about this concrete meteorological fact?
Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you. So I decided to take a headwind to every race I go to, to the most desirable place to get away on the route.

After two reconnaissance laps I'm still shaking, and my eyes are still pupil-filled black.
I need to CALM DOWN.
Another lap does the trick. I meet a fellow French Hennebont teammate, and we have a left-to-right-hand, hand shake; which happens to be very fitting as we have an extremely awkward conversation about the race we're both about to do, and what it actually consists of.
But we enjoy each other's company: we spent 60k together off the front of a race last week, successfully making it to line performing a team 1-2; so our chemistry is as high as Mr Montana's braincells.

I now lounge on my top tube, under a départ banner. Finally, I have chilled out. If I was a colour, I would be mellow yellow.
Oakley shades cover my eyes; not because it's sunny, but to shield the outside world from the malevolent scowl on my face.

Why am I scowling?
A Frenchman is firing off words into his beloved microphone, which is stuck to his chin, desperately trying to call out every single competitor. I won a race in Melrand last week, so when he comes to my name, he makes sure to squeeze all the juice out of every syllable.

'Dannnnn-yaaaaallll Steeeeewwww-aaaaart'

And then the French Phil Liggett goes on about my race win. My current poor linguistic skills mean I'm only able to recognise the words 'Daniel', 'Stewart', 'Hennebont', 'Melrand' and 'Irlandais'.
Okay, it's not too bad assuming that a foreigner is singing you praises in his native tongue. However, the waiting gets to me the most. Patience is a virtue, yes; but why would I want a virtue when I could be racing ?!
My bit of feedback to the FFC would be for mimes to commentate on races. A simple thumbs up, then a 'trapped in a box' impression and we would swiftly have the race underway.

After Phil has finished his Martin Luther King, 'J'ai un rêve' speech, an official blows his majestic whistle and we're off into the sunset.





My life is a circus.