1 Star Dining

French race food lived up to its notorious hype as I'm currently sitting in the bus with one other teammate while the final stage of Etoile Besseges has hardly begun.I had the dubious chore of waking up five times to orally empty the contents of my digestive tract between the wee hours of 3:30am and 8:30am. Rumor has it that the current race leader succumbed to a similar fate, as did a baker's dozen or more other riders. Maybe just two from CTT isn't so bad.Having not hugged the toilet between 8:30am and our 1pm start, however, I decided to give the race my best effort. I still vividly recall the words endeared unto me by Dear-ol'-Dad, "I didn't raise a quitter!" It's worth pointing out, though, that unfortunately for poor-ailing-iamtedking the race begins with a three kilometer categorized climb straight from the starting gate. Sure that's not long, but when literally meter one is uphill, I'm allowed to be unhappy given my circumstances.You can probably guess where the story goes from here... Start gun fires, attacks straightaway, all the barfing early this morning took the snap out of my legs, kilometer two is in sight and I'm forced to abruptly find the side of the road and yak again. Yup, time to pull the plug. I'm now a DNF instead of the DNS that I figured I would be around 6:00 this morning.On the bright side, since Poppa didn't raise no quitter, I'm now able to see parts of the race I don't see from the sidelines, like the small army of people who set up the finishing banners, barriers, swag for sale, and autograph seekers already posting up besides our team buses three hours before the race will conclude.Typed on my phone.