Packed Full of Racing!

0 Submitted by on Sun, 01 June 2014, 18:40

Saturday (May 10th) what an interesting day!!! 10:30am one of the worst things happened. As I’m heading out to the race I LOCKED MYSELF OUT OF THE HOUSE. You may ask how did I do this? Well Note to self the front door automatically locks when it closes. To make matters worse, the team that I’m staying with right now was gone to Holland for the weekend. So here I am by myself locked out of the only place to stay. I called the DS and owners looking for help which I didn’t end up getting until hours later that evening. I was lucky enough to have all my gear for the race though.

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With nothing else to do I set off to the race with my frustrations fuming and my heart racing a hundred miles a minute. Between leaving later than I wanted, to getting lost and not being able to find where the start was, I got to this race with a little over half hour to spare before GO time. I’m not sure what it is with Belgium organizers but they just love putting a billion corners in the courses. This race played out with a break of eight getting away. They were never given more than like 40 seconds. At the midway point of racing I jumped across with three others. A cool thing at this race was a prime every lap of the 21 lap race so I managed to score some extra $$$ late in the race. With over 2.5 minutes on the field on the last lap. This stupid game of cat and mouse starts to play out. With about 1.5km to go, I counter an attacked and got away with one other bridging across a few hundred meters later. At this point the two others wouldn’t pull through so my options were either to go 100% full gas to be top three or I let everyone back together and let this come down to a sprint where anything could have happened. I decided to go Full Gas and walked away with a somewhat happy/disappointing third place. 

The day after there was another race pretty much in my backyard, about 7km away. That day’s forecast was perfect if you were a fish… there was so much rain! I don’t think it every stops raining in Belgium! Also the wind was the strongest I’ve seen it here. I think 95% of this race I saw nothing but the gutter, my eyes were in the back of my head just staring at the wheel in front of me waiting for this painful time to end. It ended a lot sooner than expected because with 5 laps to go of the 17 lap race I hit a groove in the road pretty hard and got a flat tire. By the way, there is no wheel car in kermis’ and if there was good luck even trying to get back in the race.

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The next couple days were recovery leading into my Pro debut on the European circuit on Wednesday. 

This Pro Kermis race had over 5,000 euros up for grabs which meant the best of the best come out to play. For those cycling fans, when I showed up to this race I was greeted by teams like: Lotto, Omega, Garmin, Trek Factory, BMC, TopSport Flanders, Wanty, Lite Roubiax, and other top Belgium teams. With almost 200 starters my Pro debut couldn’t have started off any better other than getting caught in a 20 man crash 1km into racing. Then my race ended after only 50km into the race, along with 150 other riders. Splits happen everywhere on these small narrow roads. I have a new appreciation for the riders that race the Belgium classics every year because racing with 200 other riders that all want to be at the front, on roads that are no more than a single car wide is HARD! This race was exactly like the Belgium classics that I had watched as a kid, and still do. It was so cool to finally be racing beside some of the biggest names and teams in the sport.  

 

 

Doesn't look the healthiest!

Doesn’t look the healthiest!

 

This weekend brought two epic rides. I have been told that in order to be Pro you have to act like a Pro. My only way to race was to ride to and from the races which were both 30ishkm away and 120km races. All-in-all this just means I can eat more (aha) and if I do well enough maybe I’ll have a Belgium waffle as a reward! 

Now Saturday(May 17th) was probably one of the hardest races I’ve done ever. A tip for everyone is that it’s easier to be in the front group then to be in the chasing one. After I missed a break of almost 20 guys I spent over an hour and a half chasing with the peloton to only manage to bring back 13 of the 20.  After all this hard work I was rewarded with a 30km solo ride home and a 10 euro profit on the day finishing 28th. 

Sunday was an even bigger and harder day just because of the efforts of the day before and racing against fresh guys is never easy or fun. I managed to get into the 16 man breakaway for about 100km to the finish. In this race I definitely felt the effort from the day before, I was really tired. I was only able to do enough work to keep the break happy enough to in roll steady (somewhat.) With 18km to the finish the attacks to split this big group apart started to happen. However one of the worst feelings of racer happened with under 6km from the finish. I started hitting the “WALL” the legs were on fire!!! I then finished 14th with another 35km solo ride back home.IMG_20140601_131535[1]

This next week brings the three stage Triptyque Ardennais. What I was about to find out was one of the hardest races on the Belgium circuit mixed with bad luck that didn’t end well.

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