Long time no blog!!
I’d say I’ve been busy, but that’d be a lie. Truth is, I’ve not been feeling the vibe, so here’s a big catch up covering the last three weeks to make up for it so it’s a bit longer than usual. If you click on the photos above, they’re all captioned from which race they were.
What’s happened in the meantime:
7 races
2 podiums
5 top 10′s
Mum and dad leaving
A visit from aunties and cousins
1 August - Denderwindeke kermesse and I felt like absolute crap. It was a pretty big field, my legs ached, I wasn’t enjoying it and I was considering just finishing in the bunch. With a break of 5 up the road I’d given up, until the last lap that is. Along a long straight stretch of road with 1.5 laps to go, two riders had attacked and had about 20 seconds on the bunch. Another two riders tried to chase them down but were pulled back by the peloton, where I was sitting fourth wheel. As soon as they were pulled back I launched a counter-attack, pedalled really, really fast and did some cornering that even I was impressed with. I managed to catch those two riders and we worked well on the last lap where we came into the last corner before an 800m uphill drag to the finish. One of the riders from the break had dropped off and we could see him up ahead, so I took off, chased him down and made the terrible mistake of sitting on him for about 2 seconds too long before going for the finish. By this point one of my other chase companions had managed to jump on my wheel and came round me just before the finish, landing me in 6th, which I was happy with considering my early mentality. 2 August - Balen kermesse, this one was a goodie. Early on in the race there was a break of four that went up the road and I noticed one of the guys was super strong from what I’d experienced in previous races so decided to bridge across. I think the gap was about 20-30 seconds and with a crafty attacking manoeuvre away from the bunch I rode steadily across to them in just over a lap, about 6km. When I got there I gave them the look and got stuck in. It came down to a sprint between the five of us and the previously mentioned very strong guy had me. Should I have won? Probably not, he was definitely the strongest there, but I definitely deserved my second place. Could I have done anything to change the result? Possibly, but it’s over now and I’d learnt my lesson. 5 August - Heers kermesse and an adventurous day out. It was a mid-week race about 30km north of Liege and I had no-one to take me so caught the train down to St Truiden earlier than necessary, had a ride around enjoying the decent weather and the sights, had a coffee, ate my lunch then meandered the 10km to the race following the route my Garmin gave me. It was an interesting route choice with a mixture of main roads, residential roads, small farm roads and things that could constitute ‘single track’ but the scenery was amazing and I enjoyed the ride down, nice scenery and all that jazz. The race certainly wasn’t flat with being down that way and directly after the start/finish there was an 800 metre hill that hurt. It was another race where I wasn’t feeling too fab so was going to be content with finishing in the bunch. A break of 4 had gone up the road and all was chugging along nicely until over the hill on the last lap where one rider tried to give it some jandal. Thanks to him I pulled the same move I pulled in Denderwindeke (1 August, above) and when he was caught I took off. I held off the chasing peloton to land another top 5 with 5th place. I picked up my race winnings, meandered back through the meadows (literally) whilst watching the hot air balloons in the distance, got motor-paced back into town by a passing scooter so missed out on some window shopping at the brothels on the main road back to the station, which was quite lucky in fact because I arrived at the station 5 minutes before the train. Had I missed it I would’ve had to have waited another hour for the next train, so thanks motoman! 8 Aug - Huldenburg kermesse, a race I did last year and hated. A race I did this year and enjoyed but only managed an above average result, above average because it’s above the average placing I usually get. There’s a hill in this race as well and at points I was just staring at the wheel in front willing myself to keep pushing till it eased off. On the plus side though, the other side of the course had a -17% downhill through a residential area where we were nailing 90+ km/h. I was trying a new nutritional supplement for the race that I’d seen online. Nutritional supplement makes it sound fancy, but really it was just waffle and jam, it didn’t work and I won’t be trying it again! Back to the race though, long story short I missed a split of 14 riders that went up the road and managed to finish just ahead of what was left of the peloton for 15th. 9 Aug - Nederokkerzeel kermesse, otherwise known as notalotofenergy kermesse. After the previous day and probably the race on Wednesday I wan’t going too good and did just end up finishing in the bunch of this race, more to the back if I’m being honest because I sat up at the finish. Sometimes you have those days, so I just accepted it, got a pack of cards out when I got home and dealt with it. I took the week off racing the following week as I had a kermesse organised by our team on the Saturday and wanted to perform well for that, and perform I did! Two of my aunties and two cousins came over from England on the Thursday night and it was great to see them and spend time with them, unfortunately they left about half an hour before the start of the race. 15 August - Rumst kermesse organised by the parents and team of De Dijlespurters Mechelen, my team. With primes on offer every lap and what I thought was a trophy if you placed top 3, combined with the fact it was a ‘home race’ I wanted to ‘go hunnids’. Race number for the day was 3, so I was told with no pressure whatsoever by my cousin that I had to get third or better. After a week, or more like a month of on average, pretty decent weather, it was really put on for this race, classic Belgian weather. Wet, windy and all the more enjoyable. I formed a break pretty early on which built to a group of 11 riders and we soon put a decent amount of time into the field, causing them eventually to be pulled off with a couple of laps to go. Everyone was working well together and the course suited me pretty well, longish uphill drags into the wind, a nice cross-wind section and some flowing corners to put digs in. I went to contest one or two of the primes but realised that it was going to require too much effort to get them and learning from previous races, I wasn’t going to waste my energy. Coming into two laps to go we passed the start/finish line and the corner immediately after the line threw me a curve ball, as I was swooping ride I felt my back wheel start to slide, thought “this is how it ends” but managed to pull it back and tried to throw it out my mind. That lap I took a dig on one of the corners halfway round the lap but was quickly shut down, which probably turned out for the best looking back on it. Coming into the last lap and one of the guys from a team with three riders in the break went for the prime and I realised it was make or break time. I was considering performing that as a prime sprint is great cover for a surprise breakaway. So quickly moving up from 4th wheel, I railed it through my previously precarious pinch where I put a lot of faith in my bike which delivered unbelievably, and seeing the gap he had, took off after him on the slight uphill cross-wind drag. My lead up to the corner and the ace cornering was good enough to put a decent enough gap into the peloton and with the watt bombs I was dropping the group was struggling to catch me. We reached the top corner of the straight and by this point I’d caught my breakaway buddy, lovely guy. I sat on the front for most of the 8km lap, tried to get him to roll through a couple of times but he gave me the “I’ll let you win” line. I finally did get him to do two or three short pulls of about 20 seconds before I got back on the front and continued hammering it. Coming into the finale I was on the front and flicked my elbow at him to come through with 500m to go to see if he was going to let me win, he started rolling through, on the opposite side of the road, looked directly into my eyes and started sprinting. As he started going I mentally gave him the look that it wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but it didn’t matter anyway, he’d gone too soon and I was having none of it. I gained on him fast and came hurling round him to take my first win in Belgium, I was stoked! By the looks of all my supporters, they were too. It wasn’t just all the supporters in Belgium that help out either. Along with Jozef, Karin and my team family here,it’s all my English family, friends back in New Zealand and parents that back me when I’m home that have an incredible influence on my ability and riding style. Exhibit A, if Victor from Ride Bikes hadn’t tried to sell me on the idea of disc brakes, I might have done less cornering at high speed on my calliper brakes to prove him wrong, which would’ve given me less faith in the corner that mattered! Thanks for that and everything else Victor! It turned out on the podium that there weren’t actually trophies for first, second and third, but instead for first and for first rider from the Dijlespurters team, double trophy time! It also meant that I got two sets of flowers and a little bit of extra bonus money from the team, which was lovely. My data for the last lap was pretty gnarly and I know there’S a few of you That ReAd this that will know where to find those VAlues! I didn’t race Sunday as I woke up that morning with really bad pain in my knee and instead went to watch the Eneco tour which finished on the Muur van Geraadsbergen, a good day out! Which brings us to last nights race and the latest race... 19 August - Geetbets kermesse where I messed up the finish and missed out on another win or at the least a podium. It was another race where I was feeling a bit bored and breaks were going and coming back, until the last lap where four guys were up the road, five of us rode across, we all worked together and it came down to a nine man sprint with an 11 second advantage on the bunch. I went way too early, kind of. If I’d left it another 50 metres I’d have been on the podium, another 100 and I’d have possibly won, but that wasn’t the case and I ended up fourth instead. That’s bike racing however and I definitely won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon. As I was doing my post-race self-debrief in the campervan shower I realised that
I’m on really good form at the moment and
I should have won that race but
I deserved the fourth for my efforts through the race
So heading into this weekend I’m hoping that this good form will carry on for a while and I can make the most of it. I’ve started to be asked more and more often when I go home, with the weather as good as it is at the moment I’m stoked to say it’s not yet. Truth is, I’ve only got five more race weekends left so NZ better start picking its weather game up a bit or I’ll have to have an Asian vacation on the way back! T.W.C