House time

Ronde Van Vlaams Brabant is over. With 5 solid days of speed and danger in the books, I'm now enjoying some down time @ the Belgian house. The last two stages of RVVB were tough 150k and 160k days. By stage 5 I was starting to lose some motivation for the event as everyday was similar with 4 or 5 "long loops" and 2 or 3 "short loops" in order to get the distance in. I get dizzy doing laps and prefer to end up somewhere different after spending 4 hours on my bike. The reason for this tight route everyday is that in order to stay in the Region we have to do a bunch of loops. If we rode point to point 160 kilometers we would ride out of the region. So, the last day on the 5th of 7 laps after it had been raining for the last hour I found myself at the back of a strung out pack struggling to hang on. Then after avoiding a nasty rain-induced crash -by avoiding I mean not going down. I still had to chase with about 30 other riders to make it back to the pack. When we made it back I was still at the back so the next time it got strung out I popped right off the back with 1 lap remaining. As I drifted back through the caravan being splashed by the team cars as they past I was over the day. The sweep vehicle rode about two feet from my rear wheel almost the entire way to the finish occasionally beeping impatiently for me to stop and get in the van. I ignored him and eventually he sped off to join the rest of the caravan.




Another wild story from earlier in the week was in stage 2 when I witnessed (and managed to avoid-barely) one of the scariest mass pile-ups I'd ever seen. The pack was all together flying down a wide street at about 35mph when a racer to my left hit a speed bump and his hands bounced off his bars and he did a flying superman summersault into the pavement. His bike was rolling along side me minus the rider as I heard the soft, metallic crunch of aluminum, titanium and flesh like a wave crashing into shore behind me. The crash was so bike (like 70 riders or more) that the officials stopped the race up the road in order the let the others catch up.

With the first stage race in the books, I have a few days to recover in Izegem...


We ran into the mechanic at the bar across the street from the house last night. Surprisingly he was in the shop early bright and early this morning.