Author: kennettron

I’ve raced four kermesses in the past six days and now my jaw literally aches from grimacing so much the last race.

SUNDAY’S RACE: Skip to Monday’s race if you want to hear about a real Belgain kermess.

Yesterday was a lumpy course with one good-sized climb. I rode to the town of Meerbeke with Geoff (the New Zealander), Evgeny (the Russian), and Justin (the Brit). It was a quick but joyous jaunt out there at 40 kilometers of strong crosswind, which made riding easily very difficult. I was feeling good despite the large volume of miles in my legs for the week (22.5 hours worth). I attacked immediately out of the second corner and got up the road with four guys including Justin. The four of us held off the pack for a lap and a half, losing Justin and one of the other guys on the steep climb. Shortly later after the technical corkscrew descent the already shattering peloton caught me and the other guy. I continued attacking for the next two laps as the pack broke apart on the climb, came together after the descent, broke apart on the climb, etc. I thought one of those many moves would work for sure.

I missed the massive field split the fifth time up the climb (typical). I’d gone over the top of the climb either first or in the top 10 the first three times up. The fourth time up my positioning was still OK, sitting around 20th or so. I was never in huge difficulty on the climb since it was only 2 minutes and steep, just to my liking. But that damn fifth time up the climb I came into the base of it way, way too far back out of mindlessness or maybe because I had attacked shortly before; I don’t remember. Either way it wasn’t any harder than any other time up the climb, but by the time I worked my way to the front at the top of the climb, two huge groups of guys had gotten away. They were only at seven seconds though, so I figured we’d be fine considering I’d been up the road in groups multiple times with over seven seconds and had been brought back on every attempt.

I pulled, pulled, and pulled some more and tried attacking and bridging up there with groups for the next four laps until it was obvious that they weren’t coming back. Even when they only had 10 seconds the majority of the 40-50 guys still left in the pack just sat on, content to race for 28th place. It was bullshit. I was furious, yelling at everyone, swearing and throwing my hand up in the air again and again in frustration when guys wouldn’t pull through.

On the ninth lap I nailed it up the climb with two guys able to hold on. I drilled it across the top of the climb on the false flat/crosswind section and we had a good gap by the bottom of the hill. I did a lot of work and we stayed away for the next lap, with one guy bridging to us on the climb the next time up. Now we were four-strong. We worked it, me and the new guy mainly, and came through the finish line with one lap to go. The final time up the steepest part of the climb the new guy drilled it, dropping one of our breakmates, but unfortunately a large group bridged to us with about 4K to go following the descent.

We came into the final K with seven guys. Somehow I ended up getting second to last in our group’s sprint after being outwitted when two guys got a gap and no one wanted to pull them back. Of course I ended up trying to sprint up to them with 400 meters to go and I lost the valuable placing for 28th and took 34th instead. Terrible result. I had the legs today but apparently not the brains or positioning skills. I never know how these kermesses are going play out. I thought the move either goes in the first 30 minutes or goes with about an hour left to race, but apparently that’s not how it always works–or has ever worked since I got here. So far the winning move has been very late in the race or, like today, mid-way through. It’s almost as if it’s planned and the strong guys who usually win know about it and just sit and wait until the pre-determined lap to get away. The legs were there but not the local course-knowledge.

MONDAY’S RACE:

Today was a different story. Today I didn’t have the legs OR the knowledge. I came to Belg telling myself I wouldn’t race back to back days, especially since I’m riding to and from the races, totaling 5 to 5.5 hours on the bike every race day. But I broke that promise today. I was told it was another “lumpy” course out in the town of Erondegem, this one sporting a nice cobbled climb in addition to an uphill finish. I couldn’t say no and I convinced Justin to come race with me. After a massive breakfast we set out under dark cloudy skies. A minute into the ride the sun came out and I made sure to jinx us by commenting on what a nice day it turned out to be despite it spitting rain all morning. “We sure got lucky with this tailwind and the sun coming out for the ride there. The weather gods must be feeling kind today. As long as it doesn’t start raining before we start racing I’m happy.” Stupid. So, so stupid. *Hitting self on forehead with fist*

We pulled off the main road to a bike path to take a piss with about 10K to go to the race. An old guy riding a scooter came up on us from the other direction, mid-flow. If you stop to take a pee and you make sure no one’s around it’s a given that once you’re half way through peeing, a car will show up, receiving a full on glimpse of your tiny, cold, shriveled “saddle dick.” It’s because of this cycling ‘law’ that I no longer even try to conceal myself when I piss during rides. I often wonder how many little kids and old women passing by in cars I’ve shocked and horrified as I stand there on the side of the road looking up at the sky in deep daydream, whizzing my last bottle of Perpetuem away, accidentally all over my tire in many cases.

Anyways, the guy on the scooter ended up chatting with us and explained he was on his way to the race to watch (people come watch the races here, crazy right!?) and he wanted to give us a tow. He didn’t speak a word of English but it was obvious what he wanted to do, so we happily obliged and he motor-paced us the rest of the way there, but not before it started raining and I got real cold.

I started the race with numb fingers and toes even though it had stopped raining; I figured I’d warm up once things got started. Plus if I had attempted to start in my wind jacket I would have been laughed out of the race and out of the country, because no self-respecting Belgian wears anything more than a short-sleeve jersey and bibs. Arm and leg warmers are only for before and after the race. Or for January.

The pace started fast. Very fast. Gone were thoughts of being cold or worries of the rapid growth of my saddle sore, whose girth is approaching that of a ping pong ball. I was in the mindset to crush, and got away a multiple times on the first lap. I felt strong somehow. I was a bit shocked. I figured it was the caffein talking because there was no way I should have felt this good after the long ride and race the day before. I drilled it up the cobbled climb on the second lap and briefly got away in a small break again. We were caught, but then I was off again immediately in a counter attack with one other guy shortly after. We got caught half a lap later. I kept given ‘er until finally by the fourth lap I got into something that seemed like it would stick for good. I crushed it up the cobbled climb, bridging to one other guy and pulling another with me. The three of us were soon joined by four or maybe five more and we rolled through super hard and fast. Pretty quickly I was no longer capable of pulling through and a few of the guys started getting angry at me. I wasn’t dumb though, and sat on until I could sort of pull through, otherwise I’d have been dropped immediately. I wasn’t the only one in difficulty. We dropped two or three guys and it was down to five of us three fourths of a lap later. I was completely on the rivet the entire time, just dangling. Getting gapped off, suffering back on, gapped off on another corner (I think there were about 50 corners per lap x 13 laps on tiny roads), flogged myself back on, tiny tiny pull through, then immediately shot off the back again to battle my way back on.

Despite the ridiculous speed of our break, the pack caught us. I found out when all of a sudden a guy bridged to us, seemingly out of nowhere, as I came off the front after taking a pull. We’d just started another short climb as I slotted in behind him and he got popped right then as he made contact with us, gapping me and himself off in the process. I looked back to see the pack and breathed a sigh of relief as I had an excuse to get out of the move without having given up. The rest of the guys were gobbled up a minute later. That was the last time I spent time at the front.

Minutes after getting caught we entered a series of tight, downhill technical corners followed by an uphill drag at 30 mph where I couldn’t hold the wheel in front of me and 20 guys had to come around to close the gap. That was followed by a tiny portion of flat, then the 250 meter cobbled climb immediately after. I was so deep in pain for the rest of the race I could hardly believe I was still on earth and not on some distant meteor that hosts a sadistic prison labor camp for violent criminals in a futuristic, alien-dominated galaxy where a rare mineral called Suffernyte is in great demand and for some reason the only way to get it is (after a lifetime of pain and hard work on the meteor prison) to feed said prisoners to giant sand worms with millions of poisonous spikes lining their esophagus and it takes weeks of tremendous pain for the victim to die before the worm poops out a golden brick of suffernyte that smells like Hammer gel and spit.

It had began pouring rain on lap five or six, just dumping like crazy and the temperature dropped from a beautiful balmy 60-degree Belgian summer evening to a dark, frigid 48 degree TYPICAL summer Belgian evening. If I could have seen where I was going through my mud-covered glasses and blood red eyes I would have seen double, because today I got what I came here for and my eyes were finally crossed good and hard.

We’d slow to 10 mph for the tight, rain-slicked corners, dodge the manhole covers and metal grates, then sprint full on. Almost every corner was an all out sprint followed by an all out seated effort, over and over again. Like I said, there were at least 50 corners per lap.

The increasing power of the wind tore the pack apart; gaps were forming everywhere. There’s probably no worse feeling than sitting behind someone when it’s dead flat, pushing as hard as you possibly can, seated because you can no longer get out of the saddle, and see the gap continue to grow as the wheel gets further and further away. Two feet, three feet, four, five, six, six and and a half, seven, eight, nine ten, eleven feet away. It holds at eleven…twelve, thirteen, fourteen feet. And then, after you astonishingly catch that wheel 20 seconds later, you look up to see that there’s an even bigger gap to the next guy since the guy in front of you just blew up.

As I grew colder and colder the race became harder and harder. The rain increased from pouring to SUPER pouring. I was actually doing OK until it had started raining, but now my legs were completely drained. I was immensely cold. I thought my race was over about 30 separate times, then somehow I managed to find the strength and willpower to get back onto the wheel in front of me and continue the suffering. I asked guys how many laps were left or how many people were up the road. No one seemed to know and all I got were slight shakes of the head and a gasping mumble. Everyone was maxed out, except for whoever was on the front. Jesus Christ that motorcycle NEVER got tired.

I thought we’d been racing for 30th or 40th place but it turned out no one was off the front. There were 37 of us left in the race. And then sadly I got popped once and for all on one of the many short climbs after I’d been gapped off on the previous corner; a few guys came around me but there was nothing I could do to hold their wheels at that point. My ticket was so full of hole punches it had ceased to exist. The conductor came and told me I wasn’t allowed aboard the train as I held up my empty hand to show him my ticket, confused and scratching my head seeing that where my ticket had been was now just thin air. I’m happy to say that there was no possible way I could have hung on for even 1 second longer. We’d only been racing for 1:45. The 36 guys who finished must have been polar bears…on roller-blades…with rockets attached to the roller-blades…and more rockets attached to those rockets.

I got out of the rain as soon as I could and found my way to the race HQ pub where we’d signed on. I was shaking uncontrollably, definitely hypothermic, and in way more of a post-race daze than normal. There was no car to go to to warm up, no dry clothes to put on, no money to buy any food or hot drink from the bar. I didn’t know where Justin was. I didn’t see him once during the race so I assumed he had dropped out a while ago and was now probably with one of his teammates who we’d left our bags with before the race. I stood there in the middle of the pub after eating my two cookies in my pocket, face covered in road grime and snot, shivering and hunched over with arms crossed trying to warm up, not doing or thinking anything at all except about how cold I was and how I better not get sick because I was just getting over my last cold a few days ago damn it. Eventually I found a seat in a corner and shivered there for half an hour, dreading the ride home. Even when I got home there would be no hot shower since we only have warm water between 12AM and 8AM (it’s a rare, grim day that I get up before 8). I began to believe I’d never be warm again in my life. I came to terms with that.

I went out a few times in the pouring rain to see if I could find Justin, but quickly returned to the crowded pub to sit and shiver in the relative warmth of the bar some more. The waitress felt bad enough for me to come give me a cup of coffee, two lumps of sugar, cream and a small cookie. I mumbled an extremely appreciative but slurred “donk you” (flemish for thank you) and held the tiny warm espresso cup in my hands, enjoying the warmth of it even more than the actual drink.

Finally Justin showed up. Now began the second hardest part of the day: forcing myself to step back out into the cold, dark evening and riding 20 miles home in dumping rain, already hypothermic in wet clothes, absolutely no energy left…into a headwind and to an empty cupboard of food. It was almost too much to cope with after the brutality of the race and I weighed my options: 1) take a train home: no trains in sight, 2) beg for a ride from another racer: haha not a chance that would work, 3) find a hotel: there are no hotels in Belgium, 4) just continue to sit and shiver in the bar and not think about it anymore. The final option seemed best to me, but Justin wasn’t as cold and was therefore thinking slightly more clearly. We waited another 15 minutes until there was finally a break in the rain and two weak as rainbows came out. I did NOT exclaim my joy of seeing a double rainbow. We began the cold slog home.

In some strange turn of luck the weather gods’ guilt caught up with them and they blessed us with sun and an increase in air temperature for the rest of the ride home; within 30 minutes I stopped shivering and came back to life. Today was the most suffering I’ve done all year on the bike. The combined fatigue of all the race days, plus the rain, the cold, and the difficulty of the course made for one extremely hard race. The thought that this is the absolute one and only thing I want to do makes me seriously question my sanity.

Here I am all chipper and ready to go smash it before I left for the second Lokeren race last Friday.

Smashing it up at Lokeren, though if you remember I was thoroughly disappointed in how easy this race was.

A new day, this Sunday reg-ing for race number 3 at Meerbeke.

Either the last or second to last time up the climb at Meerbeke.

Hanging out in the changing room tent after the race.

Evgeny on our ride home.

Behind the back camera work to get this shot of Geoff

And Justin.

We splurged and got pizzas at the pizza restaurant downstairs, whose aroma has been tantalizing us for days. Note: Belgians do not know how to make a proper pizza, but it tasted marvelous anyways.

On Sunday night the TV show House is on, which is a nice break from the network “Jim”–basically MTV but it actually plays music videos. The bald guy there is “the Greek” aka Michael, who’s really from South Africa but calls himself Greek because his parents are. He’s insane, and I’m not just saying that. He’s 50 years old and believes he’s training like us for bike races, though he’s never done one and rides roughly 1 hour a day. He lived on the streets in New York for years before he decided to become a professional bike racer last year and came here to Belgium to live the dream. He never shuts up and is paranoid that people are trying to sabotage him–including a network of black, gangster spies in LA. Add about 10 IQ points to Forest Gump, a huge dose of racism, and a never ending blather of mindless talk and self-righteous argument and you’ve got Michael. I’ve come very close to taking a pillow to his head while he’s asleep. He’s entertaining in small doses but not after hard races.

New day: Monday

There’s no screwing around here in Belgium. Justin has a BAG of pure, unadulterated Columbian caffeine.

Finally home after the torturous cold race…

…home at last, but to an empty cupboard. Luckily there’s a huge stash of community pasta, which Justin and I put a large dent in.

Reasons Why Belgium Is Better Than The USA:

The bread machine outside our apartment downstairs. Fresh bread from the bakery every day except Sunday.

They start them young here…with beer, that is.

Just one of many bike racing statues. This one was right at the finish line of the Meerbeke race.

Bike trophies in the pub at Meerbeke.

Also in the pub, a framed picture of ????

…Even better.

And last but not least:

Euro mullets are in full force over here.

And to further prove my point:

That there is a rat tail in combo with a beaded rat tail. Dirtiest possible bike racer haircut. This guy probably won the race with that haircut btw.

I never thought I’d say it, but damn that kermess was easy. And BORING! I made the long journey up north through Gent and out east to Lokeren again for what I hoped would be another slobernocker. Same field of riders, same town, same prize money. But completely different atmosphere. These Lokeren kermesses are a three-part series that started on Monday–the day I missed unfortunately, due to fighting off that cold (I’m 100% healthy now though). The lack of guts in today’s race could have been because everyone was tired (unlikely) as well as the top three series leader’s teams chasing everything down and keeping the field together. Each day has a different course, and today’s didn’t include any serious cobbles, which was probably the biggest factor in how the race was raced.

Like last time I got lost again today. This time ending up on a tiny gravel road winding through corn fields. I was coming to terms that I rode all the way out there for nothing, seeing as there was no possible way I’d make it to the race on time (or at all) and then just like that I popped out of an ally way and was at the race.

I came prepared. I had extra coffee in a water bottle 30 minutes before the race started, more race food, more caffeine during the race, an extra water bottle in my back pocket, a great Ace of Bass song stuck in my head…I was ready for some hurtin.

One and a half minutes into the race three guys were already up the road and the field seemed content to let them go. Huh? Screw that, I didn’t ride all the way up here to sit in. I bridged the gap, went to the front of the now four-man break attempt and drilled it. Over the course of the first lap four or five others bridged up to us. But no one wanted to really pull hard except me and one other dude, both of us doing double duty pulls when others skipped out. In fact, the others in the group got upset at me for pulling through too hard. I couldn’t figure it out. Just two days before everyone was riding like the moon was focusing all of its gravitation on circulating the peloton’s legs with as much force as possible.

I came into the last corner second wheel, 400 meters to the finish line. I pulled through and looked back, saw a gap had formed to the other six or seven guys, stopped pedaling to wait for the others to get back on my wheel, annoyed and shaking my head at the way things were looking for our success, finally took my pull and they all sprinted by 150 meters from the line. NO!! THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING AGAIN!! I specifically asked people before the race about the prime laps. 50 euros a prime every other lap starting on lap #2 and ending on lap #16. But this was lap number one. Apparently I was misinformed and lost a for-sure prime winning sprint, seeing as I could have just NOT sopped pedaling and won the stupid thing. 50 euros down the drain.

I later came to the conclusion that the first 10 laps were all prime laps. Guess what the next lap number I came through in first position was. Number 11 of course.

The break did not stick. We were caught half a lap later. I went with some other attempts but could see that the race was super negative and that everyone was half asleep or something. It could have been a hard course with all the wind and turns, but no one wanted to make it hard. I sat in for a long time, waiting. Just conserving for when it would get hard. Because I KNEW it would eventually go ballistic.

Wrong. It never did. I made it really hard for myself a handful of times, doing monster efforts to bridge up to a number of different moves when I sensed the race was just about to blow apart and I HAD to get up the road to that winning move, but sadly the field always came back together. I spent most of a lap off the front with one other guy with four to go, got caught, then sat in, still waiting for it to get hard and for things to shatter. Hoping.

I was 20th or 30th wheel with a lap to go when a large break got away with all the represented teams, and their teammates blocking. Game over. I finished in the pack then rode home, upset that I could still see straight at the end of the race. No race in Belgium should leave your vision fully intact. Lame. I hear Sunday will be much, much harder.

(Written Wednesday evening)

Today I raced in Lokeren, 25 miles north-east of my town, Zingem. It was hard as shit. If said shit was frozen. Because otherwise shit normally isn’t hard. Especially mine this morning.

I woke with massive diarrhea, ate breakfast and ruined the toilet again about 45 minutes later. I’ve been eating a ton of these fruit-flavored dissolvable magnesium tablets because Justin told me magnesium was an important mineral for going fast and since he speaks with a British accent he has a lot of clout. They sell the magnesium here at the supermarket for 1 euro for a Nuun-like container of 20 magnesium tabs, so of course I’ve been downing them like candy. Turns out this kind of candy (magnesium) gives you the shits. Another symptom of magnesium overload is a feeling of weakness and tiredness, which explains why I was so tired last night after only riding 2 hours. I wasn’t tired when I woke up this morning though, until I read on the Google about the magnesium OD symptoms. Then I got real tired.

So with the power of suggestion I suddenly became drowsy and lethargic 30 minutes before I left for the race. Not to worry, where one drug fails you, another shall take its place. A few sips of coffee and I was good to go (though later I was told it was decaf coffee, which further proves how potent the power of suggestion on the mind really is). No just joking it was regular coffee, but that would have made for a good story though.

I was a bit worried this wasn’t the best way to start my first race over here (still coughing and now consistently shitting every 45 minutes) but I felt great on the ride out to the race and it ended up not affecting me at all. I’ve had plenty of rest and my legs were good today, so that was an accomplishment for the day right there in itself.

Geoff, who hasn’t been able to get his racing license from NZ yet, decided to roll to the race with me for his afternoon workout. It had been raining in the morning, but things were clearing up and it was warm and humid and overcast. Perfect racing conditions.

I got us pretty lost about 20K from home when we got to the large city of Gent. Long story short, after asking a bunch of people how to get to Lokeren and not getting sufficient answers, I said goodbye to Geoff and went off on my own. It was getting too close to the start of the race and there were still 20K to go to get there. My cortisol levels surpassed the psi of my tires at 120, and my easy spin to the race became a mad dash through the busiest intersections of Gent, buzzing through red lights, drafting off buses, dodging cars and pedestrians and cyclists and train rails, hopping off the curb, back up, flying through roundabouts. It was a good warmup for the race actually. Somehow I got through Gent and found the correct road to Lokeren. I think I used up almost all my good luck for the day right there by A) not getting killed in traffic and B) making it to the race on time.

The race was only 114km and would take 2:40 minutes or so. It was a pan flat 13 laps on an 8.8km course with plenty of turns, brick pavers, wind, potholes, narrow roads, and three cobbled sections–one about 400 meters long and the other longer one about 800 meters.

There were 100 starters and would only be 49 finishers, which is actually quite a few for a hard kermess. I started mid pack and picked my way forward until I was sitting in the top 15 about half a lap into the race. As I took off past the front on an attack I heard a crash behind me right after we rounded a corner. Perfect! I didn’t look back and drilled it for about a half kilometer by myself. I looked back eventually and saw a few guys dangling off the front of the peloton in persuit. Two of them got onto my wheel as we got to the long cobbled section and I drilled it for an entire K by myself, feeling pretty good I guess. The effort took it out of me though. After the two of them pulled through ONCE, they yelled at me to take my pull. WTF!! You’ve got to be kidding me! We came through the finish line and I sat on for a few minutes to rest. Two more guys bridged to us. It was hard for the next three laps or so and finally we were away, the pack out of sight after some slight reshuffling of the break with six of us away for what looked to be the winning move.

I didn’t realize it, but every lap, or maybe it was every other lap, (for at least the first half the race) was a prime lap and the break was always splintered here during the 1K cobbled finish stretch–ruining the cohesion of the break for probably only 20 euros a prime. I didn’t know why it was happening and then when I figured it out I never knew which lap it was going to be on, otherwise of course I would have gone for it too.

Also, to make our break have even less chance of success, guys would skip pulls, rest for a minute, then come to the front and DESTROY for 30 seconds straight, gaping everyone off and dropping the guy who had taken the previous pull. We all yelled at each other quite a bit and I was pretty confused as to why we couldn’t just roll through in cooperation like a normal, civilized race. The peloton was pretty far gone and if we just rotated through at a good pace and didn’t skip pulls or take massive I’M GOING TO CRUSH YOUR LEGS IF IT KILLS ME pulls, we’d stay away to the end.

All of a sudden we were caught by the front, splintered end of the peloton as bridging moves worked their ways up to us. I think we’d covered around 5 laps by then and had been riding for 54 minutes. I continued to bash my head against the wall by spending another lap and a half off the front in a dozen different moves before I decided to give up and retreat back into the pack, 1:20 into the race and 2/3 of my bullets fired.

By then there were only about 60 guys left in the pack. The pace slowed up a bit for the next forty minutes. Breaks came and went but nothing seemed like it would last. Then a dangerous two or three moves went with four or five laps to go and it almost looked like game over for about 40 of us in the pack. It got really hard for a lap and it was all back together again, but during that lap, since I went to the race by myself and two bottles were NOT enough, I had tried to steal a bottle in a feed zone but ended up just knocking it to the ground. A few minutes later after a real hard tail wind drag, some big old bloke came up to me and knocked me hard on the top of the head three times and screamed at me in Flemish. I yelled at him and we shouldered each other for a moment in the middle of the pack as we came to a cobbled section. He raised a hand as if he was about to hit me in the face, but decided not to and just yelled some more. At that point I realized it was because I had tried to steal his bottle. I controlled my temper and resisted crashing both of us out, which was my first idea and was so mad I was actually on the verge of doing it right then and there without thinking. But it would have been a bad way to make a name for myself over here, so we continued to yell at each other instead. It was another minute before he finally shut up when it got too hard to talk again.

With three laps to go I began to get more attentive and chased down a few moves. My legs were in pretty bad shape by then and I needed food and water. No gifts here though. I decided to be real conservative, as it seemed like everything was being chased back. Though, I blew up a few times bridging or trying to bridge up to moves anyways.

Finally, with a little over a lap to go, a move finally got away and stuck. Then another. I was in neither and began boiling with frustration, pissed off that I’d done so much work off the front and now wasn’t even going to be top 20. I came into the final kilometer cobbled stretch too far back after being lazy and finished 38th. Turns out we were actually sprinting for 8th place somehow, with one guy winning by 10 seconds and six more up the road by five seconds. Should have moved up more before that final turn. Idiot. Most of the races I did last year were won by breaks going in the first hour, then after that it was usually the break that went with about an hour to go. I don’t remember any winning moves going in the last 20 or 30 minutes. But these races are pretty inconsistent, which is why I like them. The winners are not inconsistent though. The guy who won today took his 400th victory. Yes, 400th. Not only did he have the strongest team, the old 6’5″ behemoth was also probably the smartest and fastest guy in the whole damn field. Not to worry though, with a bit of luck I can tell that I’m strong enough to get on the podium here.

After the race I attempted to get out of my daze with a banana and some sugary “Hotel” bread, drank water from the bathroom in the bar (the race’s HQ), attempted to wipe the dirt off my face, collected my five euros for returning my race number, and started my ride home. Realized I had a flat three minutes later. Fixed it. Arrived home totaling 122 miles in a little over 5 hours. Ate half a million calories, took a cold shower because most of the time we don’t have hot water, ate more food. Body stopped throbbing. Couldn’t sleep though because my room is the only hot place in Belgium. Took another cold shower at 2AM–this time by choice. Other choices: swelter with the window closed or open the window for a breeze but let mosquitos in and get blasted by loud highway traffic noise right outside the house. Actually, even if the window’s open it’s still hot and even if it’s closed they’re still mosquitos and traffic noise. So really there’s only the idea of choice, much like democracy.

Races on Friday (again in Lokeren) and then a hillier one on Sunday.

We’re on the upper level on the far end.

steel cut oats, muesli, apple, banana, blackberries.

Really? Because I’ve never seen this in a hotel. Good ride food though, along with my Hammer Nutrition.

This doesn’t even capture how dirty or tired I really was.

Speculoose and banana…would have made for a great recovery meal but I didn’t have any. So I ate this instead:

Canned HERRING! in tomato sauce, toasted rye bread, cucumber, tomato, sweet chili sauce.

My cold is finally coming to an end and just in time too; the talk of all these amazing races, some just 10 kilometers from where I’m staying, is driving me nuts. Today I went on a ride with New Zealander Geoff and UK’er Justin. Justin’s been racing here off and on for a number of years and showed Geoff and I around a bunch of the cobbled climbs of Flanders, including the infamous Koppenburg, which was much rougher than I imagined. The cobbles were more like riding on boulders uncarefully poured over a concrete slab than actual cobble stones.

This just in: Michael Phelps plans on retiring after the 2012 Olympics. After an unimaginably successfully career of winning the most amount of Olympic medals, Phelps will dedicate the next chapter of his life to impregnating 500 women in a quest to produce the fastest free-stylists ever born. Each of Phelps’ 500 mating partners will go through a rigorous physical test, including a 45-hour session of treading water. Upon completion of the testing and seeding processes, Phelps’ 500 newborn babies will undergo a rigorous testing process of their own. While 497 of the babies will be shipped off to the nearest orphanage, the top three specimens will be raised under a strict training regime designed to produce a super-human 4-man relay team, for the final fourth child will reared purposefully to be a fat slob as the anchor in the relay. For this child’s creation, Phelps will impregnate an obese, diabetic, anemic, dwarf, albino woman to produce him, in hopes that this unfortunate baby inherits the majority of its mother’s genes. While the four athletic prodigies are trained to be the fastest swimmers imaginable, the fifth child will be trained only in the doggy paddle and will be fed an artery-richening diet of chili dogs, carnitas burritos, General Tsoa’s chicken, shrimp fried rice, dark chocolate Haggen Dazs bars, and root beer ice cream floats. After 26 years of training, “The Phelps Four and a Half” (as they’ll be affectionately called) will embark on their Olympic debut. This entire process will be in design to give the American public a truly epic Olympics to remember, with the goal of creating a dramatic finish worthy of viewers at home jumping out of their seats and screaming at the television in encouragement as the five-lap advantage that the three fast prodigies created shrinks to less than a quarter second by the time the fat slob reaches the finish in first winning Olympic gold, and then immediately dying of a massive heart attack and bobbing dead, face-down in the water as the three other brothers’ celebration slowly turns to confusion, then panic, then devastation as they realize what’s happened to the fat brother. The whole world will tear up during the many months of news show recaps, 60-Minutes documentaries, the thousands of interviews, the best selling books, the autobiographies of the three surviving brothers, the movies, the made for TV movie, the aftermath reality TV shows, and the McDonalds Happy Meal toys made to celebrate and remember the tragic victory of the Phelps Five and a Half. Michael Phelps is a cruel man, but knows what the American public wants to see and what advertisers want to sell.

Anyways, the ride went well. I didn’t cough too much and I’m planning on doing my first race this Wednesday. The apartment I’m staying in is owned by a guy who owns a bike shop and bike team called Farse Flanders Cycling or something like that. Most of the guys here ride for the team, which allows them to do more than just the standard kermesses. I might ride for it as well so I can get into some of the bigger races such as the ‘Interclub’ single-day races and stage races, as well as the bigger pro and invite-only races. Though the regular kermesses might be enough by themselves. Basically the reason I’m here is to get my ass kicked in enough to help me reach a new level for next year.

Here’s some photos of the day:

My half of the room.

The kitchen sink. Minus the most important part, meaning there are many trips to the bathroom sink for water.

Jake from England on a movie day since he raced yesterday.

Geoff and Justin

Steroid Cow

Net on the side of the road for Belgians to throw their beer cans without littering.

Lots of cobbles today

The tuber sponsor near our house really wanted us to have this giant turnip for our turnip mash.

Turnip mash with turnip, carrots, and some frozen fish. They have a huge variety of frozen fish at the stores here.

This is smoked kippered herring. As you know, I’m a huge fan of kippered herring.

No joke, this stuff is amazing.

Sunday.  Race, pack up, eat at Pilot Butte Burger, drive home in stupor.  Sleep.

Monday. Really tired and sick.  Sleep 13 hours.  Eat enormous salad.

Tuesday.  Wake up late.  Still sick.  Go to the Orthopedics.  Collarbone still broken.  Doctor says I can start riding again in a week or two.  I show him road rash from crash a few days ago.  He shakes his head.  Go home.  Pack.  Drive car to Jacob’s house and drop off empty bike box, duffle bag, and backpack.  Drive home and leave car behind.  Ride bike back to Jacob’s.  Eat dinner.  Pack bike in box.  Go to sleep.

Wednesday.  Wake up at 3:30 am.  Drive the Rathe’s car to downtown PGE Max light rail stop.  Get lost.  Miss first train.  Find the train stop and park car for Jacob to pick up later.  Drag bags and bike box to the train stop.  Realize increasing seriousness of upper body weakness. Get on Max train.  Hope it goes to the airport.  It goes to the airport.  Get off.  Drag bags to ticket booth.  Hope plane isn’t full since I’m flying stand-by.  Plane is not full.  Chug NyQuil at security gate.  Get on plane with 5 minutes to spare.  Sleep entire plane ride.

Still Wednesday I guess.  6 hours to kill before flight to Brussels.  Call bunch of people to log onto my email account and find a 1-week old email from guy named “Luc” and remind me what city I’m going to.  Sandwiches eaten since waking=4.  Sandwiches left=0.  Apples eaten=3.  Apples left=6.  Hours until destination=between 24 and ¥.  Need food.

A while later…

I made it to Belgium.  Pretty easily too.  I got on the plane without any issues since it wasn’t a very full flight.  My grandfather used to work for United Airlines and our family gets to use companion passes—discounted tickets with the risk of not getting on flights if they’re full.  Meaning I could potentially be stuck in an airport for days on end if there were consecutive full flights.  Works fine for me since my time has no value.

One of the perks to flying on companion passes, aside from the much more affordable price, is the chance to get into first or business class.  And despite not having a collared shirt, the travel agents like me enough to let me fly in business class, which was exactly the opposite of my time spent traveling on Greyhound.  I spent the majority of the trip worrying they’d find out I didn’t belong there and kick me back to coach with the rest of the livestock. As a precaution I grabbed a free edition of the Wall Street Journal as I boarded the plane—to fit in of course.  I read it as well as a Belgian newspaper with a large sports section on le Tour as I took my seat after boarding, and since I don’t speak Dutch, Flemish, French, or smart person I was pretty lost reading both.  At least the Wall Street Journal made me look important and dignified.  Up in business class there are certain standards to be upheld.  First of all, you have to divert your eyes when the low class scum walk by on their way to “economy” aka the poor man’s shit hole cargo bin where they throw everyone into a holding pen full of screaming babies, whining children, and state university-educated slobs wearing T-shirts and jeans.  To make eye contact with such imbeciles is unspeakable.  The other rules for being part of the elite (but not so elite you can afford First Class) is to blab on your phone before take off about a business deal with Johnson, wear polo shirts, ignore the flight attendants when they refill your drink, close all the window shades and sip champagne in silence as you rest your head back into your seat and close your eyes–showing everyone you’ve done this many times before and you take no trivial enjoyment out of it and are in fact bored and slightly impatient to get this uncomfortable trip over with because you’ve got important things to do and playing with the remote control to the giant TV screen in front of you would show just the opposite.

Up in business we sat in personal thrones that turned into full-length beds.  We had control of our own TV screens with movies, TV shows, games, porn, etc.  They served us hors dervies, warm salty nuts in a hot bowl, dinner, ice cream, hot towels, endless glasses of wine, and orange juice.  I almost didn’t want to go to sleep since I would be giving up valuable time and much fun to be had.  But my eyes grew weary as I finished my movie and I stretched out on my recliner and slept until they served breakfast, dreaming of livening in a mansion encrusted with rubies and pantries filled with éclairs and fancy cuts of roast beef.

Now it’s back to the real world: being confused and hungry.  I somehow managed to collect my bike box and duffle bag after we landed and found my way to the train station AND got on a train gong somewhere.  I think it’s going to the town I’m supposed to go to.  At first the woman at the ticket booth said my town “Zigem” didn’t exist.  After much confusion, she found out that there does exist a town called “Zingem” with an N.  So that’s where I’ve decided to go.  I’m sitting on the train right now as we head through Brussels.  It’s 11:15 AM here but 2:15 AM in west coast Kennett time.  It’s overcast and humid here, low 70’s and Enya’s on my ipod.  And I’m out of apples.

Ok I made my way to Zingem.  I navigated my two train rides perfectly and arrived in the quiet little town at around 12:30pm.  The location of the place I’m staying is known by its proximity to the McDonalds across the street.  So I drug my bike box, duffle bag, and backpack from the train stop to the street and asked the first person I saw where the McDonalds was.  She pointed and told me it was 20 minutes by foot.  At the pace I could go, hauling all my stuff, it would take me about an hour and a half.  I began the long walk and gave up about 2 minutes in and decided to build my bike right there on the sidewalk.  I got it built up pretty quickly in front of someone’s house and just left the cardboard box there.  Hopefully it’s still there tomorrow or whenever I can get a car to go pick it up.  It was on its last legs anyways.  It attached my race wheels to my backpack, grabbed the floor pump in one hand, loaded my duffle bag onto my back and the backpack around my neck and set off on the bike.  It was slow going and painful, the straps digging into my neck.  I couldn’t really pedal very well with the backpack and spare wheels in my lap and dragging on the ground. I was veering all over the road and crashed as a couple cars passed.  I swore loudly and one of the cars honked at me.  The floor pump was bent from the crash.  I loaded all the stuff onto my shoulders and neck again and tried it once more.  I stopped a few minutes later and decided to ditch the duffle bag and pump in a deep culvert on the side of the road next to a cornfield and come back for them later.  I scrambled back up out of the embankment to the road and hoped back on the bike.

I rode fast to the McDonalds, found the building across the street from it, and began wandering around trying to find a sign to lead me to the apartment flat that was shared by a half dozen random cyclists. The lower half of the building was comprised of closed apartment stores and a bakery.  I tried the doors and they were locked.  One wasn’t and I went in and up some stairs.  I had a stroke of good luck as three cyclists came down, heading out for a ride.  I’d found it just in time since they’d all be gone for hours and I would have been locked out and unsure of where the place was until they returned.  I quickly unloaded my backpack and race wheels and took off to the spot I’d ditched my duffle bag.

Now I’m here, waiting on the couch for the guy who owns the place to come and give me a bed or something later tonight. I just called him on Skype and I’m pretty sure he had no idea I was coming. It wasn’t as difficult getting here as I thought it would be. Seems strange that I’m already here too.

I didn’t finish Cascade this year.  I started getting sick on Friday and despite consecutive 12-hour nights of sleep, crushing fruits and vegetales, and praying to the immune system gods, I was done for by the weekend.  I woke up on Saturday feeling terrible and got worse as the day went on.  Fever, headache, body aches, cold sweats, nausea (though I still had an appetite of course), mucus, the usual works.  By race time that night I was still planing on at least giving it a shot, but after the 15 minute ride over to the crit course I was ready to call it quits.  It took quite a bit of convincing, but Joe got me to start the crit and see if I could just make the time cut and then pull out and conserve for the circuit race the next day (the hardest day of the race).  I made the time cut fairly easily and spent 35 minutes at the very end of the pack just tail-gunning and getting heckled by fat ass spectators to “try harder” and to “never give up.”  After a while I began laughing at the irony in what they were saying to me.

I woke up the next day and felt slightly better than I did the day before.  After three cups of dark coffee I was almost feeling good again.  My duty in the race was to get bottles for as long as I could and if I felt good enough, to conserve and try to make it to the finish.  I made it through the first lap with no problem, other than feeling very very sick and tired.  I did the second lap and my throat began closing up, but still I knew my legs were good enough to continue on.  My legs were still fine for the third lap but I was feeling bad enough that I began to worry about making myself too sick to recover in the next month for my trip to Europe, so I sat up.  I spent the next couple hours in a depressed daze while waiting with my teammates for the three survivors on our team to finish (Lang was our top finisher at 30th, followed by Logan and Cody).  I drank gallons of water but never felt satisfied and I was in a perpetual state of bonking, somehow not remembering that food cures bonks.  By the time I got home to our host house I was messed up enough to fall asleep on the toilet before I revived myself with a cold shower.  I’ve raced while being sick before, but never this sick.  I began to feel normal a few hours after eating a million calories at Pilot Butte Burger.

This has been the biggest let down all year.  After all those weeks thinking about Pilot Butte Burger, riding past it after my intervals, dreaming about it at night while my stomach grumbled hungrily in never ending complaint about being forced to settle for salad once again.  Pilot Butte Burger’s amazingly delicious and huge burgers were all I thought about for days on end and now…I couldn’t even taste anything.  My nose was too plugged up to enjoy the mouth watering beef, onion rings, bacon, and cheese on my BBQ burger.  The fries were ruined on me and my chocolate shake was just a cold, bland liquid.  It could have been just ice for all I knew.  Just ice!  Oh wait I got side-tracked.  Not being able to compete was the biggest let down.

Bigger even than breaking my collarbone last month.  After all those painful, excruciating intervals on O.B. Riley road and suffering up Pilot Butte while dreaming of the final stage of Cascade…just to get sick before I even got a chance at it.  It’s a cruel sport.  And it’s always a gamble.  Basically all that training was for one single race last weekend, White Rock.  Luckily I got a result, but it’s hard to imagine I did all that hard work and dieting just for one day of racing and that I’d get sick before I could put any of that good form to use again.  I knew I didn’t stand a chance in the mountainous stages at Cascade, but that circuit race is just my style.  There’s only so many chances each year, and lately they seem to all be slipping by.  I think I enjoy training more than most people do, but to spend all that time and not get to see it put to use is more than frustrating, it’s like really frustrating.  In the lead up to the race I did a total of 57 intervals in a period of 10 days for crying out loud!

I’m fortunate though that I even get to try any of this so I’ll shut up and put on a happy face now that I’ve got this complaint off my chest.  I’m looking forward to Europe (still not 100% sure where I’m staying, though I leave on Wednesday) and I’ll be back in mid September to WIN Univest Grand Prix!  Haha.  Better to have too much self confidence than too little.

I’ve survived two crashes in this race so far.  One was on the bike.

The other happened Wednesday night at roughly 4 AM.  I woke up to close the window when I heard some roosters calling and I passed out from light headedness.  This has happened to me before, one time resulting in me landing on a printer and injuring my back.  A couple weeks later when I’d recovered, I smashed the printer with a hammer in revenge.  This time I fell against a wall, luckily head-first because I fell to the right (the side of my still-weak collarbone).  Next to hit was my shoulder.  I came to a few moments later, staring up at the dark ceiling not having any idea where I was or how I got there.  Slowly, things began to come back to me and I realized what had happened, and had a moment of panic as I tested out my shoulder, seeing if I had re-broken it.  Nope, all good.  I got up and went back to bed with a bad headache.

I was just finishing telling my teammates Ian and Steve about this the next morning when Lang walked in and heard the tail end of it and asked me, “What was that loud bang last night?  I thought you fell down the stairs.”  I said, “I passed out when I got up to close the window…wait, you heard it and thought I’d fallen down the stairs why didn’t you come see if I was alright?”

Of course, Lang couldn’t be bothered.  Or blamed of heartlessness for that matter.  Other than food, sleep is the most crucial aspect of recovery during stage races, and thanks to early starts here at Cascade the past few days, there is never enough of it.

Thursday was the time trial.  It hurt a lot and took me 32 minutes and 51 seconds.  I placed 119th.  Ouch.

I woke in the middle of the night with a sore throat, probably because I slept with the air conditioning on, which every bike racer KNOWS will make you sick.  I had bad dreams.

Friday was the Cascade Lakes road race.  It hurt even more than the time trial and the pain was spread out over 3.5 hours so it hurt for a lot longer too.  For the most part, my sore throat disappeared after eating breakfast and watching part of the Tour before heading to the race–our normal routine here now, which feels like we’ve been doing for weeks but it’s only been a couple days.  I felt good riding over to the race start.  It was going to be semi-hot (only mid 70’s actually) but that was good enough reason to break out our new summer jerseys, which are mainly white.

The race started out with a long neutral section which was so slow and easy that some people got off to walk their bikes because balancing on them without any forward motion was too difficult.  After a couple miles of neutral, I took the downhill corner onto the non-neutralized section first, ready for the cross wind false flat and looking to follow the attacks.  Turned out there was still another kilometer of neutral and I ended up not attacking, which was wise because we started out with a 14 mile climb up to Bachelor.  I had never made it up this climb before with the main group; the past two times I’ve done this race I’ve been off the back in a groupetto all day long trying to make the time cut.  I was pretty worried about it today, though I knew I was in better climbing shape and also lighter.  Things began to get hard about 25 minutes into the climb as we approached the long flat section close to the top of Mt. Bachelor (after that it kicks up again).  It’s vital to make it in the main group at least to this flat section, otherwise you’re 100% screwed.  The pack had split up with some large breakaways up the road, but for the most part it was still all together and likely coming back over the top of the climb (which it did).  I was still feeling pretty comfortable, especially compared to last year, and I knew I’d make it with no problems this time.  Until some idiot crashed me.

We were the only two that went down.  I suffered only minor road rash and luckily had crashed on my left side.  I got up and tried to get my bike sorted out as quick as possible.  The bars were crooked and the shifters were both bent in and the front wheel was flat.  I tried forcing the bars back to normal at the stem, but couldn’t get them to budge.  I ended up having to get a neutral bike, the whole process taking 3-5 minutes, though it felt like hours–I mean like seven or eight minutes maybe.

The caravan was long gone.  Winger had waited for me, and Joe helped me get back up to the tail end of the dropped riders.  With quite a bit of effort I made my way up through the caravan and got onto the back of a large group of dropped riders.  We caught the peloton on the descent after a few miles and from there on a lot of the race was pretty easy (easy as in no 40 minute climbs).  I got into one promising breakaway that contained two Bissels, a Kelly Benefits, a Chipotle, and a Pure Black racer but my coach and former teammate, Sam Johnson, didn’t want me to steal any of his thunder and lead the charge to bring us back (just kidding, but only sort of).  I spent the rest of the hour or so that was left until the final climb just sitting in and conserving for the gut and brain-busting climb up the shorter but steeper side of Bachelor.  The final climb hurt a lot and I finished in a large group 2:05 down on the leader, which was Cesar Grajales again (he won the first stage).  I was in a group with Steve and Ian and I gave Ian a fake push for motivation as we crested the final steep section. If I’d given him a real push I would have dropped myself.  Lang was our highest placer today and finished 25th in a group that was only 35 seconds down.

The crit is this evening and I’m definitely sick now and I feel like shit, even after 12 hours of sleep last night.  Luckily today is the easiest stage to have a head cold for and tomorrow I’m planning on being recovered.

I don’t have anything too exciting to write about compared to my last race report.  The last two days have yielded zero outstanding performances.  Last night we had a 2 mile prologue with an exciting parking lot turn around with a lot of cones, barricades and curbs.  I went slow here and took the corners like an old grandpa with a walker where the tennis balls have fallen off and the metal legs scrape and drag on the ground and get caught on cracks and trip the old man up.  For some reason no one told me that in order to get a good time you had to go fast around the corners.  There were 14 corners in 2 miles!  I got 14 problems and a bitch aint one, hit me!  My legs were good though and I pumped out just under 500 watts for a little under four minutes.  That was good enough to earn me 103rd place!  How is that possible?  Am I that un-aero?  Did the fast guys do 600 watts?  Did they take the corners fast and just do 500 watts?  I’d like to know but no one ever wants to talk about power numbers.  It’s too bad we can’t take a practice run for technical courses such as this one, kind of  like they get to in luge and ski runs.  102 people didn’t need a practice run to beat me though.  No excuses.

This morning we tackled the short but painful 73 mile McKenzie Pass road race, which starts in a parking lot way up in the mountains somewhere, descends for 25 miles, then climbs a 17 mile climb (McKenzie Pass) descends into Sisters, then climbs up another mountain to finish at a snow park, though I failed to see any of the much anticipated snow (liars).  So we started out with a nice long descent and got good and chilly (not the food kind of chili).  I was wearing a wind vest and Spencer’s arm warmers, so I was only slightly cold.  Some of my other teammates were less prepared and went sans arm warmers.  Ian had on a pair of natural hair arm warmers, so he was fine.

Maybe 10 miles into the race, a HUGE crash sent bikes flipping through the air ten feet high, bodies went soaring and tumbling like bowling pins, and a giant cloud of dust and smoke formed a haze like that from a recently fired canon.  30 or 40 guys went down in a pile that resembled a rugby scrum.  I was at the very back of the 200-man pack at the time, just takin ‘er easy, and the wind in my ears combined with the distance I was from the crash made it so I couldn’t hear any of the carnage.  It was as if it was an explosion in space, soundless and therefore even more eerie and sickening.

Spencer got caught up in the crash and Winger slammed his brakes and power slid, blowing up his tire.  Both were able to catch back on since the remaining pack politely waited and took some pee breaks.

After the crash people took it a bit easier, at least it felt a lot easier than last year, but that’s also because Phil wasn’t there to tell me to attack on the descent.  I sat in near the back.  Drank a bottle, peed, took my wind vest and arm warmers off, then slowly made my way to the front.  Everyone else was attempting to do this and the road was packed all the way across.  I was still 80 guys back as we started the climb, but continued moving up during the lower slopes.  I was pretty worried about getting gapped off once things began heating up.  Fortunately I got all the way to the very front just as the pace went up a notch.  I maintained 15th or 20th wheel for quite a while as attacks went and came back.  Guys began blowing up and I began to hurt as well.  Someone went cross eyed or something and caused a big crash (uphill) to the front and left of me.  I slowed and avoided it, irritated to have to sprint to get back onto the wheels in front.  A few minutes later someone else crashed and took out the guy right in front of me.  I slammed my brakes on and unclipped, came to a stop, went around, took forever to successfully clip back in, and then sprinted to get back up to the lead group.  This right here was the beginning of the end for me.  I had just been holding in there, not blowing up, just surviving in the dark orange.  Now I was in the red and there was no recovering.  I dropped out of that group.  Other groups came and passed me by.  I’d jump onto the tail end of them, hold on, blow up again, “soft” pedal, get passed, jump on, blow up….It went on for a while until I finally recovered.  I hammered away from the few riders I was with, trying to regain contact with the last group that had passed me.  I didn’t quite make it before the climb evened out and became flat and rolling for the next five or eight miles.  I rode with Dan Harm from here on out.  We crushed it the rest of the way up the climb, both having recovered significantly since our implosions.  Then we drilled the descent and flat section through Sisters, amazingly gaining time on the group in front of us (it was still barely in sight though and several minutes up the road).  Dan was taking some big pulls, longer pulls than me.  But I was going up the climbs quicker, so we made a good two-man breakaway.  Nothing like a break off the back trying to get to the front.

Eventually we parted ways on the final climb and I came in a disappointing 129th, 14 minutes down on the leader.  This was especially upsetting because I had felt really strong for the first 20 minutes of the climb, even when it started getting steep, and thought I was going to make it all the way.  I just crapped out all of a sudden and it was game over.  I think my v02 is really good right now and I’m able to get by with that for shorter efforts up to 10 minutes or so, but my threshold is lacking.  If I’m right about this I should have a great day on the Aubrey Butte circuit race on Sunday, which is all power climbs and hard false flat tail wind sections no longer than 5 minutes.  I feel a lot better than last year, though my result today didn’t quite show that.  I guess I’ll know for sure after the Bachelor stage this Friday.  I’ve yet to make it up the first climb in the main group.

How my teammates did: Lang crushed it and placed 35th, besting many pros that are supposedly faster than him.  Logan came in second for our team around 60th or 70th.  Four of the guys (Ian, Steve, Winger, and Cody) came in a few minutes after me in a large group, and Spencer had a bad day after crashing hard and limped in solo to fight another day.

Chris Wingfield took some stellar sea lion pictures last weekend.  Here they are, displayed in rectangular boxes.  You can zoom way in on these. Some of these have already appeared in my blog.  But not the best ones…the food.  Chris’ photo website: http://www.wingerstudios.com/

Day #1

Day #2

Day #3

This weekend was some of the best-run racing I’ve done this year.  The City of White Rock and the BC Superweek organizers know how to put on a great show for the racers and the spectators.  The rest of North American racing: take note.  And people are so nice in Canada!  USA, wtf??  Get with the program.

Mango-peach-pineapple-banana-orange juice was a bad choice.  I fought back vomit numerous times throughout the three and a half hour race yesterday.  The other day before the race, while at the supermarket, I had chosen a tasty looking can of frozen juice concentrate to use as race fuel, along with my assorted Hammer Nutrition products.  I divided the can of frozen juice equally among the two water bottles that I started the race with.  It was a pretty thick concoction of juice sludge.   Very thick and syrupy.  And it gave me terrible acid reflux.  But it tasted pretty good, so it’s hard to say if it was a good decision or a bad one.  At one point, while I was at the front of the breakaway group I burped up a huge mouthful of warm juice.  My cheeks bulged, as did my eyes in surprise.  I couldn’t just spit it out since I was on the front.  It would no doubt splatter all over the guy behind me, which I think was Brad Huff at the time and he would have likely been quite angry had I covered him in juice throw up–and it would have been obvious that it was throw up and not just juice because I hadn’t been drinking out of my bottles recently.  So I swallowed the still sweet but now bile-tasting tropical juice and hoped it would stay down this time.  It did, for the most part.  At the time I still had almost a full bottle of juice left, and had to continue drinking it since I was out of all my other nutrition.  As my teammate Chris Wingfield would say, “Piss poor planning gets piss poor results.”  In this case he’d be partially correct, but not fully.  I placed 2nd.  Very close to the biggest victory of my cycling career, but just lacking the tinniest bit at the end.  If only I hadn’t spent so much time concentrating on keeping the damn juice in my stomach.

Though the juice thing did happen, it had nothing to do with how my race unfolded.  In fact, I’m pretty happy with how the race went.  The podium was definitely decided by who had the best legs at the end.  It was that kind of course.  A strong man’s course.  Steep, short power climbs.  Lots of corners, lots of accelerations, lots of pain, lots of excitement.  Here’s how it went down:

We started off at the wee hour of 9AM, which in Canook land is actually closer to 8AM since it’s further away from the equator and thusly further from the sun.  Chris and I were groggy and tired that morning as we woke at 6AM, the previous day had been filled with strenuous activities such as stacking rocks by the water and eating chicken burgers down by the docks in Vancouver, and then getting locked out of Chris’ grandparents’ house and having to climb through the upstairs window to get in.  The 134 kilometer stage loomed on my mind’s horizon as I prepared my morning feast.  For breakfast: 1/2 cup of steel cut oats with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and two bananas.  Two eggs, two pieces of bacon, small serving of potatoes with veggies.  2 liters of water.  1.5 cups of coffee.  Fueled for a day of suffering, we headed out the door and drove over to White Rock for the race.

I was very confused about the course.  There were multiple circuits, figure eights, short laps, long laps, different lap numbers to remember, cones…I had no idea what was going on ever.  Which is not abnormal.  So I pretty much decided I’d ride hard at the front for the first lap or two and figure things out when we got going.  Turns out there were 17 laps total.  11 of which were on the long course which was a 10km figure-eight loop that went past the start/finish and included two super steep climbs.  Then after those were completed there were 6 laps of a 3.8km course that also went through the start/finish but only included one of the steep climbs (it was basically half of one of the long circuits).

The race got underway and I found myself in the top ten over the first climb, I staid up there and then went to the front a short while later to drill it over the top of the longer, steeper climb.  That created a gap with three of us off the front.  We rotated through a few times and (I’m already having trouble remember the details here but I think…) about ten guys eventually bridged up to us well before the lap was through.  Things whittled down fairly quickly over the next two laps until we were just nine, composed of three Louis Garneau riderers, two Trek Red Trucks, one H&R Block, One Jelly Belly, one Kelly Benefits, and me.  I felt strong the entire day, but tired to conserve as much as I could without compromising the life of the breakaway.  We had 1-2 minutes for the majority of the day, so I never sat on.  No one really sat on today, though some riders pulled harder than others.  On the hills I found it most comfortable on the front setting the pace, and ended up leading the group up the harder climb about half the time.  This type of course suits me very well.  In fact I believe this course was designed specifically for me.  The climbs were just short enough and just long enough for me to feel at ease.  At as much ease as you can while pumping out 4-5 hundred watts over and over again up 15% grades.

Mid way through the race H&R Block’s star rider Sebastian Salas bridged across to us from the diminished field…solo.  Making up a minute gap.  A few laps later he blew the breakaway apart and we were down to six guys heading into the short laps: Tim Abrecrombie and Jason Thompson (Louis Garneau), David Vukets (Red Truck), Brad Huff (Jelly Belly), Sebastain Salas (H&R BLock) and myself.  Here it began to get tricky.  Louis Garneau had two guys at this point, while the other four of us were teammateless in the break.  We had 2.5 minutes on the chasers, so there was plenty of time to play cat and mouse.  A $50 dollar gift certificate for the first person to cross the line with 5 laps to go persuaded us to sit up and stare at each other even more.  I couldn’t help but wonder if the gift certificates were for one of the many fine ice cream establishments in White Rock along the beach front.  I’d been salivating over those ice cream shops for the past couple days, dreaming of Rocky Road and fudge swirl.  I didn’t contest the prime sprint though, and instead counter attacked right past the finish line to see if I could sneak away.  Didn’t work.

We attacked, sat up, chased, attacked, pulled through slowly, attacked and so on for the next four laps.  Brad Huff had been dropped by now.  The two LG teammates had been riding wisely and had been launching moves and sitting on while the other three of us brought them back.  It looked like it would all be together heading into the final time up the hill ( which is followed by a fast, technical descent and a 180 degree corner for a final 300 meters heading back to the slightly uphill finish).  Near the base of the climb, out of nowhere came Huff streaking by all of us.  We’d sat up too much and he’d been able to catch us.  All five of us simultaniously said, “Oh shit,” as he came by.

He was chased down though, and then we faced the climb one last time.  It was the 17th time we’d been up it.  We shed Huff again as we began ramping up the pace.  I had planned on sticking on Sebastian’s wheel, because I thought he was the strongest.  I’d been thinking all day long about tactics, knowing that I could win as long as I played everything very wisely and always staid attentive.  As for the finale, if you could come out of the final corner in second or third wheel it would be ideal for taking the sprint.  Though this final hill was steep and long enough that I figured we’d pretty much all come in with time gaps and the race would be won with a solo effort launched on the climb.  Tim attacked.  His teammate sat up on the front.  I sat behind Sebastian, waiting for him to go around and bring it back.  He didn’t.  No one else did either.  Tim’s gap was growing and I finally decided to just do it myself (this whole ordeal took me about 5 seconds of thinking, so not that long).  I jumped around the three guys in front of me and started closing in.  I looked back, expecting the other guys to be on my wheel, but they were already gapped off by quite a bit.  I realized no one had been trying to be tactical, they were just all at their limit.  It was up to me to close the rest of the large gap to Tim.  The rest of the climb was about a minute long going all out.  I couldn’t get any closer to him, and staid about seven or eight seconds behind.  I was finished.  My legs were shot.  I was going all out and felt like I was just barely going forwards.  I looked back to see David coming up on me.  He was still pretty far back though, and I knew that as long as I didn’t crash on the final corner I’d take second place.  I rocked my back back and forth a few more times in desperation to make up time on Tim, crested the climb, flew downhill and took the corner pretty hot, then gave a semi sprint to the line to make sure I didn’t get passed in the final few hundred meters.  Second place.  I had been telling myself the last half hour that I was going to win.  I HAD to win.  I WOULD win.  Second or third or fifth would be a huge let down.  And it was.

I felt I had been so close to a breakthrough performance.  I sort of had one, but not quite.  So close.  I was cheered up when I realized I’d won more money in 3.5 hours than I knew how to spend.  I could afford chocolate dipped waffle cone triple scoop with sprinkles on top.  I could get a banana split.  A milkshake AND and ice cream cone!  The podium presentation was pretty cool too, and afterwards Winger and I made off with armloads of free bars, food, and samples form the vendor’s tents.  I almost got some ice cream, but thought better of it.  And ate a box of cookies instead.  Gotta watch my weight for Cascade.

Our rock tower was the tallest in the land, greatly surpassing the puny competition.  I felt like tipping over all the other rock towers– their insignificant stature brining shame and embarrassment to the rock tower gods after our great tower was constructed.

Me “I’ve never gotten to speak on a microphone before.”

Race announcer “Well you can say anything you want.”

Me “Hmm, I don’t really have much worth saying.”