Second Pro Race and a Trip To Ghent

On Friday, Taylor and I decided to meet up with a couple other Kiwi riders in Ghent. We caught the train from the train station up the road in Izegem. It was a pretty cold rainy day so going to Ghent was a lot better than spending our Friday indoors. It's only about a 45min train ride to Ghent. We met up with a Christchurch  rider, Josh Atkins, at the train station in Ghent and we caught a tram into the main centre. It was even colder and raining more in Ghent so we sought shelter in a surfing clothes shop, it was a bit like Amazon, just full of expensive summer surfy clothes. Here's a little fact; this month has been the coldest month in 126 years and the day we went to Ghent, one year ago it was 30 degrees. I picked a great year to come to Belgium. Anyway, Josh new about a café that does really good coffee. They have so many different and good coffees and that is hard to find over here. It's pretty much the only place in Belgium that they do flat whites so I ordered up one of those. I also had a try of a Macchiato which is a double shot of coffee with a small amount of milk, it was pretty good. We were meeting up with Sean Joyce, who rides in the team I'm in and is from Taupo, and Clinton Avery and his girlfriend. Clinton rides for a semi pro team called Champion Systems and he races in a number of top Pro races and his girlfriend works with the NZ track team. We meet them at the café and had a few coffees and then we decided to go see Iron Man 3 at the movies. Didn't really get to do too much sight seeing because it was pretty cold rainy day and we had to make our way home before the last train took off. Got a couple pictures of the place while walking to the café.

 Sorry about the way the pictures are. They weren't moving to where I wanted them to be.

On Tuesday I had my second Pro Kermesse and the current World Champion, Philippe Gilbert, and the current Belgium Champion, Tom Boonen, were racing too. It was pretty awesome to see and ride with Pro riders like that. There were probably over 200 starters and it was pretty technical course with a lot of tight corners. There were so many people watching as well. There was one tight corner that had a wall of people as a barrier so if some stacked it round the corner... The atmosphere was pretty cool. The whole team lined up on a stage and there were heaps of photographers taking photos.

 My goal for the race was to pretty much finish. It was 170k and we were averaging 45kph. I was feeling pretty good until we hit 85km. I got a small knot of cramp in my right hamstring that took a little while to unknot but I managed to ride through it until about 95k when we came round a tight corner and when I pulled up the pedal to get back up to speed, my right hamstring completely knotted and it was so painful that I was pretty much stuck and I had to jump up on to the footpath so I wouldn't hold everyone up. I managed to finally stretch it out but I had to chase back on to the bunch. I managed to last another 10k but when we hit the cross wind section, I was still on the back and that's the worse place to be when there is a crosswind section. My legs kept cramping up and I dropped on the crosswind section. I was so gutted cause I was feeling good enough to finish. I'm starting to stretch a lot more and I'm getting a massage tomorrow which I am looking forward to cause my legs are so tight.
Got another Pro Kermesse on Saturday so I'm hoping for a better result.
That's about it. I'll write up another blog on Monday. I was pretty slack this week.

 Here's a picture of some cleaning product at the supermarket. The Bain's are pretty bad.