This week has been a bit different. Have had a pretty casual week of training with only doing a couple hours of riding a day. A nice rest week. The weather has been pretty average though. It has gone pretty damn cold again, super windy and raining, that's Belgium for ya I guess. On Thursday, 6 of the boys from the team and the team staff drove 4 hours into France for Tour De Loiret. I was named first reserve for the team but I was not needed. So on Thursday I was left to fend for myself as Taylor and Andrew had both gone. Andrew suggested that I ride out to the team house in Zottegem and stay a couple nights with two of the guys that are staying there. Normally there are six riders staying at that house but 4 of them had gone to the Tour in France. I just chucked some clothes into a back pack and rode out to Zottegem. It was heaps better to stay with some other guys at a different house rather than staying and riding by myself. I took my Ipad with me hoping there would be wifi at the house. And thank the lord! There was wifi! Haven't updated my Ipad since I've been here. I've been using an old school internet cable in my laptop. I felt like I was back in normal futuristic time using wifi again rather than using a cable. On the Saturday, the two of us went down to a Kermesse that was just a couple K's from the house. The Australian track team were doing the race to for preparation for track worlds. It was kind of cool to see some of the guys I raced last year. One of the Aussie riders had a big crash right next to me when some rider wiped out his front wheel while he was having a drink. I was feeling really good at the start of the race but I had learnt my lesson and wasn't trying anything to early on in the race. I was keeping right up near the front because it was quite a windy and wet day. After about 7 laps I got into a move with about 6 other guys. There was this one stupidly, annoying strong rider in the group with us that when he got on to the front he would surge off and absolutely hammer it and drop the rest of us. He would then turn around and get all grumpy at us and started yelling at us in Flemish. He was screwing us all up in one of the climbs where he would pretty much just ride us off his wheel and then in last desperate attempts to catch back up to him, riders would surge off to try and catch him and that kind of just screwed me up, always trying to catch back up to him. That break would have stayed away if that guy wasn't such a munter and used his strength to the breaks advantage. I got dropped from that break up one of the climbs and tried to sit on one of the chase groups for a while. For bit of entertainment there was bit of a punch during the race where two guys were arguing and one of the guys punched the other guy in the helmet. Not a very smart place to punch someone but it was pretty funny. Not too many riders finished the race because of the rain and crosswind. I didn't do too well in the end. It was a real tough race but I was quite happy how great I felt at the beginning, even with using my heavy training wheels and coming off a rest week. I rode back to the Kortrijk Kastle (the name of our house) in the wind in rain from Zottegem the next day. It was a block headwind the whole ride home. It took me 2.5 hours to ride 65k with a 27kmph average speed. Tough ride home.
Ryan Wills, who is a kiwi, ended up in second place in that French Tour which is an awesome result for the team. The team rode really well at the tour and I think Andrew was happy because he apparently sang for an hour non-stop on the drive home, according to Taylor. Wouldn't be surprised, sounds like something Andrew would do. He's a very funny guy.
Got that pro race on Wednesday which I'm looking forward to. Should be a good race and I'm hoping just to finish it in the main bunch. Should be tough, should be good. Game on.
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