Savoie Photos

Managed to get the photos up

Top of Col du Madeline

Top of Col du Madeline

Cooling down in a man made lake that uses glacier water

Team at the lake

Pretty self explanatory

View from Col du Telegraph

Picture of the 1957 Tour de France going up the Telegraph

Can't remember the name of this but it was gloomy as

View from the deck from where we stayed the first few nights of being in Savoie

Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc again

Out of the race so I climbed a hill for training

Same hill, different angle

Same hill, different angle + cars and person

Some where in France

Relaxed Week

As the title says, it's been a relaxing week, well, the second half of the week has been relaxing so not too much to write about this week.
Had another Interclub on Wednesday out by Zottegem. I honestly wasn't feeling too motivated for this race. I just played it quite conservatively and sat in the bunch for pretty much the hole race. Only touched the wind maybe 4 - 5 times. I just wanted to go home pretty much and have a couple beers but I rode on. The course we did is used in Tour of Flanders which is the biggest race in Belgium so there's quite a few hard cobble sections and climbs. We did one big lap of about 115k and then had to do 4 laps of a 15km circuit. The finishing circuit was by far the hardest. It had 3 cobble sections, one section being about 1.5 - 2km long I think, and one quite hard steep climb which was directly after the long cobble section. They were some serious cobbles. My fingers were real stiff for about 2 days afterwards and I needed to click them every 30mins or so to relieve the pressure otherwise they would start to ache. Felt like I had arthritis in my fingers. Even though I still wasn't feeling motivated and was just desperate to get a beer in me I rode on and managed to finish I think 76th out of 86 finishes. 190 starters and only 86 finishers... Tough race. I was the only one to finish out of the team but it was pretty stink for 3 of the other riders from the team who were racing because they had just finished Savoie a few days before so they would've been pretty knackered. Zeno and I had bought a 8 pack of Leffe's the day before so as soon as I walked through the door we both cracked open a Leffe. Had a quick shower, hopped on to the towny bikes and rode down to the Frituur to get some fatty food. I finally cracked, I hadn't had frits since I've been here but that's all I felt like. Bought a beer while we waited for our food and knocked it back with dinner. Rode back home, cracked another Leffe open, invited Andrew over for a beer and just chilled. Was pretty nice just having everything that you've wanted for ages likes frits and beer instead of healthy food.
Went for a nice easy ride the next day and then Zeno and I went into Kortrijk for a coffee and then went to the movies afterwards. Got more fatty food at the movies and just enjoyed it really. Saw 22 Jump Street and it was crack up.
Haven't really felt too motivated this week so I decided to have a couple days off riding, do the ol' head and soul some good. It's Monday tomorrow so fresh day, fresh week, fresh start. Got another Tour that I'm probably doing coming up in the next couple weeks so I'll be gearing up for that. Then after that Zeno and I might head off somewhere for a couple days just to get out of the house and have a proper break.
Finally got my computer up and running. The charger snapped in half and a couple days before I went to Savoie I bought a new one. Turns out it didn't fit my computer because the metal bit that charges it wasn't long enough to reach the other metal charger thing in my computer. So I went off to Savoie and thought I would deal with it later. Came home and checked the receipt and it said it had to be returned 15 days after purchase and the day I got home from Savoie was 15 days after I bought it. The closest store was Ghent, where I got it from, and it was coming up to the end of the day so I couldn't return it anymore. 50 euro down the plugger... Or so I thought. Went all Kiwi ingenuity on it and grabbed a knife and carved the plastic back because that's what was stopping the charger from going into the charger hole in the computer. So carved that back enough for the metal bit to touch the other metal bit in my computer. Doesn't fit in there perfectly so a bit of red electric tape will hold it in there nicely. So yea now it works. Good thing is that the charger head can detach from the cable so I can just leave the head taped in the charger hole. O for awesome.
I would chuck up those photos from Savoie but my computer is still being a dick and it's not recognising my phone so I can't get the photos. It's been doing it for ages and I can't figure out why. It does the same thing with my iPod too which is really annoying because I have to listen to the same old music now.
But yea, that's pretty much it. Not too much else to write about. Guess that's it.

Thanks for reading

Nick

Not Quite How I Wanted It To Go

Back to flat boring Belgium now. Left the hilly alps of France Sunday night in a pretty unhappy and gutted mood and arrived home at 2.30am Monday so that's why I'm doing my blog now cause I was pretty tired yesterday. Race didn't quite go to plan. But yea, when I last wrote my blog we had just finished our hard training and we were just beginning to relax and get ready for the tour which would have been about 3 days out. I was feeling really good in the first few days of riding in the alps and was quite excited because I thought I could do alright in this tour but I was feeling pretty knackered on our recovery rides but I didn't let the deter me too much and just thought I should be fully recovered by the time we start the tour. The day of the first stage my legs weren't feeling too bad but not 100%. Still gave it 100% though. Tried getting in the early break with 3 other guys but that got mowed down pretty quick and we were giving it some serious jandal to get away. I gave it a couple more goes but nothing stuck. After that I thought this is gonna be hard so I'm just going to chill in the bunch for a bit and recover for the hills cause it doesn't seem like a break is going to stay away. We started climbing up one of the first hills that was long and dead straight and holy moly we cracked up that thing quick. Had to dig deep just to hold the wheel in front me. I'm not entirely sure what happened next because I wasn't at the front of the bunch but I think a group got away going up that climb because once we got to the top there weren't a lot of people left. A few of my teammates got into a move to try and bridge across to the split that got away, which I think had split apart again now, so I waited for them to go up the road and then I attacked the remaining bunch and rode back up to my teammates to catch up to the split. Kinda hard and confusing to write about but yea I think that's what kind of happened. But yea, there was another smallish group ahead of us so I rode off the front and took one other teammate with me to catch up to them. We caught up to them at the bottom of the first real big climb which was 8km long. We flew past a couple riders that dropped off from that bunch and started riding with the few remaining riders left in that bunch. One of my teammates was already in that bunch so there were 3 of us out of the other 4 riders. 7 of us were rolling through and we caught up to another big bunch that was ahead of us. This race is such a hard race and there were small groups of riders everywhere so you would slowly start picking up more and more riders that had dropped off from a group in front of you. Yea, we were just rolling through fine and then to finish the stage we had to ride up the Col du Télégraphe for 10km and then turn off and do another 2.5ish km up hill. I couldn't hang on to the bunch for too long when we started to climb up the hill cause I was pretty rooted. Had had a pretty decent day with a lot of attacking and sometimes unnecessary work so I was out of gas and slowly made my way up the hill. I managed to finish with 3 other guys but we were 19 minutes down on the winners. 19 minutes!!! The guys who finished top 10 were riding back down the hill in jackets and leg warmers when were still bloody racing! This was going to be a lot harder than I thought. There were a lot of feeder teams which are basically professional teams but for younger riders like there was Katusha which is a Russian pro team, Lotto Bellisol which is Belgian, Belkin which is Dutch and Euskadi who are Spanish and also the French National team so there was some serious talent and fire power at this tour. I was pretty damn smashed after the first stage but was keen to get going tomorrow.
Hans had a chat to us the next morning and said there was a pretty good chance that they will let a break go because there is now someone in the yellow jersey, it was a smelly Russian who looked anorexic, and they will control the race so he wanted us to be up in the break. I was real eager to get into that break because the course map looked pretty flat for the first 50km and then after that it was an uphill battle so I wanted to get a head start up those hills. I think I tried a little too hard to get into a break and so did everyone else. Every man and his dog wanted to get into the break to get a head start so nothing was sticking. Tried desperately to get away and even ramped up the speed to 73kph on a slight downhill to get away but na. Felt like I was doing a bloody Belgy Kermesse cause I was being chased down every time. Of course, a break finally got away and I nor any of my teammates were in it. But yea tried way too hard to get into a break and it wasn't completely flat for the first 50k so I was feeling it pretty early. There were some bloody steep climbs in that first 50k too so the map lied... I started to feel quite hungry early on in the race so I munched down some food to try and recover for the first hill that was coming up. Was really suffering up the first climb which was about 5k long and just dropped off from the bunch, along with quite a few other people, with about 2k to the top. Now we had a real tricky and technical descent to the bottom. A lot of crashes. On the side of the road it was a steep grassy hill so you would see riders climbing back up the road with their bikes on their backs cause the took a corner a little too hot. Saw one bike lying on the side of the road but no rider to be seen, must've rolled down the hill. There was a corner that was like a Y intersection and the small group I was riding with didn't know what way to go, then some old man started pointing left and left was like a sharp as turn so we all had to slam the anchors down but I couldn't quite stop in time to be able to turn safely and I nearly hit the barrier in front of me but I managed to slow down enough before the barrier to turn away from it. Had to fist it to try catch back up and took a few risks in the process. Came round a corner pretty damn hot and there was some kid who had binned it before me just climbing back up the hill on to the road. He saw me coming round the corner and knew I was coming in hot. I was heading straight for him and he knew it too, could see it in his face. Just managed to stay on the tarmac though and kept riding. Was bloody close though. Got to the bottom of the climb where it was flat and I cracked big time. Hunger really caught up to me. Could hardly stay on the bunch I was in and then dropped. Andrew drove past in the car and I asked if he had any food in the car, he didn't... No food what so ever and that's all I needed. You can't drive a car without fuel and it's the same with riding a bike. I had nothing in me. Kept going anyway and reached the bottom of the next big climb. Was climbing that for about 30 odd minutes and getting slower and slower. Then came past a sign saying 10km to the top. I cried a little bit. I was so dead and wanted to get off this mountain and get some food in me but kept going. Not long after that the 'Broom Wagon' came past which is the last car in the race that sweeps up the last remaining riders that want to give up because they are never going to make time cut. They have time cut at Tour races so you can't just slowly make your way to the finish. You have to finish within a certain time of the first finisher and I was never going to make that so I hoped in the broom wagon and that was it. I was absolutely gutted because I just wanted to be able to finish this race. It's the hardest amateur race in Europe and to be able to say I finished it would be awesome.
Things I learnt:
Always take food for before the race. I was starting to get hungry before we started but I had no food on me.
In some races I should just ride to survive. I wasted a lot of energy trying to attack and get away from the bunch and I would just be shut down pretty quick. It was a waste of energy doing that. That's just the way I race though because I like to attack and get into a break but I do just need to be more patient and choose the right time to attack so I won't be caught 2km later. Especially at this race because there are clearly riders who are much better than me, a lot of them are going pro next year, so I should've just ridden to survive.
I shouldn't ride super hard a week out from a big tour. I was a little too eager and excited when I was riding some of these alps. I was flying up some of these hills cause I was feeling so good but I think I rode a little too hard cause I was feeling pretty smashed with a couple days before the tour and didn't feel 100% during the race.
Still enjoyed my time in France though. Saw some pretty amazing things that nature has to offer. Definitely have to go back in the winter when it's snowing and go skiing. I'll chuck some pictures up when my laptop is working again.
But yea, got an Interclub race tomorrow so hopefully I go good in that then don't have too much racing for 2 weeks until the next tour which I'm hopefully doing.

Yea that's pretty much it from me I guess.

Thanks for reading

Nick

Training To Be A Mountain Goat

Well this week has been a pretty awesome week. Got my first podium at a kermesse on Monday and now I'm chilling in the French Alps, can't get much better than this. Could be a long read because a lot has happened this week.
Well, Monday we decided to ride out and do a kermesse. Wasn't sure how I would do because I had raced the Saturday before and creeped through that and felt like poo on Sunday when I did a slow easy ride so I wasn't expecting much from myself. Riding out there was pretty slow and painful but by the time we arrived the legs were feeling alright. The course was pretty exposed and had a long uphill drag to the finish and the hill kept going past the finish. There were Sprint Prems every lap which means if you cross the line first each lap you win money. Wasn't sure how the legs were feeling so I thought I would just go for the Prems and make some easy cash. Took out the first sprint pretty easily then the second sprint, cha ching $$$ money in the bank. Legs were feeling pretty good at this stage so I attacked solo about half way through the race and picked up another Prem $$$. Two riders bridged up to me and we lapped it out for about 5 laps. We shared the Prems so one guy would win the Prem and then next lap someone else will win the Prem. We got caught before I could get my 4th Prem but I already had three so I wasn't complaining. It then started to bucket down and there was a bit of thunder and lightning too. Should've packed my gumboots so I wouldn't get zapped. When the rain came I knew it was time to go. Ryan Wills, who was racing for the Terra team last year, rode away from the bunch and another guy was chasing him by himself so I thought now it's time for me to go. Bridged up to them and we rode together for about 4 laps, again sharing the Prems so I picked up one more Prem $$$. With 1.5 laps to go, Ryan broke his spoke on the downhill so that was his race over and so it was just me and this other rider who was a Pom. I was feeling fairly cooked near the end because I had done a lot of work going for the Prems. It came down to a sprint between me and the Pom but he was too good for me at the end. There weren't a lot of riders racing so it wasn't that hard of a race but I'll still take 2nd. Looks good on the CV. 85 euro in the bank for 2nd place and 50 euro for my 4 Prems so I was pretty damn happy.
I think I deserve a Screw It, YOLO day so Zeno and I caught the train up to Ghent the next day. It was a pretty crappy day with a lot of drizzling rain so we just walked around and checked out the sites and walked around inside shops and churches. Went to the good coffee place there that do flat whites but it was really average. Flat whites shouldn't be room temperature! Gutted. Ah well, we'll head back there when that person who made the coffee isn't working. Went to a waffle cafe and smashed back a waffle with banana, ice cream and chocolate sauce. Ka Pai it was tasty. Finished off the day in Pizza Hut cause Zeno and I craved pizza. We walked around for ages trying to find a pizza place and we found one right next to the Flat White Cafe but we couldn't find the door. There was someone in the restaurant but there was no door. There was a big window where you could see inside but couldn't find the bloody door! We walked around the block thinking there would be a secret alley way or something that would take us to the door but na, just walked in a big square so screw it, we go to Pizza Hut!
So yea, Thursday was the day we made the long 9 hour trip down to the Alps. It was a bloody toasty day sitting around 28 - 29 degrees outside but felt like 35 degrees in the car. Air Con was useless and when you travel at 130kph, it's too loud to have the windows down. Finally arrived at the chateau we are staying at which is kind of part of a ski field at over 1000m altitude. The next day it was another scorcher day getting up to 33 degrees. Decided to ride the Col de Madeline which is a famous climb that is 19km of up hill and at the top is 2000m in altitude. What a view at the top! Now the fun times of descending down! To get back to the chateau we have to climb 9km up the Col du Glandon which was bloody hot. But just past the chateau is a small park that has a small man made lake that is full of fresh glacier water that is constantly being sprayed in by a hose. Was the prefect place to cool down. It was freezing cold in the middle where it was deep but it was nice and warm in the shallow. The water was so clear as well! Was really nice just chilling in the sun, surrounded by mountains. Was quite weird going for a swim when you can see mountains with snow on it.
Oh yea should probably mention that I am racing Tour des Pays Savoie which is the 4 day tour here in the alps. I was originally just coming here to ride the hills and get out of the house because I didn't think I would do too good up the alps but I seem to be coping alright.
Saturday was a very big day with a total of 6 hours of riding. We did the Col du télégraphe which is 12km long and reaches 1,566 m altitude. From the top of the télégraphe, you ride 5km down hill into the ski town of Valloire and from there it's 17km to the top of the Col du Galivier which reaches 2,645m altitude. The road to the top had only been opened for 2 weeks or so so there was still a bit of snow around. Started to rain 3km from the top but we decided to carry on because it's a very famous climb as well and you can't just turn around when you had ridden all that way. Rain turned to sleet with 2km to go but we still carried on. Got to the top and rode straight back down. No time for a photo otherwise we would die of hyperthermia. Gets bloody cold up there especially when your soaking wet. About half way down, the road is pretty straight so you can really give it some curry and it was a big headwind too so we got blown dry by the time we reached Valloire again. Easy 5km to the top of the télégraphe and then the fun times of going down. The roads are so much nicer here than New Zealand and Belgium so you can really fist it in the downhill. We weren't taking too many risks though around the corners because we don't want to die before the Tour.
Weather was fairly average today. Had to do our ride fairly early to beat the rain. Legs were still feeling pretty good though. We did the Col du Chaussy which is 15km long and reaches 1,533m altitude. The Chaussy is most famous for its 17 switchbacks in the first 3km. About halfway up there is a massive cliff on the right with an awesome view. Didn't get a chance to get a picture though cause we were really hitting it on the downhill. After that we climbed up the Col de la Croix des Fer which is 28km long and reaches 2,067m altitude. The first half of the climb was pretty hard and steep but after that it was downhill and fairly flat but then after that section it was a hard uphill to the top. Freezing cold descent home with a bit of rain. Three fairly hard days now so easy bakery ride tomorrow. Supposed to be nice weather again too because it's pouring with rain at the moment.
I'll wrap it up now cause this has been a long one.
My blog next week will be delayed because we finish the Tour on Sunday and I'm sure I'll be wrecked. So next blog will probably be New Zealand Tuesday.
I'll try upload some pictures but I don't know if it will work because I'm on my iPad and the pictures are on my phone so not sure if it will work but I'll give it a crack.

Thanks for reading

Nick

Hoping Summer Is Here To Stay

Summer time

Riding wise it has been a pretty average week but it's been pretty good fun. Monday was a really nice day and the sun was out so Zeno and I decided to go down to Kortrijk in the morning for the Kortrijk markets and I was hoping that the coffee truck lady was still there from last year so that we could grab a coffee. Got to the centre where the markets were last year and it was completely empty. I figured they didn't have the Kortrijk markets on Monday morning anymore so we just decided to wander round town for a bit and try find a nice coffee shop. While looking for a place for a coffee we stumbled across the market, they just decided to move. We walked through it all but couldn't find the coffee lady and her truck. It was mainly tacky clothes and cheap sunglasses. Could only find one pastry truck and it didn't even look that good. We decided to keep walking round and we indeed up in the mall and had a look around there but there was nothing really. Then Zeno said should we just go to Brugge. Zeno said that we could apparently get train tickets for 6euro because we are under 25. It was a nice day so why not. Got to the train station still laughing about our last minute decision and there was a train that left for Brugge in 5 mins, perfect! Got on the train. We're off to Brugge. Decided to have a screw it day and not ride and eat heaps of food. First thing we did when we got to Brugge is got a fresh waffle with strawberries on top. That was good under the hot sun. She was busy in Brugge as well for a Monday afternoon. Next thing on the list to do in Brugge; smash back some chocolate. Went to a chocolate shop and bought 16 bite size pieces of flavoured chocolate to share. (We weren't going that hard on our 'screw it, YOLO', day to eat 16 pieces of chocolate.) Got some coffee chocolates, hazelnut, orange, lemon, mousse and a few other ones. Bloody good. Had bit more of a wander around and decided to head back to a cafe that we saw that had a barrister. Grabbed a pretty average coffee and a sandwich there. It was a bakery cafe which was real dangerous for us because they had some pretty choice looking stuff in there. Banoffee pie! Drooooooool. I resisted though and got out of there ASAP. Did a bit more walking and sightseeing then went to restaurant cafe and ordered a beer with Fritz. No better way to finish off a 'screw it, YOLO' day than with a Leffe and Fritz.  After that we hoped back on the train for Kortrijk. On the way home we stopped at the other Kortrijk mall cause Zeno wanted to get a backpack so we went to Sports Direct which is basically rebel sport but tackier and at the front counter they had playing cards for 70 odd cents. Now we are having family games of cards at night when the internet dies on us. Wifi is really shitty here and it turns off randomly and you have to fiddle with the modem to get it going again and that lives in Andrew's house and a lot of the time he's not home. I normally stay on my computer downstairs while some of the guys go up stairs then you see the internet is down on your computer so we just yell out "family game of cards!" And everyone comes down and we normally play cards until it's 'muesli time'. Everyone has muesli before we go to bed cause we hungry. But yea we've had some pretty good games of Scum and Spoons and we played some other random card game the other night. One day we'll learn how to play poker and then were gonna bet our waffles. Weather was real average from Tuesday till Thursday with rain and thunderstorms and cold. Friday was really nice so I decided to my Power test that I had to do for my coach. I recently go a Power Meter which measures how much power you are producing when you pedal and it measures it out in Watts. They are really handy to have cause you can really monitor on how your training is going and to see how hard your are riding and how hard you have to ride. So I had to do a test so we know how many Watts I should be training at because everyone trains at different Watts. I had to do a fun 1 hour time trial and I was pretty wrecked afterwards. Had to dig deep in the last 20 mins. Grabbed a coffee in Kortrijk on the way home and sat in the sun for about 45mins. Didn't want to leave, was so nice chilling in the sun. That night Andrew got all of us out and we chucked the rugby ball around in the backyard. We'll have a match soon.  Saturday was a bloody hot day and we decided to go out and race in it. It wasn't too bad to race in cause there was a coolish wind blowing but it was really dry and I ran out of water fairly quick. I was feeling alright just rolling around in the bunch but then I tried to follow a move that went up the road and had to bridge the gap, that was hard. Thats when I realised my legs felt terrible. Felt like I had nothing in them and that was pretty much my day done. We got pulled out of the race with about 35km to go because the break got too far ahead. A lot of people dropped out early cause of the heat i think because it wasn't that hard of the race, I was still just wrecked from my test that I did the day before. Some of the boys are racing today as well but I was still feeling pretty smashed so I decided to go for an old spin by myself, wasn't feeling it today.
But I'm off to France this week. There's a big tour up in the alps. It's called Tour des Pays de Savoie and it's a climbers race. I'm not sure if I'm doing the race but I'm still going to go down there because it's a very cycling famous part of France with climbs like Alpe d'huez and I want to ride some of those famous climbs. I also just want to get out of the house and see somewhere new. I'll be down there for about 2 weeks and its a 9 hour drive so it's a long bloody way. I'll find out if I'm doing it in the next couple days i guess cause we leave Thursday.
But yea thats pretty much it from me. Laptop charger is broken so that's pretty shit, can't use my laptop at the moment. The charger end just snapped right off. Heard the All Blacks just beat England cheers to Conrad for that late try. Got no wifi at the moment and I'm writing this in the sun on my iPad. I'm writing this in my notes on my iPad and I was going to copy and paste it on to my blog when the internet comes back on so hopefully I can remember my password for my blog cause on my computer I'm always logged in to my blog site.
But yea that's all folks.

Thanks for reading

Nick

Aw Yeah Part 2

Well today is technically the first day of summer so gutted to everyone back home cause that means it's first day of winter for you guys. Doesn't exactly feel like summer right now but it's been a bit warmer here than back home. Had another pretty big week on the ol' two wheeled beast.

Had my first Interclub race on Thursday in France. Grand Prix des Hauts de France Douchy was a 178km race where we did about 2 laps of a big circuit including a 1.7km cobble section but we were told it was only 700 meters of cobbles, yea right, another 2 laps of a slightly smaller circuit that just cuts out the cobble section and then about 8 - 10 laps of a small circuit. It was something like that anyway; we went round in circles. We arrived the day before and we rolled up to the motel we were staying at and the sign out front said Ibis and I thought 'Oh yea it's an Ibis, shouldn't be too bad' but then I looked a little closer and it was an 'Ibis budget'. 'Budget' was written in small for a good reason. Drove down the drive and the place looked like a nuke town or something you see in a zombie movie. I wasn't really surprised we were staying in a place like this to be honest. The outside was made of that real crappy plaster stuff that would rot even if you just sneezed on it. Took us about 5 mins to punch in the code to unlock the door. The buttons were useless and you had to push down the number '1' real hard for it to work properly and I was the only one that could do it because my roommate, Josh, just didn't have the magic touch like I do and he could never open the door without me. But the inside of the motel was actually pretty nice. It was pretty clean and looked pretty new so we were pretty happy. Went down to the hotel restaurant that was hosting some of the teams for dinner and they gave us a nice heap full of plain pasta and chicken yummmmmm. Classic Frenchys. Had to share a tiny bowl of sauce between 6 guys so we just chucked our pasta into bread rolls to get some extra carbs in us. They gave us some apple pies for dessert but who ever cut them clearly couldn't judge size because some people got a massive slab of pie and others, like me, got a slither so I took a gamble and quickly gave my tiny piece to someone that didn't have any yet and waited for the last couple of plates to be given out. Yea I'm definitely not going to the casino this week because that gamble back fired. Got an even smaller piece than what I had before. Ah well getting lean. Before we started that race we had a quick team briefing and all that Hans really wanted us to do is be seen. There were quite a few big top teams racing and he wanted us to be up next to them in the spotlight so he wanted us to be up in the breaks or going off the front. I had a few big cracks off the front and tried to get a break going fairly early. I was doing quite a bit of work just to be seen and apparently they were talking about me and the team quite a lot on race radio so Hans was quite happy. 30km in was the "700m" cobble section, they missed out the 1, and she was a tough one. 1700m of ouch. I had bad positioning leading up to it and I was sitting mid pack heading into it the first time. There was a crash in front me and I had to swerve to the left and got caught in some mud so I had to unclip and it's bloody hard to start riding again on cobbles. I just waited for the bunch behind and we eventually caught back up to the main 50 odd riders that split off the front. Not long after we caught back on a big group rode off the front and Liam, one of my teammates, was up in that split and the big team Lotto-Belisol U23 were on the front chasing so I just chilled in the bunch and tried saving myself for later. We came on to the small circuit and we still hadn't quite caught the front group but we were fairly close but with about 45 mins of riding to go I started to crack a bit and started cramping. My legs were feeling pretty good just cruising in the bunch but trying to stand up and sprint out of the corners was hard cause I would just to cramp. I had to really dig deep mentally and physically to just finish. Manage to cross the line 61st out of about 180 riders and there was only 75ish finishes so that shows how tough the race was. Pretty gutted with the cramp. Think I should've drank a bit more. But yea I think Hans was happy with us and I'm pretty happy to finish the race.

The house is now full. 6 guys living here now so she's a tight squeeze. Irish guy here now. We all get along so it's not too bad. Found the rugby ball in the garage that we bought last year so now we can have the ANZAC's vs The British Lions test match in the backyard. Zeno and I have been chucking it round the last couple of days. Took Zeno out to Ypres for a coffee yesterday and saw the Menin Gate. Still humbling to see that big arch with all the names written on it. It was a pretty crappy ride though cause I got two punctures and Zeno got a puncture too. I'll probably take Zeno out to the Kortrijk markets tomorrow morning and grab a coffee. Hopefully the coffee truck that me and Taylor went to last year still comes to the market. (Zeno is the other Kiwi guy by the way) I was talking to Taylor on Facebook the other day and he asked me if I've been smashing back Frits but I haven't touched one yet. I ride past the Frituur nearly everyday and still haven't had any. He said he respects my self control. I'm weighing 69kg which is the lightest of weighed in a long time. I don't know if the scale is really generous or if I'm actually weighing 69kg but I want to try and keep the same weight. 

Anyway that's pretty much it. Pretty tired today so yea.

Thanks for reading

Nick