No More Snot

Well this week has been a lot better. Started feeling better by Wednesday and now only have a slight runny nose. So this week I've been back on the bike gearing up for my next tour which starts on Wednesday. There was another tour on this week that the two poms and Irish in the house did so Zeno and I had the house to ourselves for most of the week. Made the house seem a lot bigger. Pretty happy to not be selected for that tour because it sounded like hell. One of the Poms and Irish came back with a couple broken bones. Liam the Pom fractured his hip so he had surgery and stayed in hospital for a few nights and Connor the Irish had a cracked rib and that was due to a big pile up on the first stage. So they came back home Saturday night and we've had to move Liam's bed smack bang in the middle of the living room cause he can't climb the stairs so it's really cramped now. He's going home next week so we'll be down to 4 people in the house.
Did a couple kermesses this week with one on Friday and one on Saturday. Had a nice and rainy race on Friday but the course was perfect for the conditions with only 3 corners and only one being tight. It started bucketing down as we sat at the cafe pinning our numbers on. We were fairly close to just handing back our numbers and going home because it was just cold, wet and getting dark. We just manned up and lined up at the start in the rain. From the get go, Zeno and I just drilled it and rode away from the bunch while taking a couple other riders. There were maybe 6 riders away with us at the start and we eventually just whittled it away down to 3; the last rider being a Korean. It was a short circuit of just over 3km with a 10euro prem every lap so we shared the prems every lap with each other. Every time we crossed the line the commentator would yell through the loud speaker "Nick Bain the New Zealander" or "Matt Zenovich the New Zealander" or "(some stereotypical Asian name) the Korean wins the prem!" And the crowd would go crazy just yelling our names and telling us to keep going. But with about 20km to go my legs just fell to pieces. I don't think I could hold the pace we were doing for that long and my legs blew up. My average heart rate for 2 hours was over 180bpm so we were working pretty bloody hard. A small group of riders came past me and I couldn't even come close to staying with them. Then the bunch came past and I went straight out the back of them. So that was my race over. Unfortunately Zeno and the Korean got caught by two riders with a lap to go so Zeno finished 4th. But after the race, Zeno was basically crowned Mayor of the town and I was Vice Mayor. Everyone came up congratulating us and would stare at us and you would always hear someone say New Zealand or something. Some would say thanks for making the race and even the Sports Director from a pretty good team came up to us afterwards and offered us to ride for his team next year so there's one team option for next year. Made a bit of money as well for winning some of the prems in the race so all is good. Bit gutted that I couldn't hang on for the whole race because we would have stayed away if I was able to make it to the finish. I guess I'm still just getting back to full fitness after being sick.
Decided to race again on the Saturday cause it was nice day and I didn't really feel like going out for a training ride. Was a pretty big race with lots of riders and spectators. Again, a lot of people staring at us. We made a new friend. This fairly old lady named Dianne who pretty much offered to look after us at all the kermesses we do. She said if we need water during the race then just chuck her our bottles and she'll fill it up and she also gave me a coke after the race and she would cheer us on every lap. But yea at the race the legs were feeling good. After the first lap I managed to get into a break away of about 12 riders. Just after 60km some guy smashed it in the cross wind and we were down to about  7 of us. There were prems every lap and two really strong riders sprinted off to get the prem and decided to keep going. I was on the front in the hard crosswind section and just as I lap off after a hard turn on the front some guy attacks to try and bridge up to the two riders up the road and I couldn't quite make it back on to the group. So I waited for the bunch and there weren't too many left in the bunch, maybe 30 left. I just chilled with that bunch for pretty much the rest of the race. The bunch caught the break but two different riders from the break had already broken away from the break away group and they stayed away for the rest of the race. I ended up 18th out of 96 starters so fairly happy with that result especially after having a hard race yesterday.
So yea that's basically my week. Made a bit of cash to help pay for food so yea all is good. Let's hope everything goes to plan at the tour this coming week.

Thanks for reading

Nick