Good Legs, Tough Race

On Saturday I had my third Pro Kermesse and my goal for this one was to, again, just finish and gain experience. Tom Boonen was racing again and as we were walking to sign-on we see him pulling into a driveway in his flash new Ferrari. There were a number of Pro riders racing from a couple Pro teams just to make the race that much harder. The course was pretty difficult but not as technical as Tuesdays race. There were two small climbs in the 10 lap race but the hills were hard enough for people to start going backwards after a couple laps. The last hill had a cobble section at the top and then went to a downhill cobble section just to make things interesting. After the first lap, as we crossed the finish line, we were hitting 70kph in the tail wind but legs were still feeling strong. I was able to go into the red zone and then recover quickly and my legs were still feeling great which is a feeling I haven't had in a while so I'm hoping I continue to feel like this for the rest of the season. After 5 laps in the crosswind section of the course, a group of 45 riders managed to ride away from the bunch that was all pretty much single file. I was near the front when it happened but wasn't close enough to make the split. I was riding in a small chasing group of about 10 trying to chase but there were just too many strong riders in the split group. They're Pro for a reason. We then got caught by the remaining bunch and tried chasing for about 20km but the split group was just getting further and further away and smaller. Boonen was in the front group and was just destroying everyone. In the end, only about 7 riders finished out of the 200 or so starters. It was one hard race but my legs felt great. I was gutted that I was so close to making that split but overall I was pretty happy with how I felt.


Boonen's flash Ferrari

The other day, Andrew took us to the town of Ieper which is a very famous and historic town in Belgium. The town was completely destroyed by both WW1 and WW2. They have a big arch memorial thing that you can drive through. Every night at 8pm, people gather around the memorial and they start playing 'Last Post'. I'm hoping to head back there at night and watch this. It's a pretty amazing town and all around the town is big moat. There are hundreds of war cemeteries surrounding the towns too.

 So yea, that's pretty much it. Saving Private Ryan is on tv right now so we are just watching that. I don't think anything too exciting is happening this week. I don't think there is a team race this weekend so I'll probably just do a local Kermesse. That's pretty much it.