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The Real Belgium Trip
As some of you will know I have just got back from a weekends racing in Belgium with the east of England squad, and this is the race report.
So, we got up quite early and left London at seven. The channel tunnel train was as pleasant as ever and France on the other side looked very nice from the inside of an air-conditioned Volvo. The drive to the west of Flanders was quite nice but as we got out of the car we were in for our first shock of the trip. It was like stepping into an oven, from the air-conditioned car to the 37 degrees centigrade Belgian sun. Within two hours he entire team had signed on and were lined up right at the front of the riders pen.
The race we had entered as a team from the east of England, was the tour of east Flanders and so all of the big Belgian teams were there, including the feeder team for Omega-Pharma lotto. Also as it was such a high calibre of racing the Great Britain talent team had entered a team.
So the race started and immediately after the neutralised zone the attacks started. With 150 riders in the bunch there was always someone who was going to have the legs to attack, so the aggression was quite high. As most of you will know, my bunch skills are not great, so I was rather pleased to find myself staying in the middle of the bunch for the first 3 laps. But from then on, mainly because I do not think I ate enough during the race, I became tired and started to drift to the back of the race. By lap 4 of 9 I had lost contact with the peleton and then used the convoy of team cars to regain the back. By lap 5 of 9 I was hanging on the back again. As a result of the lethal accelerations out of corners and continuous attacks of the group I was shelled out the back on the sixth lap and passed by the convoy of teams cars and then pulled out of the race.
Obviously I was devastated, I think its the first race I have ever abandoned, and I would have kept plugging on if I was allowed but as a lap was 8km long, the rolling road block could only protect me for so long and it would have been dangerous to race with the traffic. So I sat on the side and watched the rest of my team and the talent team do well.
Josh Hannon pulled out with a puncture, Ed Bird pulled out a lap after me, Tao Geogen Hart (probably spelt wrong) rode well to a 16th place and Dan Young and Josh Green came in with the bunch behind him
It was straight to bed and up the next morning to a race of 6 laps of a 12.3 km course, the only difference from the day before being that it was a rolling course and had a 1km hill in it. I had learnt from the day before and formed a plan of how to survive the pace and the heat. Again the race went off like a missile, but I was able to hold my position midway up the bunch. The fast paced slowed on the climb and then went into light speed on the cobbled descent, but I managed to hang in. Then disaster struck as a rider crashed and fell across the road in front of me, I was held behind the crash for a while but then managed to regain the group on the climb.
But then disaster ,not for me, for the yellow jersey from the day before!!!!!! He dechained on the climb and had to do a bike swap. He lost time and as a result of his mechanical the field beasted the climb and having been at the back I was left to jump places in the sweltering heat. I managed to get to the top of the climb just out of contact with the main group and would have caught the peleton on the descent but for a incident with my bottle rattling out.
I was left in a group as large as the leading peleton about 500metres away. The group contained the sprint jersey and the white jersey. I would do no work as one of our riders was up the road in the main group and was competing for the white jersey, so he had a time advantage, but both of the jerseys were in the DJ Matik-Kortrijk team, and had some helpers bring them back to the peleton. For what felt like the tenth time I regained the peleton to see it slip away as someone else attacked up the hill and I was caught on the wrong side of a split.
So, we got up quite early and left London at seven. The channel tunnel train was as pleasant as ever and France on the other side looked very nice from the inside of an air-conditioned Volvo. The drive to the west of Flanders was quite nice but as we got out of the car we were in for our first shock of the trip. It was like stepping into an oven, from the air-conditioned car to the 37 degrees centigrade Belgian sun. Within two hours he entire team had signed on and were lined up right at the front of the riders pen.
The race we had entered as a team from the east of England, was the tour of east Flanders and so all of the big Belgian teams were there, including the feeder team for Omega-Pharma lotto. Also as it was such a high calibre of racing the Great Britain talent team had entered a team.
So the race started and immediately after the neutralised zone the attacks started. With 150 riders in the bunch there was always someone who was going to have the legs to attack, so the aggression was quite high. As most of you will know, my bunch skills are not great, so I was rather pleased to find myself staying in the middle of the bunch for the first 3 laps. But from then on, mainly because I do not think I ate enough during the race, I became tired and started to drift to the back of the race. By lap 4 of 9 I had lost contact with the peleton and then used the convoy of team cars to regain the back. By lap 5 of 9 I was hanging on the back again. As a result of the lethal accelerations out of corners and continuous attacks of the group I was shelled out the back on the sixth lap and passed by the convoy of teams cars and then pulled out of the race.
Obviously I was devastated, I think its the first race I have ever abandoned, and I would have kept plugging on if I was allowed but as a lap was 8km long, the rolling road block could only protect me for so long and it would have been dangerous to race with the traffic. So I sat on the side and watched the rest of my team and the talent team do well.
Josh Hannon pulled out with a puncture, Ed Bird pulled out a lap after me, Tao Geogen Hart (probably spelt wrong) rode well to a 16th place and Dan Young and Josh Green came in with the bunch behind him
It was straight to bed and up the next morning to a race of 6 laps of a 12.3 km course, the only difference from the day before being that it was a rolling course and had a 1km hill in it. I had learnt from the day before and formed a plan of how to survive the pace and the heat. Again the race went off like a missile, but I was able to hold my position midway up the bunch. The fast paced slowed on the climb and then went into light speed on the cobbled descent, but I managed to hang in. Then disaster struck as a rider crashed and fell across the road in front of me, I was held behind the crash for a while but then managed to regain the group on the climb.
But then disaster ,not for me, for the yellow jersey from the day before!!!!!! He dechained on the climb and had to do a bike swap. He lost time and as a result of his mechanical the field beasted the climb and having been at the back I was left to jump places in the sweltering heat. I managed to get to the top of the climb just out of contact with the main group and would have caught the peleton on the descent but for a incident with my bottle rattling out.
I was left in a group as large as the leading peleton about 500metres away. The group contained the sprint jersey and the white jersey. I would do no work as one of our riders was up the road in the main group and was competing for the white jersey, so he had a time advantage, but both of the jerseys were in the DJ Matik-Kortrijk team, and had some helpers bring them back to the peleton. For what felt like the tenth time I regained the peleton to see it slip away as someone else attacked up the hill and I was caught on the wrong side of a split.
Comments
The sponges were nice as well and I would like to thank the Belgian rider who kept his patience with me and explained that the two litre bottle of water he was handing to me was not an effort to weigh me down for the climb, but to pour over my head and to pass onto the next rider.
I finished the race tired but elated that I had finished and got on the result sheet. I came in 59th overall out of 150 riders. Tao came 11th overall and did a stunning ride to get second in the young riders competition. We finished as the tenth team out of twenty-three.
It was a good race and I really enjoyed the experience. Everybody says that you learn a different skill each time you go out there and this time I am going to say my bunch skills improved rather than "I learnt how to steal water bottles".
I would just like to say thank you to Alan Rosner for organising the trip and picking me to ride, and a big well done to the rest of the team.
Daniel