Day Two

I arrived in Belgium a day ago after a complete 24 hours of traveling, which involved the usual difficulties:
-Trying to fall asleep.
-Successfully falling asleep only to be awoken by a flight attendant who wants to know if you want to have chicken or beef. After responding “Beef” she then tells you that their out and you’ll have to be content with chicken.
-Finally going to bed again, only to be woken up by a crying baby. (Who knew that such small objects could make such a loud noise??????/)
-Finding a lunch at Amsterdam airport which cost less than ten euros, only to find that this is the very definition of impossible.
-And finally, explaining to a shopkeeper who only speaks Dutch and marginal French that he short changed you.
But despite all the difficulties I arrived safely but extremely fatigued. Then I had the arduous challenge of somehow staying up to 9:00 a complete 11 hours after my usual bed time.
Yesterday we went for an easy spin. On the ride we got to ride the pave. The cobbles are really tough because the roads are heavily crowned. If a rider goes too far to one side of the road he will find it virtually impossible to find the center again.

Today we had our first race. My plan was to stay near the back so I could observe what was going on and understand the dynamics of the race for the rest of the trip. I was surprised when 50 guys lined up in-front of me at the start. This was like no race I had ever done. The junior gears are 54-16. This doesn’t sound that small but when the races average around 28 miles an hour this is very small. The roads are about the width of the iron horse trail. But this doesn’t stop the Belgians from moving up even if it involves bunny hoping a side-walk and startling a few spectators. Half way into our race the rain started coming down. It wasn’t cold, but led to some very treacherous conditions. Lawson slid out and I think at times I nearly did to,h I could feel my rear wheel slipping at times. With 10K to go I was fed up of riding at the back. I rapidly moved up to front. I found that the first three wheels was the easiest place to be. This is because typically the riders at the front typically take really bad lines so that the riders at the back have to sprint out of all the corners. With 5k to go I was in a break with three other riders. This was a place I should never have been in. When the field caught us I was exhausted and was quickly at the back again. Some riders in-front of me weren’t cornering spectacularly and I found my-self of the back with a group if five other riders. I just rode to the finish somewhere inside of the top fifty riders. Joel crashed in the final 200m. Lawson had the best result finishing somewhere in the top 20.