Wow, that was fast. First lap I looked down and we were going 33mph. I lasted about what the guys projected for your first kermis, 15 minutes. I learned quite a bit though. You CANNOT let gaps go. They are really hard to close. Plus the other racers get really pissed, luckily I didn’t do that. Also, some of you may have heard about taking the corners slow in European racing. This is definately true. I would be going 30 on a straight, 15 in the corner and back up to 30, 200 meters from the corner. It makes finding a rhythm really hard, much harder than in the US. The Soulard crit course is the closest thing I can think of that feels like what we did today, but there were only 5 or so corners and it was a 7.5km loop. The accelerations and stung out racing feels a lot like Soulard, maybe even The Loop during Gateway Cup. Todays race was really large too, around 130 racers. I was also surprised to see Webcor, Endeavor, Snow Valley, TIAA/CREF and Great Britain National team racers out there today. From what I hear most of them are staying at the US U23 National team house. All in all it was a hard race. All of the guys on the team got pulled at some point today. Our last guy went with about 3 laps to go. It was a hard race for all, 120km in under 3hrs. In the end these races are definately rigged. Passing notes on water bottles seems to be a common practice. Paying of other racers is not out of the question either apparently.Lastly, possibly most humorously, some Belgian man came up to me as I lining up on the startline and grabbed my sideburns, rubs them saying something in Flemish then he and his buddy give a big belly laugh. I have no idea what they said but I geuss they enjoyed them…even Belgians like the burns!
Some new pics from today have been posted!
Yeah, Joe Billy, them flandrians wanted to know how them sideburns would feel on their inner thighs….Keep that rubber on the road, and anywhere else you might need it….
agreed.