7/16/09 - Race 3: Gistel Kermis, 116 km

So, kermis number two! Came to this race a lot more confident after having seen the competition at my first kermis… After I was dropped at the first race, I stuck around to watch and make sure there was no doping control (there wasn’t), which meant I got to see how the race broke up. At the end of that race, there were about 15 guys in various groups off the front with a battered looking peloton straggling behind about 30 riders strong. And since it always looks easier from the crowd, I had a goal to aim for coming into kermis version two: finish in the peloton!

In the Interclub UCI race last week the race finished with 4 laps of what was essentially a long-ish kermis course. The legs in the bunch were all pretty tired after 115 kilometers of racing so the accelerations were a bit more tame, but finishing with the group in that stacked peloton really helped me feel prepared to race at Gistel.

The Gistel kermis was held on a technical 6.85-kilometer course. It featured about 15 turns, one roundabout, about 500 meters of semi-paved cobbles and 100 meters of full-on Belgian cobbles just before a fast, false-flat finish.

The race started out well. I lined-up in the second row and got a good start, staying in the top 20-30 wheels. The good vibes lasted for, oh… about 5 km. Riding about tenth wheel through a crosswind on a narrow farm road I got squeezed into the ditch on the inside of a slight sweep in the road and before I knew it I was kissing the pavement. I did my best to take flight, but just ended up spread-eagle on the ground with the pack scuttling away. Without checking my bike at all (I knew it would be the end of my race if I did) I hopped straight on and made an all-out effort to get back onto the tail end of the pack. It took about three or four minutes of pouring on the gas, but I did make it. I really burned some valuable matches though.

Once I was back in the field I worked my way straight back to the front, finding a position about 20 spots deep to sit in and “recover” and take stock of bike and body (both were essentially fine). As an aside, my first impression is that recovering is something that you just don’t really get to do in these races. I think the best you can do is find a spot where you aren’t burning matches like crazy, but with so many turns there is never really a point where you can relax and settle in. I imagine someday I’ll look back and say “Aha! That was my problem - I didn’t know how to recover yet!” But for now it seems like a pretty tall order. Even sitting in the best place I could find, right near the head of the peloton, the accelerations were relentless. First, there were the jumps coming out of every corner, at least 15 per lap, none of which were easy. On top of that, in order to stay in a smart position, you have to jump several more times per lap to surf the waves of riders coming up the sides and match speeds with riders sailing off the front… If you don’t, you’re at the back in a heartbeat.

The race ended up being two hours and 40 minutes long, and huge portions of that time are a pure, blissful blur of suffering, accelerations, covering and countering, a feed, several missed feeds, and another feed inside the last 10 kilometers (that was the montage, in case you missed it). With about 30 kilometers to go I was severely dehydrated and fighting off some mighty cramps. I was lucky, having missed a few feeds, to know a couple Americans (Ross Berger and Martin Guess from Colorado) who were kind enough to share what they had with me. But it was a too little too late, I am afraid. I started to feel like I was going to keel over from exhaustion. Oh yeah and it was the hottest day since I have been here, probably in the low 80’s (so not that hot, but…) and I felt like I was going to have sun/heat stroke. My entire body erupted in goose bumps and I really was feeling faint. My lungs began to tighten and I bet my eyes were crossed and bleeding. Ah, sweet suffering!

Next week there is a big UCI stage race that I really want to be a part of (there are seven guys to fill six spots) and that prospect was dangling in front of my sorry, mashed ass as I struggled to find any source of motivation to push through. There was that and, of course, the fact that I came to Belgium to learn how to suffer - at a very high level! From 42 to 36 to 30 km to go all the way down to the bell lap I used every mind game in my arsenal to push through the agony. Once I reached two laps to go I knew I would make it. But shit, I really came close to packing it in.

In order to finish, however, I really had to sacrifice my pride. With 30 km remaining the group was together. The last laps would see over 25 guys jump away from the group in twos, threes, fours, and fives. These groups then join and recombine and were not to be seen again. I was absolutely keen on holding a good position to conserve as much as possible towards actually finishing, so I got to see the winning moves first hand. I held my tail between my legs as I watched guys jump away, knowing that if I tried to go with them, not only would I fail, but also the effort would shoot me straight out the back. But I had to keep reminding myself that today was for finishing, so I sucked up my pride and focused on that.

I crossed the line near the front of the first peloton and was satisfied with that. My legs were completely shot and cramping and I could barely stand after the finish. I don’t know if I have ever pushed myself so hard. Just don’t remind me that around here these are training races. Please, don’t bring it up. My average HR for 2:40 was 183 beats per minute and I probably performed no fewer than 250 quick, intense jumps over that time… That’s good training, right? And that’s not to mention 30 km’s (each way) commuting to the race and back.

I felt like a train wreck all night and today has not been much better. As I fell asleep, I scared my roommate pretty bad when I violently spasmed and uttered some sort of loud exclamation of surprise. Twice. That had to be some sort of bizarre display of my absolute physical exhaustion. Soooo, it is time to do it again tomorrow (Saturday). Sweet!

It will be interesting to see how things go without a crash, hopefully getting feeds, and focusing much more on saving every possible ounce of energy for the key moves towards the end of the race. Unfortunately, my guess is that those differences will amount to… Not a whole lot.

Some thoughts about Belgian racing...

One of the most interesting things about the racing over here is the difference in mentality compared to American racing. The guys are super-aggressive, angry, rude racers. They’ll attack from the gun until the finish, yelling the whole way, accelerating full-gas out of every corner. There’s a seriously smash-mouth mindset about the whole thing - its strongman’s racing for sure. I think all Belgian racers feel a certain patriotic duty to be as impolite as possible to Americans racing over here. One time in my first kermis, I got gapped a bit out of a corner (ok, it happened more than once) and was met by a flurry of Flemish curses from the guy behind me as he came past to fill in the gap. His anger was justified, I guess, but you would think that the energy used for the cursing would have been better spent turning the pedals to close that gap. I suppose it was because he was using all his oxygen yelling at me that he didn’t have the energy to close the gap himself; naturally he grabbed my side and gave himself a hard hip-sling up to the wheel in front of him. It is much more important to stand your ground out here than back in the States. I have already gotten pretty good at: a) cursing, loudly, in English or Spanish (still working on Dutch and French); b) completely ignoring someone yelling at me; c) shaking my head in disdain; d) cutting people off to assert myself… I have found all translate pretty well despite the cultural and language barriers.

So like I mentioned, the racing is super-aggressive with attacks fired as relentlessly as anywhere in the States. The accelerations are pretty violent coming out of corners and the pace never really slackens at any point… But here’s the contradiction: going into a corner, turnaround, tight roundabout, or even a narrow bend, they grab brake and lots of it! Partly this is tactical, I guess, since it makes life at the back miserable as the accordion effect dishes out hearty helpings of suffering on those unfortunate souls at the back. But more it seems like guys over here are afraid of going down. Back in the States, if you don’t dive into every corner sans-brake, you’re getting gapped before even starting to sprint, then burning matches accelerating back up to speed in the wind. Here, it is easy to keep wheels through corners, but coming out you better be ready to sprint 100% or else you open a gap and when you open a gap and the dude at the front is giving full gas, it ain’t easy to close. Just a different style I guess, but I have yet to feel like I have to risk my arse just to be competitive. Back home either you lay it all on the line through the corners or you might as well just pack it in and call it a day.

Maybe the coolest thing about cornering here is that you don’t know a corner is coming because of the smell of roasting of carbon or the squeal of dirty brakes, but rather because of the whistles being blown on each corner. It really puts you at ease, sitting 20 riders back, not having to think about whether that road on the left is on the course or if you turn right at the intersection up ahead. You hear a whistle, you brake, you turn, you jump. It makes life pretty easy. Or at least it means you have to be less focused on trying to figure out where the course goes, which gives you more time to pick your gears and get yourself all set for the jump out of the corner. Once you get to the corner, if you aren’t at the very head of the pack, the pace is low enough that you can probably find some kind of sidewalk, bike path, or cobbled shortcut to sneak up a few extra spots. Guys ride over anything here and as they say if you aren’t moving up you’re moving back!

Photo drop

I went out at dusk last night to take some photos... The light was amazing!

7/11/09 - Race 2: GP Stad Geel, Top-Comp, 165 km

GP Stad Geel is a UCI 1.12 race, part of the Top Competition series for U27 riders. The race features a long loop of 120 pancake flat kilometers, which include one cobble sector of two km. Then the race heads back into the start town of Geel, where the streets are lined with fans for the four 12 km finishing circuits. Some of the bigger teams present included a couple Silence-Lotto development squads as well as a Quick Step devo team.

I felt much better before the start than I did at the kermis in Knessalare early in the week. Just the experience of riding in the Belgian peloton (or off the front or off the back, I guess) really helped me break the ice and break through whatever mental block I was dealing with. I was still nervous at the start and felt pretty self-conscious wearing some goofy, four-year-old, baggy kit. But in Belgium if it serves its purpose, nobody gives it a second thought. So whatever. Anyways, I was still expecting some kind of violent, explosive shit to go down and that it would be nose-to-the-stem hard straight from the gun. Instead, it was just pretty fast and steady rolling out of town. At first there were a few hard accelerations winding our way out of town, but on the smaller Belgian roads things got a bit steadier. And it started to pour.

I was super-conscious of positioning, mostly because there was nothing else really to think about. In a peloton of 200+ it is pretty easy to forget there is actually a race going on. “Mullet” racing: business in the front, party in the back. And shit, I am here to race, so might as well be on the business side of things, at least to get a feel for the racing here. So the early part of the race was spent looking for bike paths and sidewalks to sneak up the side of the peloton. In Belgium, the roads are mostly one lane in each direction, plus a bike path on each side. The bike paths are about 4 feet wide and are either painted onto the road as a shoulder, or are separated by a few feet of grass. It means when training you get a lot of respect from motorists and when racing, you have a lot more risky, fun opportunities to try and advance your position!

Heaven!

Anyways, once I was near the front, I started to try and cover the moves to make sure nothing went away with out my team, JBCA (Johan Bruyneel Cycling Academy), represented. It gave a lot of confidence to be riding at the head of such a big race. But the moves were for naught due to the relentless pace in the peloton, which was calculated to be about 46 kph (just a whisker under 29 mph). That was good to know, since try as I might I was going nowhere. So anyways, basically huge portions of the race are a blur of constantly trying to sneak a few positions here, a few positions there in an effort to stay at the front. That and torrential rain! I was aiming to keep about 25 riders back. The funny thing was that the roads we were on were so much wider than most back home and with full enclosure for the race, it meant that the pack was frequently riding 10 or more riders across. So you might see the front of the race, just a few rows ahead… Good position, right? Then, suddenly you turn into a heavy crosswind section, there’s an attack or two or three, the pack strings out, and suddenly fifth row turns into 50th position, at best. Then there’s a split - and guess what, you missed it! True story. There was one big separation in the first 100 km through a 5 km crosswind section and I found myself near the front of the second echelon. We hovered just a few seconds behind the front group even though we were absolutely killing ourselves to make it back. As soon as we turned back onto a tailwind straight, the gap closed in a snap!

The cobbled sector came at kilometer 97 and the 20 minutes leading up to it the peloton was a place of nervous mayhem with everyone jockeying for better position. I came into the cobbles about 30 or 40 riders back - a little further back than I would have liked. The road onto the cobbles was straight, so you couldn’t tell they were coming. That is, until the first riders hit the cobbles. It sounds like a constant, growing, deep rumble of thunder that quickly swallows you up entirely. I didn’t ride over more than five cobbles before I realized that part of the noise was due to a massive pile-up that sent riders sprawling across the road. Did I mention it was raining heavily? Rain + cobbles + bike racing = FAIL. So, I literally went flying off the side of the road, over the ditch and into the grass and then into the weeks, some five feet off the side of the road! The alternative was to join my comrades in agony on the cobbles. I want to get a variety of experiences out here, but I’m just not so eager to experience what crashing on cobbles at 50 kph is like. Judging from the screams I heard, it’s not so fun. The entire two kilometers was spent powering over the side of the road following some bastard’s hub like a donkey and his carrot. When we got through, I was in a group of about 15 riders about 20 seconds behind the peloton, which turned out to be around 40 riders that made it through cleanly. So I had a teammate with me, so we were both working hard to make sure we closed the gap. And bit-by-bit we did, although team cars were passing us, then we were passing them back once we got closer. This made the job easier in one respect as we were able to draft off the caravan at times. But mostly it just made the chase terrifying, since we were coming back into town for the finishing loops and there were lots of twists, turns, braking, and acceleration - not so fun in the middle of a race caravan. We made it back about eight kilometers before the finishing circuits, which was just enough time to reload on fuel and water.

The finishing circuits play out a lot like a kermis, except that everyone has just raced for over 100 km and the legs are a bit tired. The laps are full of corners and jumps, which really feels like hell after the longer loop, but its really important to come into these laps not feeling like it’s a finishing, but rather a substantial portion of the race… Moving up became much harder and there was much more consistent suffering, with the field rarely swelling at all - just a long line of riders through town. However, I did manage to slowly work my way up to the front. With a bit over two circuits to go I was about 25th wheel. It seemed perfect! But apparently, I was in the right spot too soon! Rather than the pace gradually ramping up leading to the finish, there were spurts of intensity, then on narrower roads the pack would get shut down by the Lotto boys at the front, just riding across the whole road! This made it hard to maintain position. In a lot of ways the whole deal is much easier if everyone is hurting and on the rivet. But when it swells up, everyone suddenly has a shot at moving up, which makes things pretty chaotic. There was a pretty big crash in the final lap that nearly took me down, but I scraped through and made it back to the leaders, just in time to watch the field sprint from the back!

We finished more than 100 miles in about three and a half hours. It was hard, but not crazy, but holy shit was the speed high! It was absolutely relentless at the front. It was great to get that one under my belt and my manager was stoked to see my finish with the bunch in my first UCI race over here. I was pretty happy as well. Now its time to start learning a bit more about what to do over here to make the magic happen…

One final note about the start/finish area. Everything was pretty standard, but exceptionally professional. Barricades in the final 250 meters, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 meters-to-go signs, finishing arches (yes, plural!) and big fatty white line with a black stripe to race towards. The sign-in area was great, a little podium area next to sign in for team photos. Really cool atmosphere. The one strange detail that left me completely baffled was the music. With the highly professional atmosphere, I was shocked by their taste in music. American music, no less. And its not what you might think. Outhere Brothers,"Wiggle Wiggle." Imagine "Thong Song" on steroids if you haven't heard it for yourself. I had never heard the song before, so I guess it was doubly hilarious - once because I couldn't believe a song with those lyrics existed, and second because I couldn't believe that the race was playing it in public, and loudly! I was wondering if anyone understood it, since nobody seemed to think it was odd at all. But most people speak pretty decent English here... Maybe it's one of those "you had to be there" kind of moments. But I had to share. If you are curious, check it out (jump to about 1:00), but be warned, it ain't family/work friendly!

That's all for now. I'll have a bit more on Belgian racing in general and a bit about Belgium outside of racing in the next week. And some photos, too! Stay tuned and thanks for checking in!

7/7/09 - Race 1: Knesselare Kermis, 105 km

I was super-nervous before the race today. I had heard from a lot of different sources how the race would be (hard, etc) and really let it get to my head. It was hard, but rather than take it in stride and race the smartest race I could, I freaked out. I followed an attack in the first 100 meters. Not the worst tactic, actually, but for totally the wrong reasons. It was good to be dictating the race to start rather than having it dictated, but I was burning matches like crazy. Even when we were caught at about 15 km I stayed up at the front and covered a few moves, really digging myself into the red.

Once I settled back into the field I didn’t have the pop left to match accelerations and kept getting gapped and losing spots. Not a bright race for me at all. I think the accelerations are going to be very hard for me to match for 2+ hours, but wasting myself on/off the front isn’t exactly helping the situation. The race gave me a lot of confidence though. I know these guys aren’t out of my league. I am excited for the next one, not scared, which is the biggest accomplishment of the day! Cool tip from Nick Friesen: sprint hard out of the corner - don’t sit until the guy in front of you does.

An interesting tidbit from the day... Registration is held in the back of a smoky bar. Bikes are parked outside, but when you walk in all you see are regulars smoking and drunk, watching sports on TV. Ummm, is this the right place? Walk through to the back and in a tiny little room lit with fluorescent lights there are a bunch of Belgium officials for registration. Weird weird weird. First you have to get a Belgian racing license (5 Euro), then pay to register (8 Euro). After the race you can return your plastic-y number for 5 Euro, so racing is only 3 E/race!

The courses here are pretty cool. A kermis usually (I am told, and it was the case today...) winds through town before heading onto some small 1-lane farm roads before coming back for the finish. Full-closure, of course! Lots of fans on the streets, its just such a cool atmosphere.

That's all for now, more soon!