Surprise!

On Sunday I raced another kermesse, but this one had 153 starters!  My goal before the race was to make it into the winning breakaway.  Mission accomplished!!!  I only finished 8th from the break of 12 riders which sounds not so great.  I was very pleased to finally make it into the right move and I just didn't have enough speed in the very fast tailwind finish.  After a lot of missing the break, making it was a big success in my book.  One step at a time.

Riding in the break.

That's it and that's all for the kermesse racing though, because now we've moved into a small castle a ways South of Namur, Belgium.  This is where we will stay for the Tour de Namur which is a 5-day stage race beginning tomorrow.

The house we are staying in has 32 beds.  This must be what medieval kings feel like.  Except they didn't have Muesli with chocolate. Suckers.

Last night we went out to dinner.  They speak French rather than Dutch/Flemish in this region of Belgium.  Either way I couldn't truly read the ingredients on the pizza menu.  So when they offered the "Surprise" pizza as a choice I went all in.  The anticipation after ordering this was incredible, especially after repeated winks from the waiter.  This was either going to be great, or I was going to get a pizza with a whole fish on top of it.

Today we did another incredible ride brought to us by Garmin Connect and the Edge 500 mapping abilities.  Just map something out and follow the black line on the little screen that sits on your handlebars.

There are a few things going on in the photo above that I took in Dinant, Belgium, located on the River Meuse.  I'm standing on a bridge over the river, so you might have to imagine just how majestic this place is.  Front and center is the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame which was first built in 1227!  Hard to see in my photo, but sitting atop that cliff is the fortified Citadel, first built in the 11th century to control the river valley.  That is a lot of heavy rocks being moved without any bulldozers and cranes.

Were you wondering how the "Surprise" pizza came out?  I really wanted to try and share with you the same excitement I had while waiting for my food last night.  It turned out to have fairly normal pizza ingredients inside: mashed up tomatoes, cheese, meats, peppers, artichoke hearts, onions, olives, and overall goodness.  Note that I said ingredients, not toppings.  This pizza had a roof, so you couldn't see what was inside! Surprise!

Meeting the Cobbles

On Thursday we got two do a one-day race called Reningelst.  There were 26 teams of 6 riders each and the race was 14 laps of a circuit to make 170k in total.  The weather was hot, the circuit was mostly flat and it wasn't too windy.  The race started off pretty fast and I slipped into the first move of the day of about 10 guys.  We were working alright together, but it wasn't the right group and didn't get far, getting caught within 10k.  Not long after the real break of 12 guys went and we missed the move completely.  They quickly got 1min and 30sec on the pack, but didn't seem to get much farther up than that for lap after lap.  The pace was fast, but nothing crazy.  Then halfway through the race a group of 21 guys just rolled off the front of the peloton on one of the narrow farm road sections.  It wasn't windy and it wasn't a hard attack.  Just the wrong 3-4 guys were in a row next to each other across the narrow road and I guess couldn't be bothered to match the slightly higher pace of those guys in front.  The group quickly built a huge lead and was well out of sight.  I was kicking myself pretty hard for missing that.  I thought the race was at a fairly stable point, but if I've learned anything here there is no stable point in any of these races here.  If you want to succeed you need to ride very close to the front, at all times.  I was 3rd in the bunch sprint and I think that landed me in 36th place.  That doesn't sound terrible, but I felt a little frustrated having missed out on the break and the split that followed.  I'm wanting a lot more.

Greatness which I enjoyed today.

Fast forward to today and let me tell you about an incredible bike ride!  First of all, if you've got a Garmin Edge 500 and you've never used the feature that allows you to upload a route, do it. Now. Even if you are at home, make a route with roads you've never been on, it's great.  This is my fifth trip to Belgium, but the first for road racing.  My past trips were for cyclocross racing with minimal for training rides of any great length while here.  Belgian cycling is most famous for the Spring classics and races like the Tour of Flanders.  Today I had the chance to ride a few of the cobbled climbs from those famous races. 

The view from the top of the Paterberg.  I had to stop for snacks after this climb that is only 360m long, but cobbled with an average grade of 12.9%.  As you can see the weather was beautiful in Belgium today.

I rode 3 hrs total and did 3 cobbled climbs.  The Tour of Flanders takes around 6 hours and includes upwards of 15 cobbled climbs.  First we rode the Oude Kwaremont, next the Paterberg and then the Koppenberg.  Each one on its own was completely shocking.  I pedaled as hard as I could, to make it to the top.  My body was rattled and my hands aching after hitting each of these climbs with only an hour in our legs.  I cannot even begin to imagine actually racing anyone up these climbs, let a lone after 5 hours of racing.  Seriously, I felt like I needed a full suspension mountain bike.  Those things are rough!

Beautiful riding just outside of Oudenaarde.

Next up I've got a few more days of training and maybe another kermesse before starting the Tour de Namur on August 1st.

Some Success at the Kermesse

I'm happy to say that life in Belgium has improved in many ways since my last post.  I may have been a little bit sad of myself (opposite of this) after getting sick, getting crushed at Liege, and many days of grey weather in Belgium.  So I'll get you up to speed with the good happenings.

1. The temperature has been hovering around 80F with sun for the last several days.  This is much improved over the previous 63F with light rain that happened for the 10 days or so before that.  Also convenient is that the country of Belgium, Belgian bike racers included, begin to melt at or around 79F.  Also Belgian cycling has not yet discovered ice socks.  The preferred heat combativity method here is a cold sponge dangled on a string in the feedzone.  I enjoy watching the sponge hand up and the sponge bath that quickly follows at 30mph while I just hang out in my Defeet UnD Ice baselayer and drink some water.

2. I rested a bit, can eat normally again, and got a massage.

3. This one is the rest of the blog post about the kermesse in Lichtervelde that I raced yesterday:

I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of these kermesse things!  The course in Lichtervelde (about 12k from our house in Izegem) was about half city streets and half farm roads.  The last corner was narrow, featured some road construction and was less than 200m from the finish line.  This was good.  The race was 18 laps of a 6.4k loop.  There was a prime of 15 Euros available at the line every lap except the first one!  The field was small though with only 36 riders ----> several potential starters may have melted on the way to the race.

Start line action.  The rider in black and orange I'm chatting with is a fellow USA U23 rider named Jos.

We rode the first 1.9 laps without much happening.  I was real ready for the first prime sprint after that though.  I went through the final turn real fast in second wheel and did a minimal amount of sprinting to pocket my first 15 Euros.  It was as if the melting Belgians had never gone through the last corner of a criterium before.  Wait, that is true, they don't really have criteriums here and the amount of braking into corners makes that apparent.

Then we went around for another lap and still no breakaways had stuck.  So I did what I just told you about again.  With 30 Euros in my pocket in less than 30 minutes I pretty much already considered this race a success.  For good measure I did the same thing for the 3rd prime as well.  At this point I think the Belgian riders were starting to get a bit frustrated.  Understandable... I was taking all their money.  As I attempted number 4 in a row the rider in front of me grabbed his brakes real hard in the exit of the final corner.  I think this was his desperate and shady attempt to create a gap to me rather than cause me to crash.  Either way I still sprinted around him and kept the streak alive.  Then after another lap I won the 5th prime in row.  

At this point I was ready to make it rain, in Euros.  I was also getting fairly tired though and the remaining Belgians who hadn't melted were riding against me as much as possible.  If attacks went there was a lot of looking at me to accelerate and/or chase it down which was quite understandable.  Perhaps I'd shown my cards a bit early, but at least had some cash in my pocket.  Jos and I did our best to ride near the front and follow the attacks, but right around the midway point of the race a group of 6 got away without us and built a big gap quickly.  We and several others gave chase in the pack, but they were pretty clearly gone.  We rolled around and there were lots of attacks and the main group got whittled down a bit before the finish, but we were far from catching the break.  Jos offered and gave me a great leadout for the field sprint.  I botched it a little bit though when I overcooked the last corner and ended up a bit too far into the construction zone with 150m to go.  I lost a lot of speed and only managed 2nd in the field sprint, 8th place on the day.

The field sprint for 7th place.

Overall it was a great race though and I'm very pleased to have some good legs again.  Sure I could have raced it a bit differently and maybe gotten a better end result, but I had a lot of fun.  Tomorrow we have a longer one-day race as a full team starting in Ieper, Belgium.  I'm quite excited for that and I'll let you know how it goes!

Maastricht

While the other guys were finishing up the rest of the Tour de Liege I did a little bit of exploring to the city of Maastricht.  Not only was Maastricht supposed to be a neat city, but it is also in The Netherlands and not Belgium so adding another country to my bike ride for the day was especially appealing.  I knew that there would be no official border crossing with gates and such between the two countries, but I was surprised that there was literally nothing indicating that I'd entered another country.  There was no sign welcoming me to Holland, so perhaps I was not welcome there?  Either way I stayed for a bit and made my way around the city taking pictures of things I thought were cool.

 

First up is some moped action.  I was a bit surprised to see them on the bike paths, but they were pretty slow and courteous.  It is pretty hard to see in the photo, but the woman who just made the inside pass in that left turn is riding a scooter made to look like a Harley!

The bike paths in Maastricht were quite nice, allowing me to putter along looking every which way without being in too much danger of traffic.  Every major street had a path like this one separated from the road.

Vrijthof Square

City Hall

The Provincal Government Buildings which sit over the Meuse River.  The Maastricht Treaty was signed here in 1992, creating the European Union.

The Saint Servitius Bridge

There was a sign letting me know I'd returned to Flanders, the Flemish speaking region of Belgium, on my way back.  There was also a sign after this announcing I was now in Belgium, but it's main purpose was to let drivers know what the speed limits were.  Where is the welcoming Europe?!

Tour de Liege

I made it to the start of the Tour de Liege, but maybe not in the best shape.  My stomach still wasn't 100% and I hadn't been able to eat much the last several days.  I was excited to race though and wanted to give it a go.  There were 33 teams of 6 riders each making a 198 rider field.  That isn't just a big field, but also a lot of teams!

Bikes ready to go before the start. Note the new Instagram filter, I call it: TintedvanWindow

The race started off fast, very fast!  I tried my best to stay in the top half of the field, but during the first 20k I honestly felt like I'd never raced before.  There were guys passing everywhere; sidewalks, bike paths, roundabouts, speed bumps, etc.  It was insanity, or so I thought at the time.  I felt like I had settled into things after that initial shock and I even worked my way up to the front on the first climb of the day.  I followed some attacks over the top, but nothing notable stuck.  I thought I was even feeling pretty good so I tried to just ride towards the front in anticipation for the bigger climbs to come later in the stage.  We were still going through all sorts of roundabouts and navigating other traffic furniture, but I was already much more comfortable and learning a lot.

The short story is that more racing happened over the next 1.5hrs including one hard hill followed by a bit of cross wind over the top.  It was a little ways after this at about the 85k mark that I realized I was in big trouble.  My stomach was still bad and I hadn't been able to eat much at all in the first 2hrs of racing.  I got dropped on the smallest of rises, my body simply empty with nothing left to give.  I think I got down about 300 calories in 3hrs of racing.  I pedaled slowly for what seemed like an hour, still determined to make it to the finish.  Eventually a group of about 30 riders caught me as we were approaching the finishing circuits.  They'd been dropped earlier on that hard hill and crosswind section and I was glad to see them at this point.  We got to to the finish circuits just in time to see the leaders screaming by for their final laps.  The officials pulled us and gave us what races in the US would call a pro-rated time - meaning we were far down in the results, but allowed to start the next day.  

Right about now I'd like to put in a picture of me racing.  None exist that I know of.  So instead I'll just tell you about the shower here at the hotel outside of Liege.  See below.  There is Caesar.  He looks at you while you shower.

The second stage was to be fairly flat for the first 80k and then hit some real climbs.  Namely the Mur de Huy, as featured at the finish of Fleche Wallonne.  The race still started off fast though with lots of attacks and no breaks getting away until after about 65k.  There was one wicked crosswind section.  I was way too far back and ended up in the the third echelon.  I was surprised how long everyone just rode strung out in the gutter before deciding to form echelons.  I could see the end of this straight road only 3-4k away so I didn't panic much, even if I had panicked I wouldn't really have been able to have done anything about it.  I was too far back, ended up in the third group, and just took my turn riding in the group to get us back up to the front when things calmed down a few minutes later.  I learned more in those 10 minutes of bike racing than I've learned in a long time.

I'd been feeling pretty tired all throughout the first hour of racing and struggling to stay up front.  I knew I needed to move up around the 70km mark before we hit the Mur de Huy, but I just didn't have the legs.  I was on the back and swinging after only 75k of racing and when we hit the base of the Mur at 80k I was messed up.  I was passing guys going up the hill, but the guys I passed were going so slowly they must have had to stop and walk shortly after I passed them.  That hill is steep!!!  I can't imagine racing up that after 5 hours to finish a one-day classic as in Fleche Wallonne.  I made it to the top, but way off the back and empty again.  With the front of the race long gone I pulled out in the feedzone.  It's not a good feeling to just pull the plug, but I think my inadequate nutrition of the past few days had really caught up with me.

So here's to hoping that a couple days of rest and eating full meals again will have me back on my feet.  I promise to fix the picture to word ratio as well.

Kermessy

On Saturday I raced a kermesse in the town of Ledegem.  I had three goals: 1. Have fun 2. Learn as much as possible 3. Get some good training in. The loop was about 8k long and we were to do 16 laps.  For you Seattle area racers, imagine if they put an extended version of the Kirkland crit course together with the Skagit Flats circuit race course.  Oh, and they also cut down that single right lane you are allowed to use on the Skagit course to about half that width.  For you non-Seattle racers, about 2k of the circuit wove its way through town and the rest took place on some narrow and windy farm roads.  This picture isn't from the kermesse, but I rode this the other day and lots of roads around here look like this.

There were only 46 starters, which is a bit on the small side for these races.  The first lap was tough, but the second lap was absolutely ballistic through the crosswind sections.  By the end of the second lap I was in the third group on the road wondering how these guys could possibly sustain this pace for the rest of the race.  Things calmed down a little bit, my group turned into the second group on the road and we were working reasonably well together.  We caught some of the guys that blew themselves out of the front group, but there were still 14 guys in the front group which was making much better progress than my group was.

The officials determined that eventually the lead group would lap us, so out of the kindness of their hearts they rang the bell for us early and shouted "laatste ronde".  I was excited and rode real hard as our group split up through the wind.  I managed 2nd place from my group and was given 16th on the day.  Good enough for 10 Euros in prize money!  While it was a bit of a bummer not to complete the full distance I think I learned a lot and got some good practice riding in the wind.

I thought these guys below were my friends.  It turns out we are worst enemies though.  I spent all day yesterday in bed unable to keep any food down.  My leading theory regarding the cause of this is that my former friends have poor hygiene and while I thought I was racing on a road the other day, I may have been racing through their restroom.

So, to all the cows in Belgium that are far too muscular to be eating just grass, screw you.  Good news is that I'm really light now!  I've been trying to eat a lot of snacks today and so far that is going okay.  Tomorrow we start the 5-day Tour de la Province de Liege, which I will never again call by its full name because what are they trying to prove?  Hopefully I'm able to pedal bikes well again in time for the start tomorrow.  For now though I'll leave you with a few photos that don't fit in anywhere else.

City of Ieper

WWI Memorial in Ieper

Blog's not Dead

My blog was totally dead.  Maybe it's not anymore though? It has been 324 days since my last post, or 27,993,600 seconds if you operate in a finer scale of time.  I've had several requests to start blogging again, this can't be because my writing is as fantastic as Ian Crane's or my stories as grand as Kennett Peterson's.  I will admit though that a lot of cool things have been going on in my life that some folks would like to hear about.  Before I can tell you any recent stories though I feel the need to summarize the last 27,993,823 seconds (note how many seconds it has taken me to get this far).  I'd like to do keep this summary as short as possible. So really, please don't mind the gaps.

Based on my last post back in August of 2011 you probably thought that I enjoyed my outdoor adventure so much I just moved off the grid and into the woods.  Unless you follow me on twitter. That is a hyperlink for a reason...  Instead I finished off the road season with some fun local racing and got ready for some cyclocross racing.

My 'cross season started in September with one last year as a U23 rider with the Rad Racing program.  I didn't travel much at all as I was going to school and wanted to put a lot of energy into the 2012 road season.  I took as much time as I could to hang out with some of the younger Rad Racers throughout the 'cross season.  We had a great time.  I won a few races, won both the MFG and Seattle Cyclocross series overall titles.  I really like this photo from DBC Photo so check it out.  

With some big pressure school, I kept the 'cross season pretty low pressure.  I did feel the need to test myself a little bit so I went down to LA for a UCI race weekend at the beginning of December and came away with my best UCI cross results to date with 6th and 8th place finishes.  That was the true end of my cross season.  I took a week off the bike in an attempt to avoid being completely crushed by some finals at school.  I still went down to Bend, OR though and raced one day so that this could happen.

With my cyclocross season ending much sooner than any time recently I took a little break.  I even got to go on a real deal vacation for a week with my family in Mexico.  Then I  did some skate skiing and started preparing for the upcoming road season.  In January HB had our first team get together, it was grand. #heeleyswag #peacoatswag

 

Then I bought this car, which I considered a fairly large step out of the many towards adulthood.

The Spring road racing season started in earnest and I was feeling better than I ever had before in March.  Still not crushing it though considering that most of my competitors and nemeses had begun their training long before New Years.  I kept doing my thing knowing that my fitness would come when I'd planned for it to come.  I've already done a lot of racing this year and had some notable results. I finished 5th in the U23 Nationals road race!

Nationals was swell.  I was thrilled, but knew that I was ready to keep on giving it for the next month.  Last weekend I took the biggest win of my career in the final stage of the Tour de Delta, also coming away with the overall win!  It was a huge team effort with my teammates riding the front for me all day.  I still can't really even put it all into words, but below is my favorite photo, ever.

 

 

Photo: Greg Descantes

 

Now I'm in Belgium to race with the U23 National Team for the next several weeks.  To sum things up I've been literally living my dreams this year.  I landed in Belgium a few days ago and did my first kermesse today.  I'll write a little bit about that soon.  We start a 5-day stage race in the Liege region on Tuesday and I hope to provide regular updates throughout my stay here.