Sunday, May 3, 2009

Back in Belgium


I'm here back in Belgium, this time with the Hot Tubes Development Cycling Team. I arrived here yesterday after a 12 hour flight where I could only sleep about three hours. Despite lack of sleep, we woke up today ready for a kermesse in Vinkt. We completely dominated and took home first (Anders), second (Me), third (Nate), and sixth (Gavin). The course was about 8 kilometers long with completely flat on skinny roads in the middle of wide open farm fields. The race itself was 98 kilometers (13 laps) and had about 90 starters in it. About one kilometer into the race I put in an attack and stayed away for about a kilometer before a Belgian bridged up to me. We worked evenly until Nate bridged up to us going into the start/finish line that lap. The three of us worked steadily until Gavin and another Belgian bridged up to us about half way through that lap. This made it three Hot Tubers in a break of five with about a minute on an eight man group including Anders, and the pack over five minutes back with Stuee in it. Some would say that this was a near perfect situation. With about eight laps to go, the Anders group caught us and Anders went flying by us. I jumped on his wheel and we opened up about a 30 second lead. Nate bridged up to us about three laps later. We then proceeded to put in almost three minutes on the group of six behind us. We decided to let Anders take the win with myself over Nate. In the sprint behind us, Gavin took third in that group to take home sixth. By the end of the race I was pretty much cramping the entire time, but I wasn't really surprised as I had been in the lead group for all of the 100 kilometers of the race.

2 comments:

wenger said...

nice work to you and your team. and, nice cycling computers.

Mike Lalla said...

DUDE!!!