Day 4

Well race day 1 is here and after a leisurely start to the day I have to negotiate my way across Belgium to find the race still without my Sat Nav, I hope the new mini disk will turn up on Monday. I Google mapped it last night and have made some notes for a route that isn't direct but uses the freeway's as much as I can, that makes it a lot easier.

The race sure did have a 'berg', nasty thing a little bit like that hill on the Phillip island race track, about 40 seconds from top to bottom, I did a couple of 450 watt efforts in the warm up, that's what I was doing in my race at Phillip Island earlier in the year and finished 3rd. I though this would be tougher since the lap was shorter and recovery would be less but was reasonably confident until we started assembling on the start/finish. This was a race with 3 divisions starting together, over 40, over 50 and over 60, given what transpired it was no surprise that the majority where over 40's and they all seemed to have calf's bigger than my thighs! I'm sure they would have all seen Leigh Egan off let alone me. Well we started at a full sprint, within 200 metres I was at 50kph and we kept that up until we got to the corner at the bottom of the hill which had a slow exit, they basically charged up the hill from there! My plan to manage the climb itself went completely out of the window, I was at 800 watts out of the corner and 550 watts on the climb. To put that into context I can win sprints at 800 watts, here I was just hanging on! Over the hill and down the other side was a brief respite but very brief, since we were then into probably the worst corner on the circuit and I was 950 watts out of that on the first lap, subsequent laps settled a bit but always over 900 watts. The difficulty for me was that on such a short circuit with 5 slow corners and that hill was that there wasn't anywhere to recover.

So to cut the story short after 6 times up the hill I couldn't stay with the bunch and came off the back, I was just going to ride back to the car when I was picked up by 4 over 50's who kept going so I joined them. We were far from the first to come off and these guys led me to believe that if they kept going and were 'pulled' they would be classified and in these race the prize money is there and the same whether 1 rider or a 100 guys enter, its all done to a set down formula. So I won the over 60 division! Bit hollow and to be honest I would have rather finished the race and not got the 45 Euros.

The first six laps I averaged 43kph which on that circuit I find astounding, no wonder my legs where hurting, the 5 laps I did with the other guys was at an average of just on 39kph whilst not easy was manageable, I could have featured in a race at that pace I think.

Well a win is a win I suppose but overall I'm disappointed with today, I hope Monday brings me a finish at least.