4pm start for today's race, very civilised start to the day. Driving the 10 minutes to the course, a real luxury for me as I was explaining to some new friends today - but more of that later. According to a thermometer I passed on the way 24c, it was, at that point very pleasant.
I have raced at this venue before but any hopes I would know the course really well were scotched when I was told apart from the finish, which we were doing the other way, there was only about 500m from the 'old' course. So no help there then. On the positive side the old finish was 200m out of a corner, the new finish was 980m out of a corner but the 500m I would be familiar with was cobbles! Admittedly not as bad as Monday's circuit probably only 1 star, flat and straight.
To be honest I don't think I had recovered from Monday, but I had reasoned that I'm here to race so race I did.
The course was not as complex as the last race but still managed to move about quite a bit, probably 90% of it was urban including one fairly major road that we were hitting as the end of work day as traffic was building and therefore had to be stopped as we approached each lapped. The power of bike racing in Belgium, gotta love it.
From the start we went straight for 200m, 90 degree right up a hill for 400m, 90 degree left onto 500m of cobbles, 90 degree right onto a 200m straight, 90 degree right onto a 1km straight, 90 degree left onto a 500m straight, 90 degree right onto 1.5km straight, fast downhill, 90 degree left 1.km straight still slightly down hill, out onto the mainroad, 800m, 90 degree right up a drag for 500m, 90 degree left flat then down hill for about 1km, into 120 degree right onto finishing straight which was all slightly uphill, 3% according to my SRM, 980m to the line! Apart from the cobbles it was mostly fast good tarmac, only a few sections of concrete and no bad joins.
5 minutes to go we are all on the line ready to go, 45 minutes later we are still there. As far as I could tell the police were having difficulties with the number of cars that had to be towed away, gotta love Belgium. By the time they had finished there was still one very awkwardly placed car which had already been clamped! and couldn't be towed, this got a marshall of its own, this chap had a yellow warning flag and a whistle which we got both of every lap.
I filled in the wait by getting into a conversation with the Belgian champion and one of his team mates, they both had enough English to make it worthwhile which was excellent as we exchanged views on our respective racing backgrounds and of course they were interested in the Australia. They were both horrified with the idea that I have to travel 2.5 hours each way to race with my own club, 4 hours each way for more serious racing, they really couldn't comprehend that but coming from Flanders they wouldn't and we had a good laugh at that. When I was trying to explain 14 hours each way to do the nationals in Adelaide they looked at me like I was some sort of Alien. As they pointed out they go to St Johann in Austria most years and thats only a few hours each way, there are incredible upsides to living in Australia but access to this sort of racing isn't one of them.
Anyway we finally got underway and I was really dreading some one going off the line, I've never been good at that, sure enough somebody did but fortunately it was a bit half hearted which was good since I was sitting dead last wheel for the first half lap trying to get my body going. After that we got going in earnest so I moved up to the business end of the race. We had an interesting situation in the race since we had 5 of the team I've mentioned before and the Champ had two very strong team mates and between these two teams they shaped the first 5 laps of the race, attacking and counterattacking trying to get the right mix into a break. I took the view that anytime there were two of each in a break, along with any other 'individuals' like me, I would go across. To be honest this got pretty wearing and after one particularly extended flurry of attacking I was pretty stuffed and somebody left a gap coming onto the home straight, they do that sometimes it is irritating. Anyway a group of six moved away a really soft breakaway, everybody was looking around for somebody else to take up the chase and they just kept getting further and further up the road, coming through the finish the Champ jumped away hard with somebody on his wheel, that was it! everybody else still wants somebody else to do the chasing. End of race really.
Try as I may there was only one other guy who was actually up for working to get us back into the race, anybody else with energy was only interested in sitting on and then jumping away. So it was pretty easy for the front group to move away, they had 4 strong riders, 3 from the one team and 4 pack fodder onto a good thing for the race.
I knew I was just wearing myself out trying to get back into the race but when there are 8 up the road there didn't seem much point in sitting in for a sprint, unfortunately the majority of what was left seemed intent on doing just that. I lost count of the number of times I forced a small group off of the front but everytime it fell apart because they just don't 'work' turns effectively and the rest managed to drag themselves back.
By the time we got into the last lap I had decided that I would turn off with half a lap to go, that's where my car was parked, I thought I was both unmotivated and too stuffed to sprint. However when we got to the turn off where my car was, I decided not finishing is not a good habit to get into so stayed in the line.
Flying down the hill into the 120 degree final turn I sort of went into autopilot and moved up into about 6th wheel coming into the corner, to my surprise the sprint started there, bearing in mind that it was all uphill.
Non sprinters trying to burn out the sprinters, very nearly worked on me for the first 500m I was consciously thinking that all I was capable of was going to be to sit on the wheel, if I could! At 400m to go I was thinking maybe I had something left and then when a couple of guys fired off I went with them and without really thinking I made my own move up the left hand gutter, so I managed to keep my record intact, just, punctures aside.
Interesting little fact, the last 980m, uphill took 1 min 8 secs! When I was riding track I would have been ecstatic with a 1 min 8 sec kilo! and I averaged 620 watts. There was only one guy that finished the race on Monday that finished in front of me, I did say Monday was hard.
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