Bugger, bugger, bugger

Friday was a recovery day, just did an hour on the bike which was just as well, because although I started in the dry I finished in the rain and it kept raining for a couple of hours after that. Having finished with the ride I cleaned my bike and changed the rear tyre in the hope of avoiding any more punctures! After completing my mechanic duties I cleaned myself up and headed off for dinner with Steve Snowling at his house in Moorsele, which is a suburb of Wevelgem. I didn't find it the last time so I had aranged to rendezvous with Steve at a point I did manage to find, I'm not surprised that I couldn't find it as a new estate its design is a tad obscure at least in the layout.

Anyway having found the house we had a good catch up talking over old times, probably through the proverbial rose tinted glasses, then we spent a lot of time catching up the intervening years since we last met. Those with keen eyesight will notice that Steve has put on a little weight, happily married I guess, and I should point out that the glass contains wine! Steve's theory being that it saved him continually going for refills! So it was later night that I had intended but losing a few hours of sleep was worth it.

Saturday was my penultimate race, I raced with the WAOD at Westkerke which is very near Oostende on the North Sea coast. The weather looked a little unpromising early on but turned out to be a brilliant day, 24c sunny with a bit of wind. The course was a fast one despite the wind, the home straight was just over a kilometer long, wide and really good hot mix, a luxury for somebody that does all his riding on 'dead' country roads. The corners were all fast even if two of them were a little 'interesting', the first corner at the end of the fast home straight was a left hander that had some traffic islands which effectively gave three lines, the fastest by far was to cut through the middle of the islands from right to left. This was an ideal point to attack and I enjoyed lining everybody out with some speed through the finish then kicking hard through that corned and picking it up into the wind along the next straight. The other 'interesting' corner was at the back of the course and was a left hander off of a wide road into a narrow 3 metre lane, then straight into a right hander, the real tricky part of the corner complex was that the first corner went over a speed bump. So that when the pace was really on, we were making the the first part of the turn in the air if we hit the speed bump hard and then the wheels were landing onto an off camber surface. I had a couple of 'moments' myself but the best one was a chap along side me that lost it big time but managed to keep himself upright somehow by leaning across my thigh, fortunately I was stable myself at that point otherwise it could have been nasty. Needless to say he thanked me effusively.

What can I say about the race, I started with a plan that said that I would follow wheels for the first half of the race then see if I could get away and if not the dead straight last kilometer on a fast road was tailor made for me if nothing else worked. That didn't last long by the time we hit the line the first time I was towing a break of 5 at high speed and basically the race went like that for its whole length. I was in every break, instigating many or jumping across to each break, in short I was going like 10 men and even if I do say it myself I felt I was the strongest rider in the race today.

The WAOD has a funny way of dealing with lap boards, which is they don't show the until the last few laps so you need to keep count yourself if you really need to know where in the race you are, personnaly I just set the interval timer on my computer and keep a rough track off time elapsed, most of our races are the same length so I more or less know what's left. Today I didn't bother, I was having a lot of fun!

Anyway we came around and got 4 laps to go, fine plenty of time to get a move in, probably 20km to go, or so I thought. During that lap a rider sort of waddled of the front, it wasn't a real attack, he got about 200m and stuck there, I thought we were just letting him fry himself for a little while, I certainly was anyway. We came round to the finish and blow me they gave us 1 lap to go!! To say there was confusion was an understatement, everybody loking around trying to understand whether it was the last lap or not. Having decided that it was the last lap there was attack after attack but the leader had 4 team mates who were chasing everything and sitting on, when we attacked hard we nearly gobbled him up but then when nobody would come through we swung about and he would go back out to his 200 metre lead. Frustrating to say the least, I kept trying but there didn't seem a lot of point in towing most of the others to the finish straight.

We came up to the last corner with 1200 metres to, our man still had his lead, I attacked hard into the corner and kept going, the pursuing bunch on the right, me in the left hand gutter. My average power for the last 90 seconds was 500 watts, my average speed 55kph, an interval I do regularly, after trying to chase me the bunch cracked and I put 250 metres into them down the home straight, unfortunately although he was rocking and rolling all over his bike, our man managed to hang on by 10 metres, Bugger, bugger, bugger.

That could have been so different if they hadn't screwed up the lap boards, although according to my computer we raced the distance,

Last race tomorrow, again with the WAOD at Gavere, about 20 minutes away. Normally I wouldn't race back to back days, I'm not usually good on the second day but its my last full day here so I might as well give it a go, then its bike packing time.