Race Day, the first of many

Well it's getting late, and I'm just getting to this post!

We, a teammate and I, rolled to the race (that's right it was close enough to ride to!!) about 2 hours prior to the start. Lucily we gave ourselves plenty of time as a 15km preride turned into a 43 km preride, not too bad though nice little warmup. I was warned about the starts, that they are all out from the gun, so get a good line position. I thought I had one, right at the line, but I realize now the line is more of a guideline than a rule. I started closer to the back than to the front, not good.

The start was a little disappointing, yeah they went hard, but it wasn't like a full on sprint, more like a crit start. The race felt a lot like a crit too, the way everything moved, but the biggest difference was that it's 2xs longer than a crit, so imagine the amout of intensity required to do a crit and double that, and it never really lets up. Whenever I got to sneak a peak at my HR it was in the red (196, 187, 182 etc.). The lowest I EVER saw it drop was 166, and that was when I was eating and losing position at the front for a short while.

I did get to show my hand a bit, the break that stuck took off on lap 3, like I expected it to, and I wasn't in any position to go with it. When a guy tried to bridge, I was in position for that, I just wasn't ready for him to attack me when we were half way to the goal. Because of that I gave up that effort, but not before being in no man's land for a half lap not getting anywhere. After that I needed to recover so I moved to the middle and tried to relax. Not much of that happening, let me tell you. There were more than a few times I thought my heart jumped into my throat, I wanted to puke so bad. I did everything I could to stay with it, I dug as many times as I could, but after 10 laps of 15 I was cooked. I had to pull out, I just couldn't physically go that hard again. I tried so hard to dig one last time, and my brain was yelling at me body, but my legs just said "No".

Even though I didn't finish the race, it wasn't a complete failure. The race director was please with my efforts, and that I could fight my way to the front and hold my position. He said that he's seen guys get popped of at lap 2, lap 3, but to make it through more than half on you first Euro race, that's very good. So maybe I'll have a chance after all.

I definately learned my lesson about position. I've always known to stay at the front and those that have raced with me know that's where I like to be, but here it's of even greater importance to get up there and stay up there. These guys have the hardest time with corners, when I was on the front I would rail through the corners, and get a gap pretty quick, but when I was in the group, the euros are all over their breaks into the turn, then they drop the hammer out of them. Nothing new for NC crit racers, but different.

They town it was in Wajdaam, was pretty cool. The whole town, it seemed, came out to watch this local race. We had people selling seating on their front lawn!! Racing was cheap, it cost 8 Euros to enter, and when you turn your number in you get 5 back, so it really only cost 3 Euros. They had a awesome smelling bbq, with brats and beer, but of course, I can't partake right now. That smell was killing me every lap we went through there, I was just thinking about how good those brats probably were. The only real frustrating thing was that the race was all in dutch, not french, so I couldn't understand a word. I had no idea how many laps remained or how many were up the road. Guess I'm going to have to learn dutch just to know what's going on in the race.

Ok, well I need to go to bed. It's almost 10pm here and I'm awfully sleepy. Tomorrow is another day of living the dream!

BTW, I didn't see any faux-hawks, but I did see a handful of mullets. I'll look for the hawks next time Jonathan.

Also I'm trying to figure out how to put pics up, as soon as I figure it out I'll let everyone know.