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Before I start, prepare yourself, I havnt had time to write before  now, this is a long one!!

After placing 8th and 8th in two crits this week, (Naldwijk and Niewegien), I felt that I was on the way up again. Naldwjk was a 1.5k circuit, the surface was completely stone, no asphalt, and after 3 or 4 laps I felt like my hands were about to fall off from the vibration, the entire crit was spent on the tops of the bars as it was just too hard to stay down on the drops for any extended period of time, after a crash in the last 15 laps allowed a group of 7 to ride off the front I lead the bunch in for 8th place with my new found sprinting skills!! Its amazing what you can do if you just give it a go.

Sitting down after the race spacing out I was approached by a quite attractive young girl, she began to speak to me, told me her name was Kelly, and asked me where I was from, and how Australia was etc etc,

We kept talking and out of the corner of my eye I noticed another guy my age who kept sneaking looks over our way, he had just raced in the race with me and he looked very much like the girl I was talking to, finally Kelly came out with:

“My brother would like to visit Australia”

I couldn’t contain myself any longer, I burst out laughing, realising that it was neither my stunningly good looks, my quick witted sense of humour nor my tact and charm that was the motivating factor in Kelly talking to me.

Even if I had any combination of the above, it still would have been clear that the reason I had this attractive girl talking and flirting with me was that her brother had sent his good looking sister to talk to the Australian to try and get himself somewhere to stay over the summer so he didn’t have to suffer through the horrible dutch winter!!

After I picked myself up off the ground and wiped the tears out of my eyes (I was laughing soo hard) I went and introduced myself.

Niewegien started at 830pm the next night, it was my first night time criterium, and to top it off it was raining, I went off the front with another rider after a couple of laps and was out there for 40 laps before being pulled back, I collected 4 or 5 primes and the leaders prize, so I was not short of cash, but my efforts out the front meant that when the small group finally caught me back, I was spent for the finish.

The Veenkolonian was my first dutch classic, The majority of the  country lives in the west, near Amsterdam, Utrecht and Den Haag, surprisingly, with the country being smaller than the ACT and with 16million residents, there is a lot of farm land, On our way there we drove past fields and fields of potatoes, all exactly the same, most with makeshift scarcrows, some with windmills.

Just to give you some idea, the profile for the veenkolonian looks like this:

We were to complete 6 laps of 21kms, giving us a total of 126kms, on roads no wider than 2 or 3 metres, winding left and right through freshly ploughed potato fields, the finish straight was the exception to this, a dead straight, 3km long double laned road, Normally this would be a fairly fast and easy race, finishing with a bunch sprint, ad wind and a completely different race develops.

We started at the pace that all dutch and Belgian races seem to start; As fast as possible, with the wind picking up the bunch soon split up into 3 or 4 groups, I was sitting in the 3rd group about 45 seconds back from the front, Racing in the wind is a special type of racing, and some riders specialise in it, making sure your in the first wire is an art, especially on such narrow roads.

After 40kms my group caught the groups in front down the finish straight and I saw a gap down the left hand side of the road, Although when I say gap I mean I bunny hopped up onto the gutter and sprinted as hard as I could to get to the front, after hanging dangerously close to the edge of the road for the first 40kms trying to gain some sort of wind protection from the rider in front of me (who was already riding in the gutter), I knew that I needed to be either on, or off the front of the race, we passed the 4 laps to go sign and the drag race was on to get into the narrow farm roads first, I managed to get myself into the first wire of 8 riders, Everyone was commited to the break and before we knew it we had 1’25” on the rest of the quickly dissipating bunch.

And that was that, 70kms, rolling through, some attempts at  breaking away from the group were quickly shut down by the well working group, in this wind, a solo rider was no match for a well working group, I had to keep an eye on things, as I was the only one from my team in the break and there were 2 teams with 2 riders there.

We turned the final turn onto the 3km finish straight and after 2.7kms of cat and mouse Julian Van Dijk jumped and so did Wouter Mescat, followed shortly after by myself, and we finished in that order, making this my first classic podium, a total of about 40 riders from the original approx 130 finished the race.

3 kisses on the cheek, an envelope full of prizemoney and a boquet of flowers later we were on the way home, needless to say the scenery was no more interesting on the way home, That night I went Carp fishing with Wouter and his Brother Sjoerd, who I am staying with, We caught 1 fish, Im still puzzled as to why you would spend your time fishing for a fish which you cannot eat, but im told carp fishing was a very dutch thing to do, Im in Holland, why not!

As most school age cyclists have returned to school after their 2 months of holidays, there are now no longer mid-week criteriums, causing a serious dent in my prizemoney income, I spent the week training, eating, watching mtv (it’s the only channel in English) and planning the weeks ahead.

Finally the weekend came and it was time to travel again to Belgium to a small town called Diegem for the Curitas Classic, a national 2.14 race for juniors, 24 teams of 6 riders took the start, with 1 big lap of 60kms and 10 small local laps of 7kms to contest, which included (600m before the finish) a 300metre climb of 12% this was set to be a tough race, the forecast for the day was showers and wind.

After the compulsory gear check and signing the start sheet, we lined up, rolling away for the 60km loop. This was not where the race was going to be decided, as it was mostly on nice open roads, (Yes they even closed highways for us!!), but made certain that our average speed for that first 60kms was up around 45km/h, leaving some tired legs for the local rounds, in which only the strongest would survive.

With 10kms left in the big lap the pace began to lift, everyone trying to make sure that they were amongst the first riders into the smaller roads of the local laps, one particular driving force was the team of the Belgian National champion Jens Debusschere, who were racing now as if they were leading out a sprinter in the last 2 or 3kms of a stage, I managed to jump a couple of gutters and sprint up a couple of footpaths and place myself within the top 20.

The Local rounds came in around the town centre of Diegem, with  the course after the 300m climb immediately turning around and heading downhill, before again turning back on itself and winding up a slow incline to the finish, riders were certain to pop if they could not recover in time, especially as immediately following that last section was a long open drag which the wind was blowing strongly across and then a downhill section with a tailwind before again leading into the small streets of Diegem for the hill and the finish, This course ensured any riders left off the back would stay there, although some time could be made up if the small streets were taken very fast.

After placing myself well the bunch split up, with myself and Ruben being amongst the first group, I protected myself as well as I could as I had Ruben to work for me because I had performed the best in the last race.

Lap after lap the group got smaller and smaller, and with 1 lap to go the bunch again split in my favour, leaving the Belgian National champion 30 seconds back in group 2, with 15 riders left in the top group and barely hanging onto the back I was left to fend for myself. A group of four, including 2 riders from the AVIA team, got away in the last 2 or 3kms and with the other AVIA team rider in the bunch with me blocking they gained a small advantage, I attemped to jump across but was instantly shut down.

With 600ms to go the sprint started early, with the top group well in sight, barely 25ms ahead a rider attacked up the climb with me on his wheel, a group of 5 wound over the top of the climb and down the other side, I started to sprint with 300ms to go but we had left It too late to catch the leaders, in the end I became 7th, with the front group about 20ms in front of us, But I still earned 80 euros for my efforts, Ruben Finished 9th. The only other rider from the team to finish was Coen Ottenspeer in 30th.

From my experiences the Belgian classics are some of the hardest races I have done, with the pace being soo ridiculously high at some points that you find yourself spinning out your u19 gear for kms at a time! My Next and last race is the UCI 1.1 Zemst-Laar, on the 15th in Belgium.

Funnily enough I havnt been homesick until now, I have 10 days left in the country and I cannot wait to get home, Ill miss all the new friends I have made here but Australia will always be my home.

Till Next time

Rubber side down

Joe

P.S. I warned you it was going to be long!!