GP Marteen Wynants

Hi All

Well today I raced GP Marteen Wynants. It was a kermesse in a place called Helchteren, about 1 hours drive from home. The race was to be 118k or 18 laps of a 6.5?k circut. The circut was a tight quite dodgy circut with a few well placed roundabouts to help lift the heart rate, and some quite narrow roads.

I started the race pretty much in the last 10 wheels and with 120 starters on a tight technical circut it was going to be tough to move up. During the first few laps I managed to move my way up to the front half of the feild and with Ryan trying to make the early move and my legs feeling like a sack of shit I was content to stay there, for the time being anyway. The pace was kept fairly high for the next few laps and even after countless attempts no breaks were sticking. I was quite pleased with this as my legs had finally come to life and I was actually on a quite good day. After making possibily the greatest passing manouvere of my cycling career, by hitting it up the inside of the pelo as we came into a 180 degree corner and just hoping like hell I wasnt about to get chopped I managed to make up 50 odd wheels in the space of 100 metres and finally found myself at the front after 6 laps. For the next few laps I had a few digs and followed anything that looked promising but nothing could break the hold of the peleton and after 2 laps of continuisly attacking I was in need of a rest and within 1km had drifted back to the last 1/3rd of the bunch.

It was now that I saw what sort of toll the pace had taken on the bunch and a good 20-30 guys had already been dropped so I was glad to see that all the attacking had at least come to something. I just cruised along for the next 4 laps going about the normal things you do in a Bike race; Day dream, have a snack and abuse the odd guy. It was during my daydreaming phase that quite a funny thing happened really. We were going through the feed and some guy had dropped his bottle. Not paying to much attention I hit the bottle at 50km/h and the top flew off and smacked some guy in the head, This brought me a wee chuckle as I carried on, on my way.

After 12 laps had been done, and still no breakaway I decided to have a few more digs. My legs were feeling really good so I was pretty motivated to try and get something away. I managed to make a few small breaks and some of them seemed promising but we always seemed to get brought back. I managed to stay at the front and follow a few more attacks for the next 3 laps but still nothing was getting away so figured I'd save my energy till the last lap and try and have a dig then.

Coming into 1 lap to go I was up to about 20th wheel and was sitting good, unfortunatly coming into the first corner we got swamped and I ended up mid pack. I tried to move up during the lap but as it was probably the fastest lap of the race and with everyone else trying to move up it was difficult. Coming into 1k to go I was about 50th wheel and with an uphill head wind drag for the final kilometre and the road narrowing from 3 lanes to 1 with 400m to go it was always going to be dodgy. I decided to play it safe and just cruised in at the back of the bunch finishing with some insignificant placing. The winner managed to sneak away with 2ks to go and won by a few seconds with the bunch sprinting for 2nd.

All in all it was a good race and I had really good legs which was nice and means I am only getting stronger. I have another race on Monday which is a public holiday in Belgium for some reason, then I may be racing a 3 day tour Triptye Ardennes next weekend but am not sure of the selections yet, but if not I will ride to Germany and stay with James for a few days and eat all his food.


Hope all is well

Just keeping it real.