It turns out I’m getting three days off between Loenhout and the last two races of my season.  So yesterday’s ride was mostly focused around this:

For dinner Els made us a traditional Belgian meal of steak and frites.

Today’s ride though was a bit more serious though.  I took a trip South of the border!  Not to Mexico you silly vacationing people (parents), but to France.  Here is the place where I would provide you with a cheesy picture of us crossing the border…  But there wasn’t really a border to photograph.  We actually had no idea when we had crossed into France.  The beauty of the European Union and/or peace?  Originally we set out just to cross the border and then loop back to Izegem, but before we knew it we spotted a sign pointing us in the direction of Roubaix.  The search was on the for the famous velodrome in which Paris-Roubaix finishes.  Finding the city of Roubaix was the easy part, once we got there though finding the actual velodrome proved a bit more difficult.  We stopped three or four times within the city and simply asked “Velodrome?” and we were able to find it after a few minutes thanks to the help of some nice French people.

Here is the Rad Jake with some big rock outside of some bike racing track.

Unfortunately the track was closed so we just took a few pictures from the outside.

Here I am outside of the velodrome with my friend David “The Champ” Kessler.  All in all it was a great three our ride with beautiful weather and in good company.  There was only one cloud in the sky.  It’s just that it was just one really really big cloud…

After Diegem we had one day off from racing.  I rode the canal into the city of Roeselare for a nice easy ride.  I took quite a few pictures. 

Above is the view along the canal as I rode out towards Roeselare.

Once I got to the center of Roeselare I discovered this temporary skating rink that was set up to enhance the holiday atmosphere.  The thing that stuck me as most odd was that this skating area was shaped like a horse racing track.  In America we generally have much more freedom in our holiday ice skating endeavors.  While you are generally expected to skate in a counterclockwise direction, you can start making that left turn whenever you want.  Cut across the middle to catch up to your friends, do crazy spinning tricks in the center area, etc..  This particular skating rink is straight up regulating its skaters.  There is no middle area!  Where is the freedom?  Poor regulated Belgian children…

Next I stopped by the petting zoo on my way back to Izegem.  Ok so it wasn’t really a petting zoo it was just someone’s front yard and that is what makes it seem so strange to me.  In the foreground you will see an ostrich. I wasn’t even sure that those could survive in Belgium.  Then in the back there are numerous goats and horses/donkeys/mules of the smaller variety.  Rob Dyrdek should have come to the outskirts of Izegem to get his mini horse.

This is my friend Lubomir.  We chatted for a bit about the condition of his living space.  He seemed quite displeased with the mud created by the melting snow.  I tried to explain to him that my cables and housing felt the same way, but he wasn’t having it.

So today was one of my favorite cross races in Loenhout.  It was fairly muddy and we had a huge U23 field with 99 starters.  I had an okay start and just tried to keep it steady.  Once again I was able to turn in on in the last 2 laps to win my group and pick off a few other guys.  I ended up 50th out of 99.  I think that’s a pretty decent day for me and my legs seem pretty fresh still considering all the racing we have been doing.  I think the massage from my man Herman yesterday really helped.  Now we have 2 days off and then 3 more races all in a row to close out my season.

I did a couple of bike races since last time I updated.  Yesterday was the Heusden-Zolder World Cup in Belgium.  The venue is an F1 race track and the course was pretty different from anything I had ever raced either here or in the states.  The first half was fairly wide open and fast, but the second half had numerous technical climbs and descents plus one “run up”.  This run up was more like a climb up though because it was so steep.  My short legs were grateful for my free left hand’s assistance in getting me to the top each lap, but I was still going faster than some people up it.  It has finally warmed up a bit here in Belgium and the sun was even out for a bit yesterday.  The race started fast and I managed to stay out of trouble in the opening lap and tried to settle into my group.  Being on a wheel was nice for the 400m long road section down the F1 track every lap.  I rode fairly steadily and finished on the lead lap so it  was an alright race.  Here is some video from the race.  It’s got some good shots of the descent and also the run up.  I feature on the descent at about 1:15.

Today we raced one of my favorite courses, the Diegem Superprestige.  It is the most urban cross race I have ever done and had tons of spectators this year.  The elite men’s race is under the lights, but the U23 race was happening right around sunset. I’m not sure exactly how many starters there were, but it was one of the bigger fields so far.  It was quite muddy so that made for a bit of fun.  I had a good race and finished feeling strong especially in the last couple of laps.  I’ll try to find some pictures to post in the next couple days.

Now we have one day off from racing and then it back to it with one of my favorite races on Tuesday.  I’m welcoming the day off after 5 races in 8 days so far.

I was riding along today getting ready for tomorrow’s World Cup and I thought I had found myself in Bellingham.  Although all the signs that alerted me as I was approaching were spelling it “Bellegem”.  I pressed onwards hoping to find Belgium’s version of my beloved Bellingham.

As I was entering the town I stopped to and tried to sight Mt. Baker, but I think it was just too foggy today.

Once I entered this supposed old world Bellingham I began to search for the comforts of home.  Much to my dismay I couldn’t find one organic food establishment, nor any dreaded out hippie folk.  I searched and searched, but there was no Diego’s Mexican Grill.  I was beginning to doubt that Bellegem actually did equal Bellingham.  It was then confirmed that this was indeed not actually Bellingham when I saw that the residen’ts of Bellegem find it humerous to confuse their children by having more than one Santa Clause.

Perhaps the residents of Bellegem just don’t know that Santa has elves to help him out rather than clones of himself.  So I left Bellegem via this “road” with an empty heart, upset by the lack of hippie folk, and saddened by the lack of Diego’s in my stomach.  At least now that the snow has mostly melted I can see/taste the cow poop on the “roads”.

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Yesterday I raced the Noordzeecross in Middelkerke.  It was a smaller race by the standards over here so us U23 riders were combined with the Elites.  I ended up with a decent start despite the near last row call up.  Maybe my start was a little too good, and I was going a bit too hard for the first half the race.  I was definitely fading in the second half, but Sven Nys put me out of my misery a lap early when he came around to lap me.  It’s been a while since I’ve been lapped in any race, but I was giving it my best.  I can’t be too ashamed at being lapped by the best cyclocross racer in the world, so instead I’m just thinking onwards to the upcoming races.  Here is a picture from the race yesterday.  My friend Mario from Cycling-Pics took it.  As you can see some of the snow is finally starting to melt and create a muddy mess.

So now the name of the game is REST.  There are two days of light training and then it is right into the meat of the racing here at EuroCrossCamp.  The biggest block of racing will kick off with the World Cup in Zolder on Saturday.  What is normally a dry and fast course could be a very different race this year with the melting snow.  I’m pretty excited to give it out there on Saturday.  But until then I have been focusing on resting and recovering as much as possible.  Today I had a good ride with some others on some very iced over farm roads.  One thing I noticed about riding on the ice today is that it really demands that perfectly round and light spin of the pedals.  It ended up being great for a recovery ride.

I took a couple pictures around the house today too.  So below you will see the room where the training bikes are kept.  It’s quite full with so many riders staying in the house.

Here are the mechanics trying to get into one of the vans that the keys were locked inside of.  We were supposed to take this van to the race yesterday, but ended up all squeezing into one of the other vans to get there on time.

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The house is really starting to fill up and the last two days have been a good break from racing before some of the more serious racing starts.  Tomorrow I’ll be doing the Noordzeecross in Middelkerke.  It’s right on the ocean and only an hour or so from the house.  The U23s are combined with the Elites (like in the US) so I’ll be going up against the biggest guys in cyclocross.  It should be a good experience and some good racing to keep the legs firing.  The last two days have been quite snowy.  Yesterday I rode inside on the rollers for an entire hour!  That is a lifetime achievement of inside riding for me.  Riding with eight other guys makes the inside riding a bit more enjoyable though.  Today I had to get outside though and the snow was melting so I put on some road tires.  Riding along the canal path was a bit tricky, but tons of fun.  So now I’ve got some of those pictures that I promised you:

The view of Izegem from my room.  It keeps me entertained during the day sometimes.

Seriously folks, it’s snowy and icy outside and safety comes first.  3 wheels is way safer than 2, especially if you have a broken arm…

The Rad Jake partway through our snowy ride today.

Riding into Kortrijk today with sun showing itself in Belgium.

Snow is what’s happening here in Belgium right now.  It’s not supposed to snow in Belgium, and it doesn’t very often.  For all you Western Washingtoners, it snows considerably less in Belgium than on the West side of our state.  So there aren’t many snow plows, roads are bad, the airport has closed a few times… you get the picture.

First off you should check out my entry for the EuroCrossCamp cyclingnews diary that I wrote yesterday.  That should bring you up to speed on the yesterday’s “race”.  Now for today’s race.  We had to get up super early to start our drive to Kalmthout because of the poor road conditions.  I was not digging on more snow after yesterday’s experience, but once I got out on the course it was quite fun and I was pumped I had a decent race on the technical course with quite a few fast and short stair runs.  I finished in 34th place on the lead lap and I’m pretty happy with that.

The roads had improved quite a bit so we made it back to the house in time to watch the elite men’s race on tv and it was spectacular.  Especially the last lap, so when crosstube.net gets the video up you should definitely check it out.  Please ponder this:  Is Sven Nys the Real Slim Shady?

“That last lap crash didn’t bother me. Nobody could pass me, even if it meant that I would have to go through the last corner at 60 km/h. These are extreme conditions and that’s when the real Sven Nys stands up, even though it was really cold.”

I’m planning on trying to give updates here every other day, or maybe everyday that I race.  I promise that there will be interesting pictures too.  Cause I’ll be real, those are much cooler than many of my words.  Last but certainly not least thank you to all of those who have made this trip possible for me!

-Steve