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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