Boomchakalaka

A wise man once gave me some advice on doing something new. He said, the first time you try something, you will be pretty useless. The second time you do it you will show a big improvement. And the third time you do it, you will be worse than the first you tried it because you’re over confident. I wish I listened to that guy.

Woke up this morning feeling like superman, pretty confident after making the front group in both of my first 2 kermesses. So decided I’d step it up a notch and go for a win. I put on the race wheels and went into the race backing myself 100%. 

The circuit didn’t look too hard and the wind was just a breeze at the start/finish so I predicted the race would stick together for at least a few laps. I was totally wrong. The pace went on straight away and I found myself too far back. On the first cross wind section the race blew apart. I ended up in the second group on the road. In an attempt to make the front group I attacked and put myself right into the red zone, didn’t manage to bridge it and ended up almost right at the back of the race after not being able to recover.

So in the end I ended up riding almost the entire race in a bunch of 4, with 2 of us lapping (the other guy was a huge rig, he made Clinton Avery look like a little boy). We were the 4^th bunch of the road and ended up sprinting for 31^st. I came in 32^nd after the big man rolled me.

Matt was our top rider finishing in 18^th as part of the third group on the road.

So lesson learnt and as my good mate Katy Perry tells me, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But I did come away making a profit of 5 Euro! I love you Belgium.

Cheers Murray

Kermesse #2

Belgium decided our first kermesse was too easy so decided to ramp it up a bit by making our second kermesse a pretty brutal ride. It was our intro into Under 23 racing, 14 laps of an 8km circuit. The first half of the circuit was pretty technical with some tight corners and crosswind while the other half was a uphill headwind drag followed by a fast downhill tailwind to the finish. And sure enough, a Belg kermesse isn’t the same if it’s not wet. But they did chuck a bit of coin towards the primes in on every lap too.

Race started and I felt like a demon. The belgies didn’t seem too keen to hit the wet corners at pace so I could move up through the turns pretty easily. Hit up a few early moves and took the first prime of the day without too much difficulty. But early in lap 3 someone stacked it a couple of wheels ahead of me. I ended up off the road and the pelo completely split in two.  Our bunch wasn’t working well and the front group wasn’t coming back at all so I decided to play the patience game. When we hit the technical part of the circuit I started drilling it through the turns and pulled back a 30 second gap on the front group solo. Luckily I managed it because only 5 other riders managed to make it across the gap about a lap later.

We dropped a few other boys and ended up with a bunch of about 15 including some good teams such as the Quickstep team. With 3 laps to go one of the teams sent a man up the road and that was it. His team was blocking and we never got it together to pull him back. But he must have been an oxe to stay out front for 3 laps. In the final lap it split up a bit, Matt rolled in 2^nd and I picked up 7^th in the sprint.

A good day out in my books. Matt and I both picked up 2 primes on top of the placings so a bit of food money for this week...hello waffles      ! Also good to see a few other kiwis in there, Sean Joyce and Simon Finucane riding for Bianchi.

So yer, life’s still good over this neck of the woods. Gotta cut down on the food bill though. And we had a bit of an issue with visas today but I think/hope we got that sorted.

Looking forward to mixing up some curry this weekend with 2 kermesses back to back! Shit yea Murray.

So Euro

Finally managed to hook onto the neighbours internet so no more romaing the streets looking for wifi. So now I can get the blog updates rolling.

So I hit up the Tour of Canterbury as well as Graperide in the last couple of weeks in NZ. Had to bluff my way through a bit as the form wasn't really there. Big ups to my teammates Sam and especially Jo Chapman who worked themselves over for me at Canterbury. But unfortunately all I came away with was a 3rd on stage 1. Graperide was a similar story and I came in 6th.

But that's old news, since then I've made my way around the world to Poperinge, Belgium where I'll be racing for the next 6 months with Tomacc Cycling Team. Spent the first few days in a hotel with 2 teammates, Matt Wheatcroft (NZ) and Joe Harris (Eng). Now we've moved into the new flat which I have to say is a big step up after last years flat in the States. Although the Englishman is a bit of a loose cannon and talks more s*** than Jay from Inbetweeners. (He'd probably take that a compliment).

A couple of days after arriving we went to check out Ronde Van Vlaanderan (The Tour of Flanders), a pro race that had a few kiwis in there. We set up on the cobbled climb up the Kwaremont where the atmosphere was pumping. I was giving the kiwis a bit of abuse and I see Roly mentioned in his blog that he heard some hearty kiwi support up  the climb. 

The training around here is pretty sick. We're only a few k's from the French border so we've been hitting up a bit of altitude training in the mountains on the border up to a whopping 100m above sea level! Nah seriously though, there are a few hills including the famous Kemmelberg which is a brutal cobbled climb that is used in the Belgium classics. Picked up my fist puncture up there the other day. I've been knocking up some k's to make up for my lack of training over summer. It's so good having all this time to train. Yesterday I went out for 6 hours but it turned into 7 after I tried to take a shortcut home. Hit the wall but stoked to be back into it.

 We had our first kermesse the other day. It was 17 laps totalling 120km with a 100m cobble section leading into the finish. Didn't really know what to expect so just rolled in the bunch for the first lap. The pace wasn't too bad and it was a little sketchy in the pelo so I went on the attack and made the split with Matt. We started hussing and the time gap grew pretty quick. I was loving the fact that you could lap hard knowing that someone would always follow through (unlike some of the racing in NZ). The Belgies love to give a few hand slings too to keep the bunch rolling. Matt took a few primes until some Belg rider had a go at him for taking too many primes and chopped him coming into the start/finish. I spent most of the race trying to work out how Matt knew there were primes for that lap. Turns out there were primes every lap. With 3 laps to go we nearly had 3 mins so I had a crack but the Belgies weren't keen to go that early so with a lap and a half to go they started launching and I gave 100% trying to pull it back for Matt but in the end he finished 6th and I got 12th. But it's all part of the learning curve.

A few photos here (in black, blue and white kit) : http://www.cyclingnews.nu/fotopaginas%202012/Bredene04-04-2012.htm#Woensdag

We had team preso the other night which was mad. We were all interviewed and there was a famous Belgie dancer who cut some shapes at the end of the night. There's a bit of talk going round about the team merging with a British team to form a Continental team next year so we can race some UCI tours so there could be opportunnities for next year.

But other than that, I just want to help the team pull some results this season and I would be stoked to find a Euro wife while I'm here!

Enough talk for one day.