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.