Getting Wet in Antwerp

It's a weird feeling to be done with a stage race. It''s nice to be able to rest but at the same time it's a bit depressing. There is a major drop off in stimulus. No schedule to keep, no carbo-loading, no eat-sleep-race cycle. Yet my body is still raging, expecting another day of racing. I'll give it what it wants and go for a ride in a few hours.

The Tour of Antwerp was wet. The first day (prologue and road stage) it rained from sun up until sun down and was cold. It was a miserable and epic day on the bike. The CC team had good prologues and finished in the front of the peloton in the afternoon. Besides some minor crashes everyone escaped to race another day. Friday morning was a short race of only 90km, completed in less than 2 hours. That's over 27 mph. Despite a hairy run in to the finish Allen cracked the top 30 and Aaron and I were just behind him. The afternoon brought a Team Time Trial of 23km. We had high expectations for this and were a bit disappointed with our 15th place. Right smack dab in the middle of 30 teams. The times were close but we made a few too many mistakes. Team time trialling is definately a skill where practice pays, and our 3 days of practice may not have been enough. It was a good learning experience. Saturday was the crazy day. I was the only rider in the peloton to get soaked and it wasn't raining. On a narrow farm road I crashed into the grass to avoid a pile-up. My momentum sent me rolling into a ditch filled with nasty muddy water. Of course the pile-up caused a major split and I spent the next 130km chasing and rotating with other riders to minimize the time loss. It was a very frustrating day because the crash was near the front and I had the legs to do so much more than pull a chase group around for 3 hours. The result at the end of the day did not reflect my good form or aggressive racing but instead it reflected my bad luck. Sunday was the beast of 190km. I was worried when I had trouble getting out of bed due to exhaustion and my sore right side on which I crashed. I thought it might be a day of merely surviving. Once we got rolling, though, I was shocked to discover how great my legs felt. A small early break escaped and the peloton chased at a fairly steady tempo. I tried to be conservative and paient. The 2 local laps with cobbles would decide the race. 30 km from the local laps...Rain. Those cobbles would be like riding on ice. I raced at the front the entire day and tried my hardest to stay there for the laps... for my own safety and for a good result. There were some nasty and spectacular crashed, some of which I could only hear. They all motivated me to move up even more. In the end I placed 38th, not great but nothing to be ashamed of. I raced hard every day, gave everything I had to give, and unfortunately had some bad luck. I did better than last year and I am nowhere near as wasted as I was at the end. Time to recover, race a kermis, and head back to the old US of A.