Belgium - Weeks 5 and 6

My fifth week in Belgium saw me have 5 days off the bike to recover from a few issues from the week before. It happened to be a great time to be off the bike, with it being the last week of the Tour De France I could watch the tour at a reasonable time, unlike at home where you have to go three weeks with very little sleep!

Leading back into racing I had a few light days on the bike but there was no easing back into racing with the first one back being 148kms on a pancake flat course. I rode a strong race finishing in the second and main bunch on the road.

I decided to race again the next day, just to get the racing back in my legs. Again it was another hard course with over 3kms of cobbles in a 5km lap. There were about 80 starters which is considered a smaller field. But the pace was on from lap 1 of 22. The peloton became smaller each lap and with about 20km left to race there were only 40 riders left. I finished in the bunch, still not totally recovered from the race the day before but it was good to get in the 2 days of racing in a row.

The next few days were spent on tour with a team that Yvo is involved with and doing some endurance training before the next week of racing. I was lucky enough to get to ride in the car following the race for a few days and it was great to see the other side of racing.

Sunday I was asked to join a local bunch of riders for an endurance ride into Holland like I did a few weeks ago, but doing a different loop. Six hours and 185 km later I arrived home, it was a solid ride with the wind blowing a gale the whole way.

I’m looking forward to my return back home next week but sad to say goodbye to what has been an amazing but tough experience.