Morning cup of coffee and a blog...

Well... I'm wrapping up my final cup of coffee before I go out and ride and decided it was probably time to get another blog going. I am still working on getting a descent hosting company for my site... I ended up signing up with one, but they turned out to be one of the worst companies I could have picked, after my experience and some reviews I started reading.... I think for the price I am wanting to pay, nothing is going to be great, but I just want to make sure I get the best service I can that is also fairly inexpensive...

As for the racing... I did this pro kurmesse on Monday about 20k from where I'm staying and 160k long. It was pretty cool, some big teams showed up with a lot of riders. Let's see if I can recall who I saw on the start line... 1 Quickstep guy, 1 Agritubel guy, 3 Lotto guys, a Suanier Duval guy, and full squads from Landbowkredit, Topsport, Mitsubishi-Jartazi, Drapac Porsche... It was a pretty impressive field... I wasn't feeling too hot, I am getting fatigued and can feel it in the races when it is time to go real hard. I felt pretty good for the first half of the race though, I could tell I was tired but could stil accelerate up to 60kph when I needed to without flailing all over the bike. I felt pretty comfortable for the first half and only got out of my comfort zone a few times. The problem is when I have to go above and beyond for a long time, the legs just don't seem to have the power at the very high end anymore. At about the halfway point things started getting faster and gaps started opening. I managed to stay in the peleton through the splits and bridge across at one point when getting caught behind a split. The race never really let up after that, I was hanging on while trying to recover from riding across the gap for about two laps. In that time I was sitting on the back trying to stay out of the way of the big hitters, plus it was easier not having to fight for position... The problem with sitting at the back, is you're at the mercy of everyone in front of you, so if someone in front of you crashes or opens a gap, you're screwed. It was looking like most of the guys still left who weren't pro, were the better kurmesse riders, so I wasn't too worried. It turned out I made a bit of a mistake and had to deal with the guy in front of me going down while we were going into one of the two corners on the course that we were always jamming out of to get up to that 60kph... He tried to take a bottle going into the corner and dropped his wheel off the road. I managed to stay upright, but then had a huge gap to close and it didn't happen. At that point I was still in the red and hanging on for dear life, try as I may, there was no riding across a gap when the pack is going 60+kph... I would've had to be able to sustain 65-70kph (36-42mph) to get across and I'm just not there... I ended up riding back home with my tail between my legs... But it was a good experience none the less and I think if I could have stayed in contact, I could've finished. I was hanging on and was at the mercy of everyone else in front of me, in those situations when you're not really strong enough, you need lots of luck. The guy who ended up winning was from Topsport and is on the olympic team for Belgium, so it was kind of cool to be racing with some of those guys.

Yesterday I went with Juan and his family to Brussels for the day... It was amazing, we went to the atomium, mini europe, and then to the center of Brussels and saw the Grand'Place(this amazing town center that was started in the 1400's) and Mannekin Piss. It was amazing, Juan took a bunch of photos... I'll try to post some when I get some copies... I'm bummed because the camera I got just before I came here isn't working... I did find the charger for my american cell phone though, so I can post some photos from my phone again... the quality just isn't too great...

alright, gotta go ride so I can get back to watch the tour (which should be pretty exciting today)...

J signing off...