Kortenaken-Stok

What a race, if I didn't have leg speed before this one I should have it now. 120 km and an average speed of 44.5 km/hr on rolling roads with a fair amount of wind meant a zippy trip to the hurtbox on more than a few occasions. I did this race last year and finished 45th, this year the race ended in a peleton sprint (or what was left of the peleton) with about 90 riders, of the 120 that started. This year Konica-Minolta from South Africa showed up again as well as a few other foreign riders and teams. I noticed a Norwegian on the start list, as well as a couple of Chinese riders, one of whom rides for Marco Polo, some French and Dutch riders and one rider from India. The rider from India was Torak (spelling?), for those of you from Victoria you might know him from such training centers as Pacific Sport where he left his mark in not always the most positive fashion. He was dropped half way through the race while riding a cyclocross bike...
Anyways, Sportzone was relatively well represented in the race with 3 riders meaning that a top 20 should be in order for at least one of us. Early on a small group went up the rode and grew to about 13 riders. After about an hour I started getting in some moves to try to get across to the leaders. Michael and I got in a move with one of the South Africans and got a good gap, a few riders bridged and we managed to form a solid 10 rider break that seemed like it might succeed, but it go brought back after about 5 km. At one point the leaders had over a minute and it looked like the race was over, but then Bioagrico decided enough was enough and started turning on the front making for some serious gutter riding and suffering in the ditch. With my head down going 55 km/hr in the gutter I knew something serious was going down on the front and before I knew it the break was back and the race for first was on again. In the final lap it looked like a bunch sprint was going to have to decide the winner as the peleton was moving very quickly and no teams were letting anything go. As we rounded the hairpin corner about 1500m out from the false flat uphill finish I was sitting in about 35th position, not great but I thought I could maybe grab a top 30. With about one km to go a Frigas rider darted across my front wheel and I was forced into the cobbled gutter which cost me speed and the wheel I was trying to hold. In the end I finished around 60th which means nothing, but it was a good day of training and a chance to get some legspeed. Chris had a good day finishing 17th in the bunch sprint.
The team is trying to get me into the provincial championships for this Sunday, which is a 150km race that attracts around 200 riders. In Belgium you have to start the provincial championships if you are an elite z/c otherwise you get an automatic one week suspension.
Thanks for reading.