Training

With no racing this weekend it was decided that I should do a solid block of training to get some volume back. After the three hour ride on Saturday I went out on a four hour adventure on Sunday. I ended up finding my way to Zottegem and then wound my way in the direction of Gent. I was riding on a fairly big road and decided I wanted off of it so I popped onto a nice looking country lane and within a few hundred meters I saw a guy at a house on the left side of the road with last years team casual shirt on and when I got a closer look I realized that it was my teammate Bart! I had managed to find his house on a quiet country road in Flanders without even knowing where I was, incredible. He was just about to head to the provincial race and gave me some good directions for some incredible roads in the area that would lead me to my destination. I have never ridden in this region before and I must say that it is incredibly beautiful. The area was rich with greenery and riding along the river Schelde was very peaceful. On the ride I managed to find a very Belgian souvenir, but that is for another day.
Sunday was to be the last day of the unseasonal warm and dry conditions here in Belgium so with 6 hours on the program for Monday I knew it could be a tough day. The thing about rain here is that the temperature doesn't necessarily plummet ten degrees when the rain starts and the rain seems to fall much lighter than in Calgary. All in all this can make for some fairly pleasant riding in wet conditions which is what I experienced that day. I set out for the first hour with a teammate and then continued solo towards Brakel and the Vlaamse Ardenne. The region is where the majority of the challenges in the Tour of Flanders lie and with some intervals to do I eagerly set out to find some bergs from the Ronde. With no real destination in mind and a vague understanding of the location of various cities in the area I simply let the roads take me for a ride and ended up finding some breathtaking field roads and villages along the way. The weather started to turn foul after the first hour with high winds and blasts of rain, but once I was in the zone I was good to go. After all those wet rides in Victoria this winter the conditions felt luxuriously pleasant and I still had to pinch myself to remind me of that fact that life can't get any better than blasting up some of the world's most famous climbs in conditions that mimic those of the battles that have been fought on them. Eventually I found myself in Oudenaarde and then on to Ronse. From here I was in the French speaking part of Belgium and getting close to the French border. I don't really have a good handle on this region and thinking I was heading in the direction of Enghien, where I have been before, I was actually heading to France and almost ended up in Tournai only a few kilometers from Roubaix! While on a narrow field rode in the middle of a mass of lush green fields I decided enough was enough and that I was quickly becoming lost so I turned in the direction of what I hoped was Ronse and after a few km found signs to lead me back to Flanders. I then headed in the direction of Brackel again and then on to Geraardsbergen with its familiar roads to fill the last hour of the ride and get some of the last intervals out of the way. It was an epic day and illustrates the magic of simply riding in this region. Here you ride from city to city. The locals never use any form of directional sense beyond knowing where each city is in relation to another. Instead of saying that you should travel north for example they will tell you to head in the direction of Dendermonde or if you want to go west to head in the direction of Oudenaarde. This makes for interesting travel and the constant discovery of new roads.
Yesterday I headed out with Tino for a nice easy spin and while we never were more than 10 km from the house and the town he has lived in most of his life we still found roads he had never seen before. We also found some nasty cobbles and a rain storm, but it was a great day.
Today it is raining again, but it looks to be letting up somewhat. Hopefully I can get out for a pre race spin in the afternoon and then start preparing for tomorrow's race. Unfortunately it looks like the race we had originally planned to do is canceled for some reason, I thought that type of thing only happened in Canada... Regardless there is another race close to Gent to maybe we will do that one instead.
I checked results from the Velocity stage race at home and was a bit disappointed in the performance of the Alberta teams. Looks like the lazy boys from the coast ran the show without much contest, nice riding Jamie.