Another weekend of riding fun

So this past weekend was fun - Saturday my friend Wilco and I tossed the mountain bikes into my car and headed to Limburg (Southern NL) to explore some of the fun trails down there. It's about a 1.5 hr drive, and in the end we were surprised to find ourselves at the start of the ride.....in Belgium! Surprise - we'd crossed the border and there weren't any signs or anything!

But the day was sunny (if a little chilly for this time of the year), so we set off planning to do a 51km loop that was rated the best trail in the Netherlands....even though it was in Belgium. Make sense? (Not to me either :o) So up and down and up and down we rode through the fields and the woods - some of the sections were pretty great MTB riding, while some portions were on paved roads, but it was a good mix. Wilco took a pretty good spill on one of the downhill sections and shredded his jersey - and got some good scrapes too (nice!). After that though we took it easier and soon we stopped at a cafe for.......waffles!!! Warm waffles with cherries and whipped cream, a capuccino, and a La Chouffe (one of my favortie Belgian beers).....mmmmmmm

By this point we'd already been gone for 2.5hrs of riding, so we decided to bust it back on the road rather than continue on the technical climbs and descents for another 20km. But it turns out on the road it only took about 15 minutes and we were back at the car! Oh well - all in all it was a good ride.

Then on Sunday I joined some teammates for a criterium - 80km around a 2.2km loop, complete with cobblestones (of course), 2 minor climbs, and 8 corners (one of them a shicane.....spl?). There were 80 riders, and soon I found myself settled into a rythm in the middle of the peloton. Things were going fine for most of the race until about the 1hr mark when my teammate (who was trying unsuccessfully to chase the 2 riders in the lead break) came back to the peloton. By this point the peloton had already been whittled down to about 50 riders as the pace had been pretty high - 45kph average with all the corners, yikes!

After about 10 minutes of riding he and I worked our way to the front, and he started a hard pull. I looked over my shoulder and realized we had a gap of 100m, so we thought to take a try. We worked a bit together for about 1/2 a lap, but eventually the peloton caugh us - and I'd make a miscalculation. I didn't have the stamina for that kind of effort, so I slowly found myself getting pushed back further and further in the peloton. Eventually after another 10 minutes of absolute suffering (by this point my whole body was tingling - something you can only feel when going ALL OUT for extended periods) I got dropped by the peloton. Shit.

But it turns out I'd made it down to the last 19 in the race, and since it was after the 50km mark they qualify all the riders that drop out after this point. So in the end I finished 19th and in the money - wahooo!!! This was my best placing so far - but it really felt weird, since I wasn't able to finish the race with the 'peloton' (I'll use that loosely since it was only 18 guys!). My teammate ended up 4th - pretty good, but he was really looking to make the podium.

In the end I guess the result wasn't that bad - and not finishing with the leaders shouldn't be seen as a loss - it just means the pace was so high that the rest of the field couldn't keep up. Also, in races like these, the jury isn't shy about pulling riders off the course and they usually only finish with about 20 riders.

Oh yeah - and I was reading an interesting article online - it's got some pretty funny views of the different media sources from around the world about the Israel/Hezbollah peace. You have to take them with a grain of salt (they could just be random editorials), but still realize they can and do sway public opinion in the countries where they're publised. Kinda funny, kinda scary. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4790219.stm