Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Catch Up

So it has been a while since I have posted, again. This is because when we are at races, the race itself provides housing (and food) for the teams. This means that often times, we are staying in low budget hotels that do not have internet. So, for the past 2 weeks or so, my internet has been hard to come by.
Anyhow, I am now back in the US. I am in Augusta, Georgia, for U23 (under 23 year old) national championships, and feel pretty good; I think that I have a chance to have a few good rides. Since I last updated though, I have had some interesting experiences, so here is wheat I have been up to:

Kermesse 
After I got back from France, I did a race called a kermesse. It was a pretty interesting experience. To start, you show up in some town and go to the race bar. It generally looks something like this:
The bar is packed with people (mostly old, fat men), and is really, really smoky. But you go in, present them your license, and pay 5 euros, 3 of which you get back after you return your re-usable numbers after the race. Then, you go pin numbers and try to ride a lap of the course, if you can find your way around. The start, before anyone gets there, will look something like this:
By the time the race starts though, the barriers are fairly packed with locals who come out to watch the race, eat the food, and most importantly, get fairly drunk. The most unique part is actually the food; Vendors will set up booths that sell grilled sausages, frites (french fries), and dried fish, which looks and smells pretty bad. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to try any, although I am not sure if I could have gotten any down if opportunity had presented itself.

But back to the actual race, the course was a 3 km loop that we did 35 times, for a total of 105 km, or around 65 miles. This is a pretty common distance for the total length of the race, but usually, the laps are longer than that. The field size was around 120 guys, and once we started racing, we were just flying. Our race time was 2 hours and 20 minutes, meaning that we averaged over 28 miles per hour. It was a flat course, and these guys just went so hard. There was a break of 10 guys up the road most of the race, but they never got more than 20 to 30 seconds, so we could see them on  the straightaways. This meant guys were just attacking constantly. I tried to mix it up in the front, following attacks when I could, but it was really hard. My best moment came when, on the last lap, the break got caught. I though that the best course of action would be to try to counter this move, and that maybe that would be the winning break. But, with less than 2 km to go, a solo attack wasn't going to make it, so in the final 500 meters when I got caught, I was just going backwards, and ended up pretty far back. Anyhow, it was a fun day, and some good training, which was good to get heading into my next race, a 7 day under 23 race in Germany (more to come on that in my next post). 


Ronny

This is Ronny. Ronny is the Izegem Police man. He also, in his free time, gives massages to cycling teams. A few times a week, he will show up in the afternoon, and give all the guys a massage. This guy is hilarious. He really lightens up the mood in the house, which is really good. When you have 10 guys in a house with the only goal of doing well in bike racing, it can get a bit rough, but he is a good way to ease the tension. 

Ieper (or Ypres) 
On the last day we were in Belgium, Ronny took us to a town called Ieper. Apparently, he has been offering to take the national team there for a few years, but luckily he never came through until this. The interesting thing about Ieper is that every day since 1928, other than during the occupation, they have held a WWI memorial ceremony. We started by going driving by a WW1 cemetery. 

Me, taking a picture 
It struck us then how many people WW1 and WWII actually impacted. Most of us had not seen any kind of memorial for WW1 before, and the fact that this was just one of thousands of cemeteries spread out around Belgium and France for both wars just struck us as incredible. 
After this, we headed to Ieper. Now I have to warn you, the next picture is the only really touristy picture that I took the whole trip, so you have been warned:
This was the main square in Ieper, and the building behind me is actually a museum now. It was interesting to find out that this, along with almost everything else in Ieper, had to be rebuilt after WWI, since the city was decimated after the war. From here we walked a few blocks to the memorial, which is built into the defensive wall surrounding the city. It also seems to serve as the main entrance into the city, as if to remind people of what happened every time they come or go.  
The actual ceremony was impressively well attended, and though it was simple, it drove home the point of how much WWI impacted this community. This is a picture from the ceremony:
Like I said, there were a lot of people who showed up, and they have this memorial service every day. It was impressive, and was a good way to spend our last day in Belgium. 

The next day we were off to Germany for my last race for the trip, but I will save that for my next post.