Belgian weather is catty wompus

Yes, catty wompus. That is our new house word. Well, actually, there are some others, but they are not exactly -re-printable: there are minors reading. Catty wompus is basically several levels up on crazy. And thats what todays race was. Ridiculously hard and fun too. And I came really close to my main goal of finishing. Two local laps from finishing, so about 20km from the finish in a 160km Belgian UCI 1.12 race. Not bad, but I am a little disappointed about not accomplishing my goal. I rode much smarter than my kermis race, not quite good enough positioning yet, but better. But back to the race, we'll start from the beginning...
Had a good morning and night. Ate well, slept like a log, and was ready to rock. Got my mental down, legs felt good. After getting ourselves and our gear into either the "silver bullet" (big ol' team van) or team car. We headed off. In our ballin' matching team tracksuits. Photos (there are not many) to come later. About a 45 minute drive to close to Antwerpen, following the annoying little GPS thingy, while everyone was in their own zone listening to their music and napping if needed. After arriving, Bernard took care of registration, Anne took care of handing out food, water and radios, and Noelle (team soigneur) and Nate (team mechanic) unpacked and set-up bikes and whatnot. Very professional setup. The idea, according to Bernard, is that we should not lift a finger at these big races. We must save energy. Unfortunately, the sun of the morning quickly passed and the rain began. So we headed over to the showering/changing facilities. And the light rain, then changed to torrential rain. When we left the building, the rain tapered a bit, and was mostly just light rain again. Nice. Got a nice pre-race rub down (massage) and oil up from Noelle. Our big, jovial bear of a soigneur. Hilarious guy. Road over to the start, took of jackets, tested the radios, and then joined the 100-150 other racers on the start line. Big pack to say the least. After some last minute instructions from Bernard, the "neutral" start began. As usual in all packs, the peleton was a little jittery for the neutral bit and the token crash happened about 10 minutes into the race. The whole pack just collapsed in front of me. I stayed up, but barely. Moving up through the pack, I attempted to learn the wierd flows of the pack (which is constantly rotating in little circles within the pack) and constantly fighting for position. These dudes will fight you for 100th spot. Took me a while to get comfortable in the pack and work around the new mannerisms. But I started following our Belgian rider's wheel and learned a lot following him as he slithered through the pack. It is crazy being in this pack over here, guys are everywhere, we are going like 45+km/h, dudes jump curbs, ride the bike paths, sidewalks, through parked cars, anything to gain an advantage or move up. Pretty cool to be moving around traffic islands, cobbled corners, moving around round-a-bouts, and being strung out single file in the gutters in little farm roads. What a day! But, back to the race...
Right after the start, the rain began to pour again as we hit the wicked winds of Belgium. And then suddenly, the rain began to hurt. Yes, thats right, it was hailing. So of course, we did the only logical thing to do in Belgium in the hail and wind: we strung out in the gutter single file. A little while later, the sun came out, the wind picked up and we kept going faster. But hey, at least the sun was out! After what seemed like 10 minutes, I heard my radio crackling that we were already 9km from the finishing loops. So we were almost done 90km and that was the reason that someone was really driving the pace. No more chances to move up now, its time to hold on for dear life and watch the wheels in front for gaps. Which started to come. Two cobbled sections in the local laps (of ~10km each). This is where the real work started to happen, and you had to be real attentive with gaps and tons of corners. The pack splintered hard on that first lap, into about 5 peletons! I found myslef in the third pack on the road with Santiago from our team, with most of the rest in the 2nd. Not great, but time to work on that. With brutal winds, we got pulled with 2 local laps remaining. So basically one and a little bit laps off the main pack. Position is key to minimizing the work closing gaps. All in all, a hard day. Time to recover. But not too much, racing another UCI on Saturday or Sunday. This one should be even harder as we climb several of the cobbled climbs from the Tour of Flanders. Needless to say, we are doing a recon ride of that on Wednesday. I'll try to post the few pictures I have soon, for now, I'm pretty wasted and will be going to bed soon. Ciao for now,