The First Race

We had our first race today in the town of Laarne. It was a small national race, and it took less than an hour to get there. We arrived plenty early and went into the bar to register. Everything went smoothly and we headed out to ride the course. Most of the course went through a farmer's corn field and there were plenty of tractor tracks all over the place. The course was very frozen and rutted so it made for a bumpy race. It reminded us a lot of Kansas City minus the snow.
We went to the start and waited for our call ups. Finally they called up the Americans, everyone of us in the back row. By the time the race started things were starting to thaw out a little bit, but it was still tough. The start was pretty hectic, especially going over the large ditch that required dismounting when in traffic. We all got through it and kept trying to move up as much as possible. We all rode strong and Eric ended up 12th, I was 24th, and Ian was 33th. Eric even made 10 Euros. We were all rushed back to the house to start recovering so we didn't get to see Nick (seen on balcony) race, but it sounded very exciting. Even though it was just a small national race Niels Albert was racing in the Elite/U23 field. So Nick and the other U23s had their hands full, but the raced very well. Nick was in 6th for most of the race until some late race bike troubles that set him back to 14th. He was still super excited to be in the money and claim his 15 Euros. We are all racing again tommorow. Nick is going to race in Holland while the Juniors will stay a little bit closer for another small race. Check in again tomorrow to see how it goes.

-Steve