Sunday, December 23, 2007

Mayhem in Balegem

Today, we traveled to Balegem for another smaller race. Once again, the course was like nothing that we had never seen. When the mercury broke the big 0 degree mark, the course got quite muddy. It wasn't the polite mud that we are used to in the United States, but a mean, scruffy peanut butter mud that was quite the interesting experience to ride in. Like yesterday, all of us Americans were going to be placed in the back row, but due to some sneakyness, we were able to get past the starting official and get into the 3rd to last row. All you have to do is show some confidence in your move and nobody will challenge your decision. So anyway, once the race was started we had to fight our way through a pack of 59 other riders to get to the hole-shot, a muddy grass straightaway. Its fun to start in the back row and work your way up through the crowd of other racers. Some of these Belgian kids are complete messes when it comes to riding mud. In the middle of the race course, the race promoters set up a series of steep descents to steep run-ups. While the pre-riding was occuring, a good half of these kids were staring at these descents and muttering incoherently in Flemish, most likely about how scared they were about these beasts. During the race they were crashing all over the place. It would have been hilarious to watch this race. Even kids who wussed out of riding down didn't get off easy. A couple tried to run, but slipped and slid all the way to the bottom and off the course while their bikes remained sitting on the top of the crest of the hill. Nobody was spared from the burliness.
The two races we've encountered in this past weekend are really helping us prepare for the World Cup on Wednesday. The Junior fields are 45-60 strong, even in these small races. This was easlily the biggest surprise to all of us first year juniors. These kids are fast too. I think if we had started in the front rows, our overall race results would be much higher. Though working the way through fields this large may be entertaining, it sure takes a lot of gas. The World Cup will be interesting.
Today, I met Ian Boswell, another American who is currently living in Brussels. It was really nice to be met by a friendly English voice after being surrounded by an alien Flemish language for the past couple of days. He is going to school is Brussels and is a really nice kid.
For dinner tonight, I'm pretty sure that Els fed us some nice horse. When we asked her what kind of meat we were eating, all that she would tell us was that is was "steak". Everyone is 99% sure that it had to be due to the unusual combination of toughness, stringiness, and odd aftertaste that would be described as farm-yardy. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.


-Eric

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gentlemen-
What an incredible time you are having - scruffy peanut butter mud, stringy meat, last row starting positions! Oh, and some pretty incredible racing, picking up a few Euros, and hanging with your fellow team mates, all in fabulous Europe!! We all love reading the blogs - keep those entries coming!

Kelly, Alex and Glenn