Route des Fonderies Royales: May 2015

There are many challenges to living and racing away from home in a foreign country; first of all there's the languages. As if one new language wasn't hard enough to try and understand, living on the Walloon boarder means having to juggle a very basic understanding of both Dutch and French with a little bit of Flemish thrown in for good measure (I spoke to a man after a race in Kortrijk and he said even people who claim speak Flemish struggle with Flemish). Then there's doing all the cooking and cleaning for yourself, it doesn't sound like much, which is maybe why I always took this for granted at home, but it turns out it's a lot harder than Mums let on. There's also the shopping but to be honest I rather like food shopping here in Belgium. For those of you who have never shopped at Colruyt, it's like B&Q mixed with a primary school party bag; The isles are massive, the checkout is a strange experience and the whole store is full of free surprises and you just don't know what you're going to get, it could be cereal, or it could be steak. That said it's still a bit tiresome (and expensive) traipsing round buying food for yourself and two other cyclists with equally high metabolisms knowing full well you'll probably have to come back in less than a week to stock up again.

Kleine Langeheidestraat, a little different to Mardale Crescent.

On top of this is of course the reason I'm here; the racing. Having been to Belgium twice before I thought I knew what to expect, but I was woefully mistaken. I've found out that racing in different regions of Belgium is very similar to racing in different regions in the UK. I'm sure this won't win me any friends down south but I have to say in my experience heading up the M6 to a race makes for a much tougher day out than heading down the M6. And this has nothing to do with the 'Northerners are harder than Southerners' stereotype, which just isn't true, it's simply because the competition is completely different, and the same can be said for kermesse racing here in Belgium. Oudenaarde seems to be the Mecca for aspiring young Brits looking to test themselves abroad, which is exactly why I went to stay there 2013 and 2014. The truth is though that racing over here in East Flanders and in the Walloon is on a whole other level to that of the racing in the West. Where I raced the past two seasons (and the few times I've raced over that way this season) you get maybe a handful of UCI continental riders, often on different teams, meaning the racing is still hard but fairly easy to read; if you have the legs to go with the conti riders and do so then chances are you'll find yourself in the break. So far this year however the majority of the kermesses I've been doing over this way have felt harder than the interclubs I've been racing in. Sint Lambert 1.12b for example saw Color-code, T-palm, Vastgoedservice and Veranclassic all turn up with full teams, not to mention the likes of Lotto U23, Profel and Van Eyke who also had strength in numbers. This calibre of riders along with the rolling, twisty nature of the roads and an average speed of 44kph made for one of the most horrid races I've ever done.

Mal - Tongeren Kermesse.

Despite the new challenges of having to be completely self reliant I'm loving living in Ottenburg. At first I felt like the locals (neighbours, postmen, café baristas, Decathalon staff, Panos sandwich makers and Colruyt checkout workers) just saw us as the weird English boys who wore lycra. But now after a few months living here they seem a lot more approachable and appreciative of the fact that although our Dutch/French is pretty crap, we are at least trying.

As I say the racing has been tougher than expected, when you prepare for a whole winter, become stronger, smarter and the results don't come immediately it's frustrating. I had a nice start to the season with a criterium win in the UK but since then have struggled to perform how I'd have hoped. I've had my fair share of bad luck what with a couple of crashes, illness, a puncture and a wheel that had a lot less spokes in at the end of the race than the start of it. However having seen the misfortune of others who have suffered broken bones and amongst many other things I'm counting myself fairly lucky. I'm learning a massive amount from every race I'm at and something I've started doing this year is to log down everything I learn at each race in an empty old school book. This way I'll avoid making the same mistakes twice and hopefully as the form and knowledge improves so too should the results. Next up for me is a team kermesse tomorrow (Friday 15th) over in Morbeke, then another kermesse on Sunday followed by two team races the following Sundays; The Sinksenkoers interclub and the GP Etienne De Wilde Belgium cup interclub.

Thank you for reading, below is a selection of pictures from races, training and everyday life during my first few months here in Belgium. I couldn't be here without the support and backing of my family, friends, coach, The Dave Rayner Fund, Pedal Potential, GripGrab and my team so thank you for everything,

Tom

Between writing this post and it going live I finished 6th in Morbeke kermesse after
making the winning break, more on this race and the ones that followed in my next post.