The Land of Rabobank

I've been hearing rumours that people are wondering what the hell I've been up tp for the last three weeks. No reports, no race results no e-mail. Well, two of those can be explained by the fact that internet access in Belgium is harder to find than, say, a decent hockey team (I watched some Belgian "pro" hockey game on TV here last year. Ouch. But then, that's probabally what we look like racing bikes). The no race results thing is a by product of not doing any racing, due to a really nasty cold-type virusy thing that laid me out for like two weeks. Ironically, I came to Belgium in January to do more racing than I could in Germany but ended up doing less.

I am back on my feet again and installed in Zeddam, Netherlands in the lead up to the World Championships this weekend. I've only been training for a little over a week now, with the World Cup in Hoogerheide last weekend being my first race back. That was an exercise in pain, let me tell you. Nothing like jumping into the last World Cup before Worlds when everyone is firing on all cyclinders and you're running on like 4 days of training. Anyways, the fact was that I had to do it in order to bring myself up for Worlds, so mission accomplished I guess. The upside of that thrashing was that I managed to not get lapped on arguably my worst race day of the season, and I was able to ride in a group with all the top Americans for a few laps (JPage doesn't count; he's a full-fledged Eurostud now) before getting popped. Last year I rode the best race of my season there and barely crossed the line before getting passed by the leaders (who were sprinting for the finish).

I've been turning laps on the course here in Zeddam for 4 days no and I am starting to get pretty confident on it. Even if I am still getting dropped with relative ease by my teammate Christian Heule in most of the corners, I am still riding way fast that ever before in a technical sense. The state of my fitness remains to be seen and that will become obvious on Sunday. For now I am just riding a bunch and doing a little intensity when it feels right, because all the work has been done at this point. Now it is all about being comfortable and confident going into the big day on Sunday.

I'll let you know next week how it all pans out.
GReain