Lichtervelde, Balegem, & Waregem

For anybody who might be thinking it’s been too long since my last update, blame Cyclocross Magazine. In the past two (and a bit more) weeks I’ve covered nine pro races and raced three times myself in the Vlaamse Cyclocross Cup. Of the days off from ‘cross, I spent a couple either sick or chasing the doctor, a couple celebrating Christmas, and a few in the office. So the time has been spent, not necessarily always well spent, but spent, there’s been little opportunity for much of anything else. Including this blog.

So we spent a busy Christmas in Belgium. For Christmas itself, we went out to Oudenaarde to hang out with some good friends we know from the racing scene and their awesome and adorable kids, where we were well cared for and really well fed. Christmas itself was a rare warmish day, the sun even cracked the sky at one point, and we got to go take the kids skating in town center, which was really fun. The rest of the two weeks were mostly freezing, sometimes snowy, occasionally rainy, but fun across the board.

Varsenare ‘Cross 2009

Last year I had one of my best races of the season—in fact, one of the best of my career—in Varsenare. The course, flat with a series of technical turns between long, straight sections, barriers, and a long finishing stretch on the road, was a good match for my strengths. It was really cold, and I’ve often been strong in the cold, especially compared to the Belgians, who don’t have the benefit of 10 New England winters under their belts. And I was at the end of my season, and was peaking. So I rode a great race, beating a bunch of people who had been beating me all season.

Leading a Small Group
Holding off a small group early in the race

So I came to Varsenare this year hoping for another great race. But now I’m more experienced, fitter, and have been beating strong racers all season. Unlike other races this season, where the courses were completely redesigned, Varsenare was relatively unchanged. It starts with an interminably long drag race down the road where the race will eventually finish, then dives left, hops a curb, and goes through a barely-one-rider-wide gap in a hedge, then right into a twisty up-and-down section of singletrack. From there it heads out around a football pitch with some tight, hard corners, and into the open fields where you battle wind, a series of 180-degree turns, and four passed through a deep and muddy drainage ditch.

A Massive Mid-Season Update

It’s been a long time since I posted an update here, largely because the demand of my work on the newly-launched PROBA2, writing for Cyclocross Magazine, and still trying to race once in a while have all but maxed out my waking schedule. But, fear not, here’s the update you’ve been waiting for!

All Systems Go

So the last few weeks have been incredibly busy, and an update on both Koppenberg and my own race in Zwijndrecht are on their way.

But the reason the last few weeks have been so busy is that we have been working very hard to prepare for the launch of PROBA2, the satellite I’ve been working on. We stayed up basically all night last night to watch the launch, which, by all accounts was a huge success. PROBA2 is, apparently, functioning even better than expected. The satellite made contact with the ground station earlier today, and we now know it is pointed at the sun, stable, and functioning as expected, some 725 km above the surface of the earth.

There’s more information, including a video of the launch on ESA’s PROBA program website. Stay tuned for much more news from the sun very soon.

Zingem Cyclocross, 2009 Edition

Zingem was the first race I’ve done this season that I also did last season, and I was kind of excited to finally race on a course that I knew. These Flemish courses are full of really nasty little technical climbs and whoop-de-doos (that’s a scientific way of referring to a class of super-steep features too small to be referred to as hills) and runups. In these races, experience counts for a lot, so I was looking forward to racing on a course where experience might give me even the tiniest bit of an edge.


And More
Through the fields of Zingem

But, of course, the evil geniuses (genii?) who design cyclocross courses know that we’re all looking for that edge, and so they do everything they can to make sure nobody gets an edge. And the race directors in Zingem did what came naturally: they completely redesigned their course. They added a host of new features, including a nice little reverse whoop-de-doo, otherwise known as a super-steep muddy ditch, which was a forced dismount for everybody. They kept some nice little tricky embankments from last year, but ran them in reverse. In the back of the masters race, everybody tried to ride them, but I found it was much faster to run, and passed a number of people by doing just that. The race also took us around a little horse pasture a few times, adding a number of very amused equines to the other spectators lining the course.

Previously: