Here in Belgium some folks celebrated the weekend with the first race of the ‘cross season in Kessel, the beginning of De Moedige Veldrijder Series (that is, The Courageous Cyclocrosser to English speakers). Though that series takes place in Vlaams-Brabant and Antwerpen, and most of the races are comparatively close to Brussels, I’ve been doing the Vlaamse Cyclocross Cup out in East and West Flanders for a few years now and am going to stick with it for the season. It’s hard enough to get to races where you can barely speak the local language, without having to worry about finding new obscure towns, learn to navigate new cow pastures, and get destroyed by new racers. So, yeah, that means that for me, the first race is a week an a half away.

This year has marked a change in several ways. First, I’m on new bikes for the first time in ages. I’ve been riding my new ‘cross bike for months now and am feeling as good on it as I ever have on any bike, and now have a sweet new road bike to go with it. My first ride was more debacle than success, when my crank fell off after about 30 km, but the second was awesome (and I’ve learned a lot about how to properly install SRAM cranks too).

I’ll save a full write-up about both bikes (and some sweet new wheels I’m testing for Cyclocross Magazine as well) for a future post.

Coming into the season I’m feeling good. I changed my training this year, putting the emphasis on quality rides and quality rest. The change paid off, all my fitness indicators and tests have been better in the past few weeks than they were at the peak of last season.

A couple of trips with some amazing riding didn’t hurt either. I rode through some of the most beautiful and attractive country, with some killer climbs, first in La Roche-en-Ardenne, where I climbed Belgium’s toughest Col (at least according to Cotacol) like 20 times, then a couple of months later in Italy.

The riding in Italy was out of this world good, with gorgeous Mediterranean countryside, tough climbs, and ancient cities everywhere. The highlight was a trip up the Blockhaus climb, a 2000 m beast in the Apennines.

Smiling, somehow, near the summit.

The Blockhaus featured prominently in the 2009 Giro d’Italia (see the link above), and was the site of cycling great Eddy Merckx’s first mountaintop win in 1967. It was my first Grand Tour climb, and I pretty much got the point after riding it. 26 km mostly at about 8%, with a brutal, blazingly hot section of about 3 km at close to 10% coming through the 1000 m mark. The mountain burned recently, so any shade you might have been afforded on this section was wiped out. And I suffered. And suffered. And then felt amazing and flew up the last several kms, which is why I’m smiling in the photo above.

The moral of this story is that, if you have the opportunity to ride on Italy’s east coast, or do any of the famous climbs of the three big tours, you should do it.

So the Blockhause and Col du Haussire and a lot of hard, hilly rides in Overijse and Rixensart and Lasne and Ittre, all paid off and here I am about a week from the start of racing season with pretty high hopes, new sponsors, and a generally good outlook.

Mindi’s getting there too, with new classes on sports psychology and some new work that I can’t talk about just yet. I’m sure she’d tell you all about it if she ever decided to deal with her woefully out-of-date blog.

Meanwhile professionals start up in the US with Starcrossed, a night race in Washington, on the same day I start here in Belgium, and the European season kicks off in Erpe-Mere. So there’s lots of news, bikes, and mud coming.

Actually, having just listened to this great episode of Radiolab all about what it takes to be truly great at something (featuring some discussion with Malcolm Gladwell about Outliers) this kid is totally on the right track. (It’s time to buy the little guy some pedals, though!)

I’m sure there are good reasons for this view of professional cycling. It does happen occasionally that a rider finds his way from enthusiast to workaday domestic pro racer, so other racers probably have seen it happen to one or two people they know and like the idea that, with just a little more time to train, it could happen to them. Pro racing is also just a world away from what the average person does on a bike. Amateurs, no doubt, like to think of themselves as in the minor leagues, but, unfortunately, this view is just wildly incorrect. The difference between the ProTour and Tour de France and your average Cat 3 race is like the difference between Major League Baseball and slow pitch softball. It’s the difference between the Olympic 5,000 m and the guy who comes in 250th at 25:30 in your average local 5k.

So people just don’t have any frame of reference for what it takes to make an Andy Schleck, Alberto Contador, or Christian Vande Velde.

Which is why I’m so amused by all the monday morning quarterbacking — or, maybe, monday afternoon directeur sportifing — after yesterday’s Stage of the Tour de France.

“Learn to shift, Andy!” someone cries! “If you mis-shift during a sprint, no one waits for you!” someone complains. “Pro riders should know how to recover from a dropped chain!” proclaims another.

Let’s start with this.

The idea that Andy Schleck doesn’t know how to shift gears or recover from a dropped chain without stopping is ludicrous. This is a man who has been racing bikes his entire life. His father raced bikes. His older brother races bikes.

Tour de France contenders do not appear out of nowhere. They train, all the time, from a young age. Every day is dedicated to training or to racing. They live at training camps where they probably spend more time in a month just practicing things like shifting and recovering from dropped chains than a lot of people spend training in a month.

When you read in Andy’s bio that he joined the amateur club VC Roubaix six years ago, don’t be confused by the word amateur and think he was some Cat 4 back then. The amateur/pro distinction means something specific here in Europe, and the amateurs of VC Roubaix all fast guys who just don’t have official pro contracts. They’d tear your legs off, have no doubt.

(Brief aside, VC Roubaix, though an amateur club, is not your average NorEast Cycling. These guys host a Cyclocross World Cup and the Espoirs Paris-Roubaix among other races. They’re a serious bike racing organization that develops high level pro cyclists. Don’t be fooled.)

I didn’t talk to Andy, and I don’t know exactly what happened to him yesterday, and I’ll spare you my boring hypothesis, but he did not just mis-shift or not know how to recover from a dropped chain. Let’s all disabuse ourselves of the notion that what happened to him is the same as what happened to that guy in your 35 mile Cat 4 race last weekend, ok? The video shows he was not shifting, and there’s little doubt that he knows how to work his bike better than you or I ever will.

The there’s the raging debate over whether Contador’s attack in the moments following Schleck’s troubles was savvy or desperate, all in the game or disgraceful. What’s my take?

First, let’s be clear. There’s no rule in cycling that says you have to stop dead when your opponent has a technical problem, or has to pull to the side of the road to take one of those beautifully euphamistic “nature breaks”. But attacking is a different story, for two reasons. And attacking is what Contador did yesterday.

So why not attack?

First, there’s the sporting reason. If Contador wins the Tour by less than about 30 seconds, his win will forever have an asterisk on it. “Contador technically won,” people will say, “but Schleck was the stronger rider and Contador took advantage of his 30 seconds of bad luck.”

And the thing of it is, Contador gained most of his time fairly, on the descent. He went over the top just a handful of seconds in front of Schleck. It’s possible he could have not attacked and still gained time on Schleck, who is not as skilled a descender. So the attack means a mostly legitimate 40 second gain will be treated by the fans as totally illegitimate, even though most of that time was earned fairly.

Of course, sportsmanship will only take you so far, and winning the Tour is important too. But some racers get remembered as great champions and others as unsporting, petulant racers who would take advantage of bad luck to win. I’d imagine that most people would prefer the first.

Jan Ullrich, after all, played the villain in the eyes of many Americans for most of Lance Armstrong’s career. But a lot of people were remembering him fondly yesterday, despite the evidence that he doped, and despite the fact that he spent his career trying to unseat the American fan favorite. That’s because he played fair, famously waiting when Armstrong crashed on Luz Ardiden only to be attacked and beaten by Armstrong moments later.

The second reason for not attacking is more pragmatic: it’s simply dangerous to piss off your opponents. Ullrich’s gesture in 2003 was payback for a similar gesture by Armstrong, who waited for his crashed opponent on the descent from the Col de Peyresourde, in 2001.

Similarly, you know that Niels Albert did not make any friends when he rode Sven Nys into the barriers in last year’s Jaarmarktcross. The fans, who had never really warmed to 2009 World Champion Albert, turned on him, and his season started to fall apart right there. And, though his public statements were fairly magnanimous, believe me, Nys did not forget about Albert’s move.

The point is, you never know when you’ll be the victim of a mishap, a mistake, technical problem, and find yourself wishing you had been a little more sporting to the guy who is now taking advantage of it. You don’t know how your ten second gain will be repaid or avenged, or what extra motivation you’ve given to the guy who already has devoted a lifetime to the singular goal of beating you in the Tour de France. You never know when the two of you will have to work together to stave off someone else’s attack. In cycling it pays to make friends.

You can argue the point if you want, but I’m not alone in my position on this. In fact, even Alberto himself seems to have realized the possible consequences of his move yesterday. Is his contrition too late?

But I’m slowly catching up. The photos from the US trip are up on Flickr.

The trip was great, with stops in Boulder, Steamboat Springs, where we picked up bikes from my new sponsor, Moots, Topeka and Kansas City, where Mindi’s brother got married, Philly, and New England. And, of course, we had the chance to catch up with lots of family and friends we miss a lot in Europe.

Ready to ride in chilly Steamboat.

Back here in Belgium I headed east to the Ardennes, where I went to some meetings and spend my evenings working out on the brutal Col du Haussire, one of the country’s most difficult climbs. By the standards of Colorado or Switzerland, it’s not so tough, but at 3.3 km with long stretches well above 10% grade, it was tough enough. Hopefully it helped my form.

Then there was Denmark and Sweden (photos coming soon), a working week in Bern, and lots and lots of bike riding here. We also caught a couple of days of the Tour de France as it made its way through Brussels. Photos from all of that are coming really soon.

In a couple of weeks Mindi and I head to Italy. First a few days of sightseeing in Rome, then a trip east where we’ll hit the beaches and do some riding the Apenines, including the Blockhaus, which should wreck my legs a little bit. The Blockhaus was famously the end of a stage of the 2009 Giro, and you can click on the link if you want a sense of what it looks like.

Yesterday marked two months until ‘cross starts for me. I’m counting down. Stay tuned…

I’m also thinking about racing because we head to meet with my new sponsors at Moots tomorrow, where we’ll check out their operations and pick up the bikes I’m going to race this year. I’ll have a new road and ‘cross bike to write about sometime soon.

Check back for updates on the US trip soon, the visit to Moots and the new bikes included. But for now, I leave you with a look back at the accumulated stuff of six months of racing. I was going to write a little essay about it, but I actually think the photo speaks for itself. Make sure you click through to the real Flickr photo for the whole story.

In addition to the new look, you’ll notice a new list of sponsors on the right side of the blog. I happy to have Hammer Nutrition behind me once again keeping me healthy and well-fed while racing and training. Their products are awesome, and if you want to get some at a discount, you can click on the link to the right for more information.

And I’m really happy to welcome a big new sponsor, Moots Cycles, a Colorado company renowned for their incredible titanium bikes. I’ve always wanted a Moots, and, after all the trouble I’ve had with other bikes, I’m very excited to be racing on frames as durable, comfortable, and fast as Moots’ products. Later this summer I’ll do some races on the road on their Vamoots CR while I’ll navigate the Belgian mud in the fall and winter on a Psychlo-X. Look for lots more about these bikes later in the season.

You’ll also notice that I’ve linked Cyclocross Magazine from the sidebar. While they’re not so much sponsor as employer, nobody has played a bigger part in powering my ‘cross season than they have. I’ve got a couple of stories in the works for them right now, and I’ll post details about them as they come out.

Here at the end of a couple of busy months, as the weather in Brussels is finally becoming nice again, I’m really excited about everything coming up in the new season. So check back for more very soon, including a wrap-up of the end of last season, a review of the Leopard CX1 that I’ve been racing and riding since January, and the story of our trip to Switzerland where, thanks to the help of some awesome teachers, Mindi finally learned to ski (and I hopefully didn’t embarrass myself too much), plus a whole lot more.

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.

For those in search of further reading, here’s the rundown on every race I wrote about over the holidays:

• Scheldecross, Dec 18
• Kalmthout – Juniors/U23, Women, Men, & Update on AmericansDec 20
• Zolder – Juniors/U23, Women, Men, Dec 26
• Diegem, Dec 27
• Loenhout, Dec 29
• Bredene, Dec 30
• Baal – Juniors/U23, Men, Jan 1
• Sint-Niklaas, Jan 2
• Tervuren, Jan 3

As for myself, results were mixed. I felt good about my race in Lichtervelde, but didn’t quite get the result I hoped for, while I felt bad about my race in Balegem and got one of my best results ever. Waregem was just a straight-up mess, but I went, so it’s at least worth mentioning.

Lichtervelde Cyclocross

I was excited to go to Lichtervelde. It followed a big (by Belgian standards) snowstorm a few days earlier and it was held in very cold conditions, so I felt like I would be in a position to do pretty well. I would have to dig deep into my last reserves of New England tenacity, but cold and snow, at least on this side of the Atlantic, seem to have become my forte. Plus, we were kicking off a season of ‘cross, and I was feeling inspired from that as well.

As soon as the race got going, I felt like I was in a position to make some good things happen. A couple of guys who I normally can’t touch were well behind me, and a few guys who I normally beat were completely disappeared. On the start line I had noticed that most guys were underdressed for the weather, with temperatures well below zero Celsius, while I was wearing extra layers and had dropped hand warmers in my gloves and toe warmers in my shoes. It definitely seemed to help.

Descending the one whoop-de-doo on the course.

I mostly rode conservatively, trying not to lose ground or make a mistake on the snow, then surging as hard as I could anywhere that there was traction. Other guys were kind of backing off on the easier parts, which meant that I could gain ground every lap just by pushing the pace in the right places. So I rode, trailing one group of three, I was passed by one guy on the second lap who looked like he was ready to ride away. But then he faltered, and, by the race, came back to me. I went around him on the last lap and he never had the opportunity to pass back. That was that.

We saw a couple of hot air balloons in Lichtervelde.

After the race we stuck around and watched a couple of American U23 riders (beloften, the call them over here) go at it in the Elite/U23 race later in the afternoon. Danny Summerhill, who didn’t really have a great trip to Europe overall, rode a good race in Lichtervelde and took the U23 win. There are a few photos on flickr.

Balegem

After a long (fun, but long) Christmas celebration and then another long day at the World Cup in Zolder the next day, I went into Balegem without a lot of expectations. I was tired, and just wanted to make sure I got an effort in my legs. But in the press room in Zolder, a couple of guys asked about my racing and I told them we were going to Balegem the next day. They said it was a hilly course, so I should watch out. Hills are another thing I’ve done well here, so I started to think maybe it could be a good race for me.

That changed when I saw the course: three short but steep and very muddy drops, two equally short and even steeper climbs, some twists and turns in the muddy fields, and then a descent down an icy, cobbled, gravel road that turned into singletrack before heading back to the pavement at the end of the lap. It was fun—kind of—but not the sort of hills where I excel.

So I rode the thing, taking it pretty easy on the downs and running the impossible-to-ride ups. The mud, still semi-frozen after the snow the week before, stuck to everything, and by the third lap was clogging my drivetrain badly. But I kept pedaling, stopping to clean things out a bit twice, then pedaling some more. I felt like it was going terribly, and figured I was headed for maybe my worst race of the season.

But Mindi kept yelling something about the number ten, and so I figured that meant something and kept going for as long as I could until things were so clogged that pedaling was impossible. Then I ran, finally reaching the end of the lap—at this point I didn’t even know which one it was—just as the leaders were coming up behind me. So, lapped and bummed about my bike, I walked off the course and went to clean up. Cleanup options were basically some barrels of mucky, freezing water and not much else, so I did the best I could on my bike, packed the car, and chatted with Pete Webber, US Masters 40+ National Champion, who had just won the race before mine. (Read all about Pete’s adventures in Belgium on Mud & Cowbells.)

Only when I went to turn in my number did I discover that, while I thought I was in a bad state, everybody else in the race was even worse. I had managed to pull a tenth place finish in the Masters 30+ field, my best ever result in Belgium. About half the field seemed to have abandoned after one look at back board the EMTs had resting at the bottom of the dangerous descents (which really weren’t as scary as they looked), and others had gone out with bike problems worse than mine. So, by virtue of persistence more than skill, I grabbed a top ten.

Waregem

I’ll spare you the details of the Waregem disaster, except to say that we only got to the race about 60 minutes before it started, I didn’t have a valid 2010 license (this was the first race of the year for me), and it snowed the night before. So the course was a mix of semi-frozen, hub-deep mud, ice, and snow, along with a few snow-covered roads for good measure. I had all of 10 minutes to warm up, and, within 2 minutes of the start of the race, my drivetrain seized up so I couldn’t pedal at all.

I tried to DNF, simply walking off the course at the beginning of the third lap, but somehow they were kind enough to place me—dead last, of course—so at least I can claim to have raced in some sense.

But there’s good news. This weekend I managed to finally get my new bike, a Leopard, which should carry me through the last two months of this season. With a new bike (and, finally, a pit bike) I should be in much better shape for the final few races, and especially for Masters Worlds in Mol in a few weeks. I’ve also got a new drivetrain for the old bike, so hopefully I’ve seen the last of the complete jam-ups for a while.

Next weekend, with the Belgian Championships I sit out from racing myself and just write—a welcome opportunity to get in some time on the new bike with little pressure. Then there’s one more Vlaamse Cyclocross Cup race for me, a few days in Davos, and Masters Worlds. Then the real World Championships in Tabor in the Czech Republic after that. Plus I’m working on some other exciting stuff for next season. I can’t say what it is yet, but it’s going to be really awesome if it works out. So stay tuned for a full report on the new bike, lots of racing action, and news on the 2010-11 season as well!

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.

And again, it was chilly, if not quite as cold as last year’s race. I had a solid start until we made the left turn at the end of the road, where things came to a standstill while we filed through the hedge. Immediately another rider crashed into me from behind, but instead of taking me down, he caught the right side of my handlebars, propelling me forward and around about 10 people who were waiting to go through the hedge. So my solid start became a great one.

We stayed single file, all together, as we made our way around the singletrack and into the fields, where the race heated up. As we came on to the road after I found myself just trailing one of my main rivals this season, Bart Demets, who was leading a group of four that was forming a few seconds ahead of me. Unfortunately, despite giving everything I could to close the gap on the road—which is where I often can gain time—I missed them and ended up on my own, trying to fend off an attack from Bert De Groote, who I’ve battled with a few times this year.

Bert was able to close the gap to me on the sections in the fields, handling himself just a bit better coming through the turns. But I was able to put a lot of distance on him on the straight sections that led into the road. I was faster over the series of drainage ditches, mostly because I found that you could run them at full speed, but had to ride them really carefully. Running has always been a strength, so I did what I could to use the runs to my advantage, hitting them fast and hard and then taking the intensity up a notch as we came on to the road.

Shoulder-to-shoulder.

As we came into the end of the last lap it looked like I might have a real sprint for the finish, but after I ran the final ditch, hopped on my bike and hit the road I looked back to see I was alone. Bert had given me a good race, forcing me to stay at full gas when I might have otherwise let up a bit, but apparently didn’t come through the last two ditch crossings quite as fast as I did. So I rolled across the line pretty relaxed.

I wasn’t thrilled with the results, but they were solid. I beat a couple of guys who have given me good races all season—Bert and Carlo Allaert—and was just behind Bart Demets, who has really pushed me this year. Coming into the holiday racing season I’m feeling pretty good about myself, my training, and my prospects. Next week we head to Lichtervelde, then Kalmthout on Sunday, where I’ll do some reporting on the World Cup race for Cyclocross Magazine. It’s going to be a little exciting, since with US Nationals over, a big bunch of top US men and women are headed over here. Stay tuned for more.

Speaking of Nationals, I have to take one second to say a huge congratulations to my friend Jonathan Page, who finished 3rd at US Nationals. I’m sure he would have liked to win, but he rode a gutsy race (in what must have felt like the middle of the night to someone displaced by nine timezones) to get onto the podium. Congrats, Jonathan!

Photos from Varsenare, and the Vlaamse Druivencross, which we hit on Sunday afternoon should be up on Flickr soon, so check back later for more.

Zwijndrecht

I capped the month of October with a horrible race in Zwindrecht, up near Antwerp. Last year we went to Bredene, on the coast, for the last race of October. But it was a long drive and I was determined, at least in the early part of the season, to try a few other series besides the Flemish Cup, so we drove north instead of west this time. It was a pretty miserable day, chilly with drizzle and some heavier rain, and the course was very slick, especially on a long section of singletrack that wound through a small forest between the fields. Today was definitely a day when I wanted to run some Fangos, with their knobbier, more aggressive tread for handling in poor conditions, but I only had Grifos glued up at the time. Honestly, though I’m not sure if they would have helped, since the real problem was not my tires but my dead legs. Zwijndrecht was nice, and I’d go back sometime, but I’m hopeful that I won’t repeat my abysmal performance there anytime soon.

Zwijndrecht Photos on Flickr

Zegelsem

I sat out the first weekend in November and took a little bit of much-needed rest and recovery after a hard month-long training cycle. It apparently paid off in my first race back in Zegelsem.

Back on the bike after running the stairs.

Zegelsem was one of my favorite races last year. In addition to being the only race I did all season that featured any serious climbs, it was also my first taste of real Belgian mud, and was set deep in a pretty, valley surrounded by little farms. And this years race did not disappoint. Although this time around they cut the one really big climb, a feature that really helped me out last time around, there was much more mud, since it rained all morning before our race.

I spent my time there doing battle with a couple of Flemish riders, Bart Demets and Carlo Allaert, who have emerged as my main rivals this year. Last year I couldn’t touch these guys except in one really good race at the end of the season, so I’ve been happy to find myself mixing it up with them–and often winning out over them, which I did in Zegelsem.

This race was the first time that mud riding really clicked for me in a while, helped mostly by the realization that I shouldn’t be afraid of using my feet. Which is to say, I managed to whip it through a number of sloppy turns that would have slowed me down in the past by putting a foot down briefly, and managed to catch several people by running through the worst of the mud while they slogged through on their bikes, barely moving and often falling. I just shouldered it and ran like hell in the worst parts, and it worked, I pulled down my first top-fifteen finish (13th in the Masters 30+ category) since coming over to Belgium.

Zegelsem also was the first chance to really test the mud-handling abilities of my Revolution Wheelworks Rev-50X wheels. I have to say I was extremely happy with them. They’re amazingly light, so they handle the hills beautifully, and the deep carbon rims track beautifully through deep, sticky mud and do not jam up the same way previous rims have for me, even in the nasty grass-mud slurry that comprises many courses here in Belgium. The guys there at Revolution are great, with awesome customer service and a fantastic product, and I’m definitely a fan.

Zegelsem Photos on Flickr

Zaffelare

Zegelsem kicked off an intense week of racing, with Zegelsem itself on Saturday, Zaffelare as a special Armistice Day Wednesday race, and Zelzate the following Saturday. I skipped Zaffelare last season and now regret it, because it was one of my favorite races yet this year.

Blasting through the pits in Zaffelare.

If Zegelsem was the hilliest and muddiest race yet this season, Zaffelare was its exact opposite. Set on a dead-flat floodplain somewhat north of Gent (Ghent, for you Francophiles), the course featured a series of long hard straightaways around the fields and a section on very fast gravel paths that wound around a fishpond in a nearby woods. And from the gun the race, which started on a long, straight stretch of pavement, was extremely fast.

At first it was just-hang-on-for-dear-life fast, but after a couple of laps it slowed to only lung-searing-leg-burning-anaerobically fast. After a pretty chaotic first lap, a little chase group formed around me, maybe six guys, and we worked together for about another lap before the stress of the hard pace started to break things up. A couple of guys in our group fell off the pace, one broke free in front of us, leaving me and Bart Demets to battle it out. And battle we did: Bart punched coming into the twisting woods trail, looking to shake me loose in the more technical section, but I held fast and attacked when we hit the road at the end of the woods, gapping him until he passed me at the barriers. It went on like this for about six laps, he’d surge, I’d cover and then counterattack. Finally, just before the road into the finish he made a little move and I got hung up in a deep rut, just for a second. But a second was all it took for him to get a gap I couldn’t close. I gave it everything I could, but it wasn’t enough. I ended up 14th in the Masters, just behind him, but ahead of my other rival, Carlo.

Zaffelare Photos on Flickr

Zelzate

Zelzate was another race I did last year, accompanied by Mindi’s parents. It’s an interesting race, set on the grounds of a sprawling hospital up on the banks of a busy industrial canal that stretches down from the Schelde into Gent. This year the weather was beautiful if extremely windy, and we found ourselves parked on the road just in front of Chris McKenney, another American who lives in the Netherlands and works for SRAM. We chatted with him for a while before he headed over to do the Masters 40+ race, and I warmed up for my race, trying hard not to get blown over on my deep rims.

The race in Zelzate is pretty straightforward, with some long straight stuff in fields, a bit of road, a set of stairs and a set of barriers, and some twisty sections in the woods. What makes it stand out is (a) a massive, steep dirt pile at one end of the course that you have to get over twice per lap and (b) its location, apparently next to a shooting range, so the sound of gunfire echoes through the course the whole time you’re racing.

In the woods in Zelzate.

I had a terrible start, caught behind (but avoiding) a massive pile-up just off the start line, so I was chasing right from the first seconds of the race. In a way, this was good, since it forced me to really ride hard and go after each person I caught as I tried to reconnect with the racers I normally do battle with. It took a little while to find my legs in the soft, dusty soil in the woods, but soon enough I was cruising and had connected with Bart and Carlo again. Unfortunately, Carlo had a mechanical coming into the last turn and, since his finish affects his overall Flemish Cup standing (as an American I’m not eligible for Flemish Cup points), I sat up and let him recover so he and Bart could slug it out together. Normally I’m not going to back down in a race if I see an opportunity, but Carlo is a nice guy and I felt bad that his overall season might be derailed by something so trivial. So I finished behind the two, but am pretty convinced that I could have outkicked both if not for my incredibly magnanimous gesture.

After the race, Mindi and I had a chance to interview Roland Hurtecant, one of the oldest ‘crossers active in Belgium. Roland has lived a truly storied life and was a lot of fun to talk to. It’s quite something to get advice on racing from a guy who’s been doing it for nearly fifty years. Look for the full story on my visit with Roland coming soon in Cyclocross Magazine.

Zelzate Photos on Flickr

Laarne

I wasn’t sure about whether to race at Laarne or not. The week leading up to it I was mostly sidelined by an ankle injury and I was a little sick as well. But as the day approached it was clear there would be great weather and our friend Christine Vardaros was going to be racing, so I decided to at least give it a try and see if I could ride.

I’m glad I did, because the day was one of the nicest we’ve had in a while and the course, a maze of back-and-forth sections in a couple of cornfields, now harvested and filled with just stubble of this year’s crop, was a lot of fun. I felt pretty good right from the start and despite being last wheel for about 20 seconds, I quickly moved up. The course was hardly hilly, but had enough rise in sections that I could step on the gas a little and gain some ground on the competition.

Leading a group in Laarne

I slowly picked my way through the competition, trying my best to go easy on my still slightly painful ankle, especially coming through the barriers on the bottom of the course. I wasn’t completely happy with my results in the end, but considering how things looked coming into the race, my 15th place finish in the Masters, ahead of Bart but behind Carlo, was pretty good.

After my race we cheered for Christine, who rode well, pulling down a second place finish behind her teammate Veerle Ingels. We had a chance to chat with Christine and her husband Jonas for a while afterwards. All in all, a great race and a lot of fun. (And maybe the last time we see warm and dry conditions for the rest of the season.)

Laarne Photos on Flickr

Lotenhulle

I skipped the race the next weekend in Drongen-Baarle so I could recover from a long day of reporting in Koksijde. So my next race was last Saturday in Lotenhulle.

On the way there the rain was coming down hard and we found ourselves driving on some typical, sketchy one-lane Belgian roads through fields that were, literally, flooded. Although the forecast called for some clearing, it was obvious that the theme of the day would be mud and lots of it. And the course, when we found it, didn’t disappoint. Parts of the course were under deep water, and the whole thing was cut by a raging torrent flowing through what usually is a drainage ditch. Warming up in the pouring rain, the ground was still reasonably hard under the standing water, but by the time our race started everything was an soupy mess.

This was the muddiest race I’ve ever done, but it turned out to be one of my best. I’ve learned, apparently, to handle my bike in the mud, and I’ve been focusing on force and power lately, so I was able to push through the slop perhaps a hair faster than my usual rivals. Again I had to overcome a bad start, but managed to quickly catch and pass Carlo and then was latched on to Bart’s wheel. We traded attacks for the final few laps, but finally he got the better of me as we came around a short run up a steep embankment with a tight turn at the top. And it looked like he was going to get away, but I hit the road and decided I had to at least try to come around him. So I gave it everything I had and tore down the road. I don’t think he even knew I was coming until too late, and I managed to pull around him just at the line. I was going so fast, in fact, that I had to brake before I crossed the line in order to avoid smashing into the 50 spectators milling about in the finish area just a few meters beyond the finish.

This race was great. I was filthy, but had a blast, even though I probably swallowed a cup of mud and cow manure on the way. It also was my best Belgian race ever, with 12th place overall in the Masters. Coming into the intense weeks of racing over Christmas, I couldn’t be happier with my fitness.

We also saw U23 racer Brandon Mart, over here in Belgium from the US for a couple of months. Brandon was all alone in the muddy mess, so we helped him in the pits keeping his bikes clean. He rode hard, but it was obviously a tough race for him in difficult conditions, which helped me appreciate just how far I’ve come myself in handling the Belgian mud.

A little end-of-the-weekend bonus was that our friend Jonathan Page nailed his race in the Igorre World Cup and pulled down an eighth place finish! Way to go, Jonathan!

No photos this time, it was just entirely too messy to break out the nice new camera!

The Rest of the Fall

In addition to all the racing, Mindi and I had a great time spectating and reporting for Cyclocross Magazine. Highlights included chats with Katie Compton, hot chocolate with Cori, Jonathan, Emma, and Milo in Koksijde, and a few conversations with Nys, Albert, and Stybar, among others. We also had a chance to chat with Cyclingnews’ Brecht Decaluwé (apparently dubbed “De Claw” by Americans who, like me, find his last name to be unpronounceable) after Koksijde; he’s a great guy and great writer. Here’s the full rundown of all of the reporting/spectating fun:

• Koppenbergcross: Photos and Article (which might be by all-time favorite that I’ve written)
• Gavere Superprestige: Photos: Women & Men and Article: Women & Men
• Hamme-Zogge Superprestige: Photos and Article
• Koksijde World Cup: Photos Coming Soon and Article
• Gieten Superprestige: Article
• Igorre World Cup: Article

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.

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.

I’ve got to say, I enjoyed the course. It was a little flat for my liking, but attractive and fun to ride. Definitely enormously better than last week’s 1-km nightmare. Unfortunately, my legs did not agree. All week in training I felt dead, and they continued to be dead right through the race. I’ve been slower, but not much, than I was in Zingem, but I definitely did not bring my A game. I just turned up the level of training last week, and hopefully the legs will respond soon, but I clearly paid for it this weekend.

Nice Scenery in Zingem

Of course, it also didn’t really help that the guys at the front of my race were like, really, really fast. Like, good enough to hold their own at a Superprestige race fast. So, in the end, I beat a few people, but got pretty much spanked. But, in Belgium, anything else would be a disappointment, right?

Now it’s back to a week of training, trying to get rides in before the sun sets (which is only going to get harder next week when Daylight Savings Time ends here). On Saturday we head for Bredene, on the coast, where I’ll race through a trailer park again, then Sunday is the famous Koppenbergcross. I’ll be there for CX Magazine, so stay tuned for more racing news.

In the meantime, photos are up on Flickr.

Racing, kind of, in Bevere.

On the other hand, the low key attitude extended from the pre- and post-race atmosphere into course design and race organization, and made for one of the worst races I’ve done in a while. The course in Bevere featured a lap that was, maybe, four minutes long. A couple of tight corners on a small hill on pavement, three tight u-turns, a couple of bridges over a stream, and one deep, muddy ditch that was faster to run than try to ride and you were back where you began. Much of the course was about a meter wide, leaving little room for passing, and there wasn’t any part of the course that I would really describe as challenging.

And, if that wasn’t enough, they ran three separate races on the course at the same time, so, after about five minutes everything ran together and there was so much traffic that we all pretty much just rode around the course at tempo, just following the wheel in front of us. I went down towards the end of the first lap and it took a little while to get moving again, by which time I was swamped by the leaders of the race that started 30 seconds behind us. So I sat in with the leaders of that race, but couldn’t really get around them, and never managed to make contact with my race again. People talk about races that get decided by starting position, and it’s true that sometimes that happens, but usually there’s some chance that even with a bad start you might have a good race. Not here. I would be surprised to learn that anybody moved up or back more than two or three positions from where they were when we turned the first corner.

So I came away pretty disappointed, although glad that I had tried something different than usual. Nonetheless, we’ll be heading back to the Vlaamse Cyclocross Cup next Sunday.

Fortunately, the weekend wasn’t a total loss, because we made it over to Ruddervoorde for the first race of the Superprestige series on Sunday afternoon. There’s plenty of detail about the race itself in my CX Magazine story. But we had a nice time there, catching up with our friends Jonathan and Cori Page (and kids Milo and Emma) who just made the trip back from the US to Belgium on Thursday night. We also had a chance to check in with race winner Sven Nys, who was kind enough to stop and answer a few questions in English.

Mindi before the race in Ruddervoorde.

So, overall, despite whatever disappointments there were, the weekend was a success, I’d say. Now it’s back to work for at least a few days. I’m thinking about taking Thursday off in order to head to Ardooie for Kermiscross, and we’re definitely headed for Zingem on Sunday, which will be the first time this season I’ve raced on a course that I did last year as well. Stay tuned!

Photos: Bevere Cyclocross & Cyclocross Ruddervoorde
Ruddervoorde story at Cyclocross Magazine

Sven Nys catches Niels Albert.

One very nice collection of bikes behind the podium.

The good news is that the weekend off made it easy to get a lot of other stuff done. We managed to pull off some live coverage of the World Cup in Treviso, which was exciting, and, later, find some time to do a real writeup as well.

Speaking of World Cup action, Niels Albert and Katie Compton kept my CX Magazine Fantasy Team in a good place this weekend. Team Gaufre is in good shape holding fast in 12th overall, although a long way back from leader Team War. Sven Nys needs to step it up and justify his number one spot on my roster.

Meanwhile, at work, things are progressing quickly now. The SMOS Satellite, with which our project PROBA2 shares a launch has been fueled up. You can read daily updates from the launch pad here and a more personal account of the launch preparations at Peter in Plesetsk (in Dutch).

I’ll post more about the PROBA2 launch, scheduled for Nov. 2, soon. But first this weekend there’s a couple of races.

We’re now two races into the season, which kicked off (for me, anyway) last weekend in Knesselare, in what had to be one of the hottest races I’ve ever done. In fact, it was one of the rare cases where I would have preferred to be lapped, just to end the complete misery that I was in. Alas, I rode too well for that, and ended up with a solid — if exceptionally painful — result for my first race of the season. I’ll spare you the details (which would go something like, “…then I pedaled more, it really hurt and a needed a drink…” for about 45 minutes or so) and just link to the photos, which are here.

Fighting the heat in Knesselare.

Saturday’s race was cooler — a very welcome change — but even harder, featuring a series of steep, dusty, and technical hills, nasty off-camber stuff, and a set of stairs. For me, anyway, a good chunk of the course was much faster if I ran than rode, and so I ran. A lot. To the point where, a couple of times, I actually had to pause for a second just to persuade myself that I could keep going. But I had a shockingly good start and then managed to keep picking people off throughout the race, mostly by just continuing to pedal my bike while other people had to literally stop and recover. Not really a tactic, but it worked well enough.

Handling the turns in Eernegem.

In the end, my persistence paid off and I rode one of the most successful races I’ve ever done here in Belgium, pulling down a solid mid-pack finish. (Editor’s note: a mid-pack finish doesn’t sound that great, but when you’re racing against the Belgian Masters national champion and a swarm of others just as fast, all of whom could hold their own with many of the top racers in the US, you learn pretty quickly to be satisfied with the middle of the pack.) I didn’t do well enough to bring home any prize money, but the real reward was getting to watch the fantastic pro race that followed ours. We had a great time and saw a real show put on by Sven Nys and Niels Albert among others. The only bummer was Dieter Vanthourenhout’s truly awful looking crash. Amazingly, he walked away looking not all the worse for wear.

My full report is up at Cyclocross Magazine. Many more photos are on Flickr.

Well, it turns out, TMBG have corrected themselves.

Today, I want to share this rather horrifying (if hilarious) story of what happens when you try to publish a ‘comment’ in an academic journal. To be fair, I suspect this situation is not the norm — journals and editors, like most things, are a varied bunch. But, having been through the publication process a few times, on both sides, as referee and author, I’ll guess that there are more than a few readers out there who founds this simultaneously amusing, disturbing, and very close to home.

You have to give credit to Prof. Trebino for seeing the humor in the Kafkaesque circumstances in which he found himself.

There’s more at ScienceBlogs.

First, over at the excellent blog In the Crosshairs there’s an interview with my part-time pseudo-employer, Andrew Yee from Cyclocross Magazine. If you want an inside look at the work we do (or, at least, the work he does) to put out the magazine every few months, take a look.

Second, new Radiohead?!?!

The 1999 Eclipse

We were set up on top of the Hotel Alutus in Râmicu Valcea, Romania, just a few miles from the point of greatest eclipse, where the eclipse would last longer than anywhere else — 2 minutes, 23 seconds. We spent about two weeks essentially building a small observatory with telescopes and spectrometers and computers just to snap a few pictures in the few minutes of totality. I was charged with photography, of both the team in its work setting up, and of the eclipse itself.

Whatever you think about a total eclipse, if you haven’t seen one, it’s wrong. There’s nothing like it in the world, the eerie twilight that builds as the moon’s shadow races across the planet at 1000 miles an hour until it’s right on top of you, the strange silence of a whole town holding its breath and watching, thunderstruck, the way the air cools, the indescribable color — blue and blazing like some otherworldly electric arc around the black moon — of the solar corona.

I can still remember sitting on the roof behind a bank of cameras, tearing off solar filters as the eclipse became total, snapping photos, moving to the next camera, another photo, knocking them out of the way of the sun to protect them from the flood of sunlight as the moon moves off of the solar disk again. And the collective sigh of relief on the roof as scientific experiments worked themselves out and the cheer from the city, far below, as sunlight returned. There’s nothing like it in the world.

So I was hooked, right then, committed to a career in solar physics. I didn’t see exactly how that would unfold at the time, but I knew it was what I was going to do. I got to see one more eclipse, in Zambia in 2001, but my course was set before that. There’s a direct — if winding — road from that rooftop in Romania to the desk, in the Royal Observatory of Belgium, where I’m writing this now. So thanks, Prof. Pasachoff, for taking me on the trip that launched my life in the sun.

More photos of the eclipse are here. Photos of our 1999 eclipse team are here.

But I’ll always think of a different movie when think about John Hughes, one that some people, at least, have hailed as a classic. Those people are right.

It also turns out that Hughes was, in addition to all his filmmaking greatness, a pretty nice guy.

Counting down the days now.