So my first Belgian ‘cross race (and first race of any kind since Collegiate Nationals last December) didn’t go exactly as planned.
Before I tell you about the race, though, I’ve got to give a big thank you to Christine Vardaros, an American pro who also lives in Belgium, who was kind enough to spend some time explaining how to go about locating and signing up for races here. Without her help I probably would have spent last weekend sitting on the couch. She’s got a great blog (linked above), a column in Cyclocross Magazine about the Belgian life, and even managed to get an interview with ‘cross legend Sven Nys.
Things started off well enough. We managed to get a rental car from Avis, and I even managed to drive and park it without too much trouble — the first time I drove stick since, like, 2003. So after driving around DePinte, completely lost, in dense fog, for about half and hour, Mindi finally managed to figure out where we should be, and we found the entrance for race parking. They had a nice setup, with a little restaurant in the stands overlooking the finish line, a good bike wash station, lots of tents where you could get food or drinks, and an announcer — all in Dutch, of course. Not unlike what you’d see at a big race in the US, except for the fact that this was all provided for a relatively small, local, non-UCI race.
There was a bit of confusion surrounding my UCI license — which was issued while my racing age was 29 (it’s 30 for ‘cross) — so the officials had to spend quite a while deliberating whether I could race in the masters (30+) race, where I belonged, or the Elite race, where I would have been, frankly, spanked. Finally they got everything worked out and I got entered in the race. I can’t say enough about how patient the Belgian officials and race organizers were with me, explaining everything about the race carefully and in English.
Coming down from the first run-up.
So with that I hopped on my bike to check out the course.
I really liked the course, which was mostly flat, moderately technical with lots of twists and switchbacks, and had some interesting features built out of giant piles of dirt, including a set of stairs, two really steep, short climbs that I never managed to ride during warm-up or the chaotic start of the race, some fun, swooping descents, and one set of barriers. Overall, it was a pretty good course for me — plenty of room to move, and lots of relatively long, straight sections where I could crank hard and make up for my relatively limited bike handling skills. While I was warming up the sun came out, and the day turned nice.
When it came time for the race to start, they took us out along along stretch of road, maybe 1 km from the actual beginning of the lap. This really helped string things out before we hit the narrow course — and is something that more American promoters might think about doing. It was nice not to have to stop and wait 30 seconds for a bottleneck to clear when we hit the first narrow section of course.
Because I didn’t have any points so far in the series, I didn’t get a call-up, and had to start in the back. Which was fine with me — since this was my first race, I was happy just to take the start a little conservatively and try to move up once things thinned out a bit. And that plan was going well — I felt strong, staying right in the mix — until remounting after the first trip over the barriers. Somehow my foot slipped off the pedal, went right into my front wheel. I crashed and, in the process, busted a bunch of spokes and rendered my wheel completely unrideable. I’m without a pit bike here, and, for this race, didn’t even have a second set of wheels, so that was pretty much game over for me. A relatively inauspicious start to my Belgian racing career.
So that’s that. I’m bummed and a little dinged up, but otherwise, things are ok. We’ll get the bike ready for next week and with any luck, I’ll actually manage to finish in Moerbeke next Sunday. One good thing about crashing out of a race is that, the next week, even if you finish last, that’s still an improvement over the week before.
You can read about the whole series, the Vlaamse Cyclocross Cup, right here (all in Dutch, of course). All four of Mindi’s (awesome) photos are here.
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