After a weekend off spent recovering the after-effects of the cold and wet race in Baarle, I wasn’t sure how things would go for me in Varsenare this weekend. The good news, before the race, was that the weather was pretty nice, sunny and pretty dry with no threat of rain for the day. The bad news is that it was really cold and windy, challenging conditions for a race.
We got to Varsenare early and I had some time to check out the course before the Masters B & C riders started their race. The ground was sort of half-frozen, muddy and slick in a few places, really muddy in a few others, but mostly hard and bumpy. The course itself was almost completely flat, with only one or two little bumps, a brief section of wooded trail, some pavement, a tricky mudpit followed almost immediately by a set of barriers, and a couple of very long straightaways, both on road and grass, directly into the wind. Working my way through the course I felt cold and slow, despite being bundled up, and I worried about how I would handle both the course and the weather.
Putting some distance between me and the competition.
One nice thing about the race however were the very nice, heated changing rooms, where I had a brief conversation about some of the differences between racing in the US and racing here in Belgium with one of the other guys in my race. Mindi was able to sit upstairs in the cafe and have a great view of the early races out the row of giant windows that normally allows cafe patrons to watch the soccer games on the fields below. After we got everything set up, me dressed, wheels in the pit, and all ready, I headed out for another couple of laps before it was time to line up for the start. Standing there in the cold wind for ten minutes while they lined us up had me wondering exactly why I decided to come out for the race at all. But suddenly we were off.
Which is to say, we were off for about 45 seconds before we came to the first turn of the course where pretty much everybody stopped and stood around for 30 seconds while we filed through the narrow turn into the woody section. Finally through, we were off again, and I was sitting rather comfortably on one guys wheel for most of the next lap with many people dangling just out of reach ahead. Close to the end of the lap I decided that it was now or never and made my first move, charging around a couple of guys on one of the long into-the-wind stretches of the course.
From there I went from guy to guy to guy, picking people off, recovering, and going again. I tried to work on some new technique — a lower cadence and more power on the muddier stuff and a higher cadence and more aggressive riding on the non-technical parts. (I’m not much of a power rider, and I have more success making moves when I can pop it into a low gear and spin like crazy, which works when the ground is hard, but leaves you spinning your wheel helplessly in slicker conditions.) It worked, I kept clawing my way up, passing people on the road and keeping them behind me in the grass. Finally I realized that there was no chance I would get lapped and I was going to have to hold off a group of three who were hanging on my wheel for the rest of the race. Mindi, who was a huge help getting me ready to race and setting up my stuff in the pit, was jumping up and down yelling for me to step it up. I was riding my best race of the season by far.
I was pretty blown at this point, but I kept trying to charge out of every corner, stealing a little recover in the slicker turns where it was almost impossible for anybody to get around me. Part way through the last lap one guy made a move around me, but the other two couldn’t do it. I made one last hard charge coming into the finish line, looked back and saw that the two behind me were out of contact, and rolled comfortably across the line.
I passed a lot of people coming out of the barriers.
End result was a huge step forward, beating a whole bunch of people I almost never even see during the race. I think the cold probably helped, since it felt pretty much like every race I did last year in New England, and I think some of the Belgians, less used to cold, were suffering. But I also just felt a kind of motivation to win (or, anyway, beat some more people) that I’ve been lacking before. Often, it seems, I’ve been satisfied to just cruise through races, but today I was riding hard, wanting to beat everybody I could see in front of me. It felt really good.
So now the question is, can I sustain this new-found momentum through the end of this week? I’m gunning for a good race in the Masters field at the Scheldecross in Antwerp on Friday to cap off the 2008 part of the season. The field there promises to be extra strong. Then it’s back to the US for ten days before heading back here on Jan 2 and picking up with the Flemish Cup again.
Check back soon for more, including photos from the race and a report from our trip to Sunday’s Vlaamse Druivenveldrit in Overijse where Kevin Pauwels bested World Champ Lars Boom and Belgian favorite Sven Nys. More photos of Varsenare are on Flickr.
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